becaustic

I'm sorry to hear that you were not successful this year. I applied 3 times before finally wining a CGS Doctoral Scholarship this year. I have found in the past that the best way to receive feedback is from advisors in your department. SSHRC is looking for something very specific, and they do not provide feedback other than your score. I'm sorry that you did not know this before hand. Your advisors should tell you this type of thing. There is an internal system of 'checks and balances' though even if they don't provide you with a breakdown of your score. It is not what someone does 'wrong' on their application. It is more how you stand out amongst thousands of excellent applicants. When I applied for my SSHRC, I collected the proposals of successful applicants. I now have a file of 20 or so successful CGS Doctoral Scholarship applications from the University of Toronto. I based my successful CGS Doctoral applications on the formats of these applicants. When you read 20 or more successful applications, you can tell immediately what they are looking for: clear, simply communicated, coherent, easily-understood language, no jargon, a do-able project, a sense of continuity from your BA to your MA to the PhD, having professors already on-board with your project, plans for after your degree (that are consistent with your project), etc. I hope that you can contact friends and colleagues to make your own 'CGS Successful Application' folder. It is truly invaluable. Paragraph by paragraph, reading 20 of these, you see immediately what makes one person win and an other not win. An other reality that can take a while to realize is that academia is NOT meritocracy. Yes, merit has a lot to do with it, but it is not everything. Certain projects will never get funded because of their political nature, because they are too 'inter-disciplinary', because they are too radical, etc. It is crucial to translate your project into the language and format that is appealing to a nationally-based infrastructure that is invested in small, achievable, gains in scholarship, not huge, radical changes. Best of luck! Cheers, B.

Hello! I received the CGS Doctoral Scholarship beginning May 2015. How long did it take for your money to arrive for those of you that also won this award? From submission of the activation form to the money in your bank? I had to resubmit my form because of an error (the year on the form was written as 2013 by myself by accident in my signature area!), but that was 2 weeks ago, and I am still awaiting my funds. I would appreciate your advice. Cheers, B.