Diakonos

I can try to answer Question 1. My understanding is that they will only pay from the start date onwards — never retroactively unless you were on the wait-list and magically got the SSHRC later in the year. (This happened to one of my friends; he was waitlisted for the MA SSHRC and found out in December that he was bumped up. So he got Sept.-Dec. all at once.) They will not give you money for the time you've already studied before officially receiving the award on the specified start date. Unfortunately if you're graduating in August 2015, I am quite sure the funding will stop when you cease to be a full-time student. If someone is a 4th year student, I assume that means that by Dec. 31 of the year of application they would have finished 40 months of full-time study (3*12 + 4 fall months), and the website says that the person would be eligible for 12 months of funding. But if the person ceases to be a student, it seems to me that the funding would not go for the 12 months. It would likely be the 4 months. Sorry if that's bad news for your scenario!

This is very helpful indeed, bentharbour! Thanks. I know people won CGS last year with 16, so if somehow I get bumped up it would be amazing. Haha, I almost shudder to share it. I got a 7.7/20, which means my score this year is exactly DOUBLE last year's. But SSHRC's not a crapshoot, right? ;P No major changes except I reworked the proposal and now I'm actually in the program rather than applying to it. I've maintained my GPA. I wonder if I made some sort of error last year, because the application was ranked #1 by my department last year and the SSHRC score was obviously quite low. But to me the take-home message was: don't let SSHRC determine your evaluation of your work or your worth as an academic. It's alarmingly random, both for these awards and for the Insight Grants. A professor I know told me that she applied one year and got rejected, applied the next year with an identical application and got 500k+. I let SSHRC ruin my summer last year and I just would hate that to happen to anyone here.

I second Konstantin. Last year I received a pretty miserable score and was rejected. Today (in Montreal) I got a letter for the B-category, which is great. (The score was 15.4, and I don't know how close that is to the CGS range this year, but I sure wouldn't turn down a bump-up!)

Mhm. I don't think there's much to be done aside from "seeking further information about the review" from "the SSHRC program officer identified in the letter of decision." I suppose I'll talk more to the grad chair and see what he says. Luckily I can still apply next year, and I probably will end up doing just that. Congrats to the successful applicants!

[Conspiracy Keanu] What if external fellowship officers know when SSHRC results will be released And plan their ACEFGAC during that week? [/Conspiracy Keanu]

Just emailed the external fellowships officer at my school... got an automatic reply saying she's out of the office until next week. Talk about cruel and unusual! edit:/ unless it is common practice for fellowship officers to do this when awards are being released?

Congrats Bentharbour, Pbaid, and Surefire!

Mhm, I agree. I'm just thinking that if part of SSHRC's (publicly-funded) mandate is to support and sustain good research and researchers, then it would make sense to do anything possible to allow doctoral students to make a good decision for school. I can't imagine it would be so difficult to have results released in March, for example, given that most universities submit their recommendations in January or even earlier. They are certainly sticking to their policy—it's just not the best one.

This. Honestly, what are SSHRC's priorities? Doctoral awards are kind of important, as they greatly determine who can go to do their PhD and where they will do it. I got university acceptances in early February; they wanted an answer by the end of February and March. If the financial packages are not substantial, how can someone make an informed decision about whether undertaking a PhD is financially feasible? It's criminal. /rant

I should not have checked this forum before sleeping. Geez. Nothing from my school.

I'm convinced Shakespeare has something apt to say in any circumstance.

To pass the time, here's a sonnet Shakespeare wrote while waiting for his SSHRC letter: That god forbid, that made me first your slave, I should in thought control your times of pleasure, Or at your hand the account of hours to crave, Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure! O! let me suffer, being at your beck, The imprison'd absence of your liberty; And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check, Without accusing you of injury. Be where you list, your charter is so strong That you yourself may privilege your time To what you will; to you it doth belong Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime. I am to wait, though waiting so be hell, Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.

Putting on my logic and reasoning course hat here. Technically, only two students from any tri-council agencies have to have been notified for the statement to be true. But yeah, the phrasing is misleading, especially to us poor souls who will reach at anything that suggests results.

I'm more nervous about this than about PhD applications... I feel like my program proposals were actually stronger than my SSHRC proposal, if only because they came later. I got into all my schools, but now I wonder about this. I seem to recall hearing from a grad director that the process would be different in future years—something more akin to the new master's CGS method of determining winners. Anyone else hear anything like this? (Not that it will matter for us, because we will all win CGS doctorals, of course.)

For what it's worth, the older models of MBP can be easily upgraded to more ram or an SSD. I have a 240gb SSD on my MBP 2011 and it runs quicker than any mac I've seen without flash storage. As well, whatever you end up going with, consider using Scrivener for your writing projects. Besides the fact that it's a much better processor than Word or Pages or anything else that I've used, it also is much less demanding on your system, so lower ram would be fine and battery lasts longer.