Wolverine

This is my third year applying for NSF and I have an interesting set of results: 2012: First year as an applicant I received the following feedback and Honorable Mention 1)Excellent, Very Good 2)Excellent, Very Good 3)Very Good, Good 2013: Second year I was a first year Phd student, had earned a number of awards upon graduating undergrad and had finished my last semester with a perfect GPA. My application included only a few minor revisions suggested from 2012 and clearly only improved- I went from Honorable mention to nothing. 1) Very Good, Very Good 2) Good, Good 2014: Third year as an applicant I received the following feedback and again Honorable Mention. Again my competitiveness had only improved with a perfect graduate school GPA and four publications. 1)Excellent, Excellent 2)Very Good, Excellent 3)Excellent, Very Good Comments from reviewers had little concrete feedback and only positive things to say. Perseverance can pay off, in my case it did not. For those of you who did not win- let my experience serve as a reminder that the process requires much more than a competitive application and is far from fair and consistent.

I think FrankForum has it right. I applied in Naval Architecture and know people in my discipline that have been given rejection letters. I received the email stating that I am still being considered. They must be waiting for the rubber stamp of approval from each department to release the final awards. Seeing as they have already released rejections within the same field this makes sense.

I too got the email. Interesting. I know they did not send the email last year. Did anyone not receive the email?