Powerup McMisterpants

Actually, we might get 34k. I got the award last year, but was on reserve for this year (did not take the stipend 2014-2015). I just declared tenure for 2015-2016 on Fastlane and when I view my fellowship status, it lists 34k. That's neat.

I have. Chapter in my thesis and published in a decent journal. The key is to have an interesting null and make it into a good story when submitting to a journal. Just as good science as finding support for the alternative.

Take fewer courses. Easy. They are huge time-wasters and mean nothing on the job market (for a Ph.D. at least). I never take a course unless it has a project component that I can use to either 1) work into my dissertation, or 2) publish a side-project paper. All other courses are a waste of time for a Ph.