I talked with my POI today and he said that the graduate school is the one who determines the fellowships, not the department, so he couldn't really comment on it other than it was very prestigious and competitive. He said they very occasionally nominate people for fellowship, but that it's usually the recruitment office that . . . recruits people for it. So it's weird, I don't know about hesheit1 but my scores on the GRE aren't stellar. But why would they have contacted me? It's not like they don't have my scores in front of them.
I think I may be in the same boat as Queen of Kale. I'm a woman and I was also president of our Allies (Gay/straight alliance) at my college campus, plus my MA is in applied Linguistics and not English. Plus, my letter discussed how much the school embraced diversity so. . .
Violet, this is exactly my line of thinking. Even if I don't get the fellowship, I feel like it might be a good sign of at least admission into the department. Plus, since I've told my main POI, maybe he will tell the adcomm that I was at least eligible for nomination?
We shall see. Keep me updated hesheit1. I won't be able to contact the recruitment office until tomorrow, but I'll post once I've discussed with them.