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^ This is why I think the fellowship application process is a crapshoot-- people like you come through!

^ This is why I think the fellowship application process is a crapshoot-- people like you come through!

^ This is why I think the fellowship application process is a crapshoot-- people like you come through!

So I accepted the Hertz fellowship a little while back. This fellowship only includes a stipend and no tuition (though my offers from schools will cover tuition). Is it possible to accept NSF just for the tuition part along with Hertz (I want to save my adviser some money )?
 
Admittedly, I haven't looked much into the fellowship stuff. 

Anyone know how to stop thinking about this? I feel like I'm building myself up for much of nothing, don't wanna be super disappointed in a couple of weeks...

Just assume it's 4/15 and you're not getting it.

Anyone know how to stop thinking about this? I feel like I'm building myself up for much of nothing, don't wanna be super disappointed in a couple of weeks...

I can tell you're seeking a more quantitative measure as to whether you will get in or not into your targeted schools-- there is none. Admissions processes are holistic, and while cutoffs are present (both official and unofficial in committee member's preferences and elsewhere), ultimately anything strong will help your application-- i.e., a strong LOR/SOP will help a low GPA/GRE, and vice versa.
 
That is not to say these factors are not equivalent. Many would say that the most important criteria are the LORs, Research experience, and SOP, while GPA/GRE scores are probably fourth in importance. Letters of recommendation are worth their weight and gold, research experience proves you can do it, and your SOP determines your fit and says whether you can really work as a researcher.
 
GPA/GRE scores are a semi-quantitative measure that they use as a filter. If you're going into organic chemistry and you have Cs in Ochem, then that will probably hurt you a lot. But if they see that you got a C in History while applying towards Computational Chemistry, it probably doesn't matter that much. For the GRE scores, a low score will definitely hurt while a high score lets you get past the sieve. Recently, some admission committees claim on be focusing more on the verbal and writing sections (provided you meet a minimum quant) as they know you can game the test, and that research at upper-level institutions revolve much around writing, publishing, proposing, etc...
 
All of this is to say that your experience, LOR, and SOP are what truly matter. Do your best on your GREs and hope you can get in. Unless you have access to a pool of candidate profiles or averages for the schools you are applying to, with complete copies of their LORs and SOPs, there is no way to tell whether you are safe for a school or not. You are nervous and seeking certainty, but from what I've seen you've got a fairly high shot given your creds, and as long as you focus your SOP and your LORs speak of you positively and recommend a future for you as a researcher.

Also, I just accepted an offer at UW, but they're only giving me TA funding for my first year. So now, I'm freaking out because no part of me wants to TA for my first year in graduate school, so I NEED this fellowship.

There really isn't a place elsewhere for grad students to discuss this, so here's my two beans: I agree wholeheartedly with brownlee's notion. I think even if you live in Boston/SF the NSF shouldn't be a monetary reward. Whatever the school offers as a stipend should be enough to cover a reasonable cost of living. For example, the Stanford Chemistry stipend is actually ~2K more than the NSF award. 
 
I think this is how the NSF should structure the program: reduce the stipend amount and increase the amount of awardees. At this point students will already have been accepted to programs. If the stipend amount is less than the school's stipend (e.g. if the NSF award is 28,000 and Stanford is 34,000), then the school should match up to the difference. For many cities, this is way more than the regular student stipend. For example, the UT Austin stipend is 24k, and in this case the school wouldn't have to match up at all. This way, you get more awardees and schools bear part of the cost of having an essentially free grad student. One downside I can think of is that schools will admit smaller cohorts to reflect the increased burden on their budgets.
 
tl;dr: taxpayers shouldn't shoulder the cost of funding a grad student, and school endowments should be dipped into for this purpose.

So you went with preemptive douchery, so people weren't douches?

