GeoDUDE!

I really caution any person in stem to go to graduate school if you have to self finance. It almost never works out the way you want it.

Trophies for winners, participation ribbons for everyone?

I think everyone should get a trophy.

I think everyone should get a trophy.

I think everyone should get a trophy.

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.

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..... 

Do nothing until you make it through the Graduate school; let the department know that you haven't received your official acceptance

Do nothing until you make it through the Graduate school; let the department know that you haven't received your official acceptance

Got accepted by University of Washington for M.S. Applied Geosciences today, not sure on the potential for T.A. yet

I think apple care is a waste of money. The 1 problem i've had with my macbook pro (3 years old now) is one of the fans started making weird noises, so i went to ifixit.com and bought one for ~60 bucks and changed it out. It was super easy.
 
IMO, if you want a laptop, the 13 inch macbook air is the best on the market. Powerful, amazing battery life. The only bad thing about it is the screen resolution is from the stone age; its a decent TN panel but i think its like 1440x900 when most people on a 13 inch screen would want 1920 x 1080.
 
With computers, I'm a firm believer in you get what you pay for; I had very expensive windows laptops before my mac and they worked out OK. If you can, spend at least 1k on a computer, for something you want to use day in and day out, build quality matters almost as much as battery life. For most people, power shouldn't be a concern. Even most computer science majors dont need a powerful laptop. The only thing you need a powerful laptop for is Gaming, Data Analysis (and really thats just ram for most people), Photoshop/Illustrator (to make posters). Everything else is easy enough run on an i3 and 2gb of ram. Look for battery life, look for build quality. The better the track pad the better the usability of the computer is, which is why apples got so popular in the first place. Keyboards are also important, and it seems windows computers have some good ones. 
 
I am skeptical of the new lenovo laptops; They aren't the same bastions of build quality they used to be. If I were to buy a windows laptop today, it would be an Asus Zenbook I think. 

I've committed to davis... good to be moving back to cali after 6 years of exile. 

I think this is highly field dependent; In any program where an offer tuition + stipend is expect there is no such thing as a safety. Academia is to fickle by nature.
 
What is a saftey?
 
TBH, any field where you are paying for the degree ( except maybe medical, vet, and law schools) are reasonably easy to get into. There are some very difficult MBAs, but there are a handfull of programs that take on students for money.
 
If there were "safties" you would see the same people get into all of their schools; while this happens to a very select few of elite prospects, the 98% or so of us dont do quite as well no matter the spread. That is why people apply to many schools.

It could have also been that your POI at the school you were rejected from already had someone in mind for the position, and they just needed an excuse to reject you without being truthful. Which in my mind is super unethical: people should always tell the truth.

I think apple care is a waste of money. The 1 problem i've had with my macbook pro (3 years old now) is one of the fans started making weird noises, so i went to ifixit.com and bought one for ~60 bucks and changed it out. It was super easy.
 
IMO, if you want a laptop, the 13 inch macbook air is the best on the market. Powerful, amazing battery life. The only bad thing about it is the screen resolution is from the stone age; its a decent TN panel but i think its like 1440x900 when most people on a 13 inch screen would want 1920 x 1080.
 
With computers, I'm a firm believer in you get what you pay for; I had very expensive windows laptops before my mac and they worked out OK. If you can, spend at least 1k on a computer, for something you want to use day in and day out, build quality matters almost as much as battery life. For most people, power shouldn't be a concern. Even most computer science majors dont need a powerful laptop. The only thing you need a powerful laptop for is Gaming, Data Analysis (and really thats just ram for most people), Photoshop/Illustrator (to make posters). Everything else is easy enough run on an i3 and 2gb of ram. Look for battery life, look for build quality. The better the track pad the better the usability of the computer is, which is why apples got so popular in the first place. Keyboards are also important, and it seems windows computers have some good ones. 
 
I am skeptical of the new lenovo laptops; They aren't the same bastions of build quality they used to be. If I were to buy a windows laptop today, it would be an Asus Zenbook I think. 

I think thats right. I think engineers can get through the mathematical rigor of an atmosphereic science degree ( I mean, you at least have to take linear alegebra / calc 3, and probably go up to PDEs.) I'm sure you will find a good home.

I mean it depends. Almost all the people in atmospheric sciences that I know either are straight physicists, mathematicians or chemists. 

It's actually a bit more complex than that, even if I want to agree with the sentiment. 

LA is a terrible city.

budget ? 

It's actually a bit more complex than that, even if I want to agree with the sentiment. 

It's actually a bit more complex than that, even if I want to agree with the sentiment. 

It's actually a bit more complex than that, even if I want to agree with the sentiment.