Not exactly. My professors urged me to apply because I had excellent grades in my major course of study; I did apply, but wasn't selected. My sister, after earning a degree at Northwestern University, did receive a Fulbright scholarship to study music in Vienna. The money paid for her apartment and most basic living expenses while she studied with the first clarinetist of the Wiener Philharmonik. Trust me - our family had no connections and no discernable political persuasion. It was strictly merit. It's not always strictly merit, I imagine, but in many cases it is.
The thing that really puzzles me about all this is that Vanessa supposedly has received this after she's already started medical school. In the usual case, it goes to someone who's just graduated college, not to someone already halfway through graduate school. That's why this story sounds fishy to me. Of course, anything related to the Kerrys stinks like four-day-old fish, but I digress.
You might have made it too though, if someone above you had not have applied that could have paid for it themselves. Who knows?