There really isn't a place elsewhere for grad students to discuss this, so here's my two beans: I agree wholeheartedly with brownlee's notion. I think even if you live in Boston/SF the NSF shouldn't be a monetary reward. Whatever the school offers as a stipend should be enough to cover a reasonable cost of living. For example, the Stanford Chemistry stipend is actually ~2K more than the NSF award. 
 
I think this is how the NSF should structure the program: reduce the stipend amount and increase the amount of awardees. At this point students will already have been accepted to programs. If the stipend amount is less than the school's stipend (e.g. if the NSF award is 28,000 and Stanford is 34,000), then the school should match up to the difference. For many cities, this is way more than the regular student stipend. For example, the UT Austin stipend is 24k, and in this case the school wouldn't have to match up at all. This way, you get more awardees and schools bear part of the cost of having an essentially free grad student. One downside I can think of is that schools will admit smaller cohorts to reflect the increased burden on their budgets.
 
tl;dr: taxpayers shouldn't shoulder the cost of funding a grad student, and school endowments should be dipped into for this purpose.

I don't know anyone that wouldn't get at least a little emotional upon seeing that they received an award. This is the first year that I am applying and I am a pre-grad applicant. If I were to get the award there would certainly be tears of complete and absolute joy. One - All the effort I put in last fall would have paid off in a HUGE way. Two- I wouldn't have to go through the GRFP process a second time! 

When all is said and done, I still think applying for the GRFP was an amazing learning experience. I have published manuscripts both as a primary author and as an et al. Until the GRFP I had not written a research proposal. This process also helped me refine my personal statement which I ultimately modified to use for my application to grad school and I got in! At the very least, the GRFP  got me accepted to grad school. Even if I get terrible reviews on my application, I am still going to grad school in the fall and I get to do science! 

 

There really isn't a place elsewhere for grad students to discuss this, so here's my two beans: I agree wholeheartedly with brownlee's notion. I think even if you live in Boston/SF the NSF shouldn't be a monetary reward. Whatever the school offers as a stipend should be enough to cover a reasonable cost of living. For example, the Stanford Chemistry stipend is actually ~2K more than the NSF award. 
 
I think this is how the NSF should structure the program: reduce the stipend amount and increase the amount of awardees. At this point students will already have been accepted to programs. If the stipend amount is less than the school's stipend (e.g. if the NSF award is 28,000 and Stanford is 34,000), then the school should match up to the difference. For many cities, this is way more than the regular student stipend. For example, the UT Austin stipend is 24k, and in this case the school wouldn't have to match up at all. This way, you get more awardees and schools bear part of the cost of having an essentially free grad student. One downside I can think of is that schools will admit smaller cohorts to reflect the increased burden on their budgets.
 
tl;dr: taxpayers shouldn't shoulder the cost of funding a grad student, and school endowments should be dipped into for this purpose.

There really isn't a place elsewhere for grad students to discuss this, so here's my two beans: I agree wholeheartedly with brownlee's notion. I think even if you live in Boston/SF the NSF shouldn't be a monetary reward. Whatever the school offers as a stipend should be enough to cover a reasonable cost of living. For example, the Stanford Chemistry stipend is actually ~2K more than the NSF award. 
 
I think this is how the NSF should structure the program: reduce the stipend amount and increase the amount of awardees. At this point students will already have been accepted to programs. If the stipend amount is less than the school's stipend (e.g. if the NSF award is 28,000 and Stanford is 34,000), then the school should match up to the difference. For many cities, this is way more than the regular student stipend. For example, the UT Austin stipend is 24k, and in this case the school wouldn't have to match up at all. This way, you get more awardees and schools bear part of the cost of having an essentially free grad student. One downside I can think of is that schools will admit smaller cohorts to reflect the increased burden on their budgets.
 
tl;dr: taxpayers shouldn't shoulder the cost of funding a grad student, and school endowments should be dipped into for this purpose.

