Carroll Fellows Initiative

Established in 1997, the Carroll Fellows Initiative is Georgetown’s flagship opportunity for its most academically talented and ambitious undergraduates.  The CFI helps its Fellows organize and support their pursuit of excellence in a community of like-minded peers.  Carroll Fellows value hard work, patience, honesty, rationality, curiosity and learning.  Defining themselves as thinkers who do, Carroll Fellows are not only successful inside the established curriculum, but are also motivated to treat their undergraduate years as a laboratory in leadership and independent academic pursuits.  Carroll Fellows are fully committed to living the motto of Mentis Vita Pro Vita Mundi – the life of the mind for the life of the world – in every aspect of their undergraduate careers.

With a goal of fostering this intellectual spirit, the CFI provides a seven-semester program to engage and challenge its Fellows.  The program begins in the spring semester of the freshmen year with the Forum, a 2-semester seminar course, and cumulates to a senior honors thesis.  During the remaining semesters, the program is largely determined by each Fellow's Carroll Plan - an individualized progress plan combining the CFI's programmatic requirements with each Fellow's specific interests and goals.  Though created by each Fellow, Carroll Plans are approved by the GOFAR office and inform semiannual meetings between each Fellow and the GOFAR staff.


Joining the CFI

Each fall, the CFI solicits applications from members of the freshmen class through campus-wide information sessions.  Successful applicants are admitted to the CFI on a provisional basis; upon successful completion of the Forum, students are invited officially join the CFI for the remainder of their undergraduate years.

Transfer students may apply to the CFI during the summer before their enrollment in Georgetown.  Transfer students must enroll as sophomores to be eligible for the CFI.

For more information about applying to the CFI, please email carrollprograms@georgetown.edu.