There really isn't a place elsewhere for grad students to discuss this, so here's my two beans: I agree wholeheartedly with brownlee's notion. I think even if you live in Boston/SF the NSF shouldn't be a monetary reward. Whatever the school offers as a stipend should be enough to cover a reasonable cost of living. For example, the Stanford Chemistry stipend is actually ~2K more than the NSF award. 
 
I think this is how the NSF should structure the program: reduce the stipend amount and increase the amount of awardees. At this point students will already have been accepted to programs. If the stipend amount is less than the school's stipend (e.g. if the NSF award is 28,000 and Stanford is 34,000), then the school should match up to the difference. For many cities, this is way more than the regular student stipend. For example, the UT Austin stipend is 24k, and in this case the school wouldn't have to match up at all. This way, you get more awardees and schools bear part of the cost of having an essentially free grad student. One downside I can think of is that schools will admit smaller cohorts to reflect the increased burden on their budgets.
 
tl;dr: taxpayers shouldn't shoulder the cost of funding a grad student, and school endowments should be dipped into for this purpose.

There really isn't a place elsewhere for grad students to discuss this, so here's my two beans: I agree wholeheartedly with brownlee's notion. I think even if you live in Boston/SF the NSF shouldn't be a monetary reward. Whatever the school offers as a stipend should be enough to cover a reasonable cost of living. For example, the Stanford Chemistry stipend is actually ~2K more than the NSF award. 
 
I think this is how the NSF should structure the program: reduce the stipend amount and increase the amount of awardees. At this point students will already have been accepted to programs. If the stipend amount is less than the school's stipend (e.g. if the NSF award is 28,000 and Stanford is 34,000), then the school should match up to the difference. For many cities, this is way more than the regular student stipend. For example, the UT Austin stipend is 24k, and in this case the school wouldn't have to match up at all. This way, you get more awardees and schools bear part of the cost of having an essentially free grad student. One downside I can think of is that schools will admit smaller cohorts to reflect the increased burden on their budgets.
 
tl;dr: taxpayers shouldn't shoulder the cost of funding a grad student, and school endowments should be dipped into for this purpose.

There really isn't a place elsewhere for grad students to discuss this, so here's my two beans: I agree wholeheartedly with brownlee's notion. I think even if you live in Boston/SF the NSF shouldn't be a monetary reward. Whatever the school offers as a stipend should be enough to cover a reasonable cost of living. For example, the Stanford Chemistry stipend is actually ~2K more than the NSF award. 
 
I think this is how the NSF should structure the program: reduce the stipend amount and increase the amount of awardees. At this point students will already have been accepted to programs. If the stipend amount is less than the school's stipend (e.g. if the NSF award is 28,000 and Stanford is 34,000), then the school should match up to the difference. For many cities, this is way more than the regular student stipend. For example, the UT Austin stipend is 24k, and in this case the school wouldn't have to match up at all. This way, you get more awardees and schools bear part of the cost of having an essentially free grad student. One downside I can think of is that schools will admit smaller cohorts to reflect the increased burden on their budgets.
 
tl;dr: taxpayers shouldn't shoulder the cost of funding a grad student, and school endowments should be dipped into for this purpose.

There really isn't a place elsewhere for grad students to discuss this, so here's my two beans: I agree wholeheartedly with brownlee's notion. I think even if you live in Boston/SF the NSF shouldn't be a monetary reward. Whatever the school offers as a stipend should be enough to cover a reasonable cost of living. For example, the Stanford Chemistry stipend is actually ~2K more than the NSF award. 
 
I think this is how the NSF should structure the program: reduce the stipend amount and increase the amount of awardees. At this point students will already have been accepted to programs. If the stipend amount is less than the school's stipend (e.g. if the NSF award is 28,000 and Stanford is 34,000), then the school should match up to the difference. For many cities, this is way more than the regular student stipend. For example, the UT Austin stipend is 24k, and in this case the school wouldn't have to match up at all. This way, you get more awardees and schools bear part of the cost of having an essentially free grad student. One downside I can think of is that schools will admit smaller cohorts to reflect the increased burden on their budgets.
 
tl;dr: taxpayers shouldn't shoulder the cost of funding a grad student, and school endowments should be dipped into for this purpose.

The purpose of the GRFP, from the government's (i.e. NSF's) perspective is to get more science done cheaper. Therefore, this doesn't make sense. More scientists can do more science. More money in the pockets of grad students simply means more beer in the fridges of said grad students (and therefore LESS science being done. Not a tested hypothesis BTW. I'll start experiments this weekend). As far as I'm concerned $28K would be generous (and allow the NSF to increase the number of awards by nearly 300). I mean, who here is doing this science stuff for the money??? Anyone??? We, as grad students, apply for this award because, we want to do good science, we want to be recognized for said science (prestige), and we want to take the financial burden off of our PIs so that they can buy us pretty science toys (Mmmmm new pipette smell...). We don't apply for it because we make a few thousand more dollars a year (of course that is a HUGE bonus). Heck, I'd apply for it if all they did was match your schools stipend!!
 
Can anyone here suggest a reason as to why the NSF would increase the award amount by $2k as opposed to increasing the number of awards by 93.33? The only thing I can come up with is that they have some algorithm which suggests that they will get more total units of work by increasing award amounts vs awardee numbers. Seems odd though to me..... 

There really isn't a place elsewhere for grad students to discuss this, so here's my two beans: I agree wholeheartedly with brownlee's notion. I think even if you live in Boston/SF the NSF shouldn't be a monetary reward. Whatever the school offers as a stipend should be enough to cover a reasonable cost of living. For example, the Stanford Chemistry stipend is actually ~2K more than the NSF award. 
 
I think this is how the NSF should structure the program: reduce the stipend amount and increase the amount of awardees. At this point students will already have been accepted to programs. If the stipend amount is less than the school's stipend (e.g. if the NSF award is 28,000 and Stanford is 34,000), then the school should match up to the difference. For many cities, this is way more than the regular student stipend. For example, the UT Austin stipend is 24k, and in this case the school wouldn't have to match up at all. This way, you get more awardees and schools bear part of the cost of having an essentially free grad student. One downside I can think of is that schools will admit smaller cohorts to reflect the increased burden on their budgets.
 
tl;dr: taxpayers shouldn't shoulder the cost of funding a grad student, and school endowments should be dipped into for this purpose.

I think everyone should get a trophy.

There really isn't a place elsewhere for grad students to discuss this, so here's my two beans: I agree wholeheartedly with brownlee's notion. I think even if you live in Boston/SF the NSF shouldn't be a monetary reward. Whatever the school offers as a stipend should be enough to cover a reasonable cost of living. For example, the Stanford Chemistry stipend is actually ~2K more than the NSF award. 
 
I think this is how the NSF should structure the program: reduce the stipend amount and increase the amount of awardees. At this point students will already have been accepted to programs. If the stipend amount is less than the school's stipend (e.g. if the NSF award is 28,000 and Stanford is 34,000), then the school should match up to the difference. For many cities, this is way more than the regular student stipend. For example, the UT Austin stipend is 24k, and in this case the school wouldn't have to match up at all. This way, you get more awardees and schools bear part of the cost of having an essentially free grad student. One downside I can think of is that schools will admit smaller cohorts to reflect the increased burden on their budgets.
 
tl;dr: taxpayers shouldn't shoulder the cost of funding a grad student, and school endowments should be dipped into for this purpose.

Around this time the next crop of applicants are starting to sniff around. Starting out, I thought it would have been great to have a Chemistry-centric resource for people who have no idea what to do. Would you guys care to share some insight you've gained during this mess?

Couple I've found:
 
Don't worry about your Cs, they won't kill you.
 
Now that I've gone on visits, I really appreciate the importance of applying to governmental fellowships. This past year the deadlines were November 15 and December 20. Check out 'The Bank', especially for NSF-GRF and NDSEG, as these can greatly influence who/what you can work with/on during grad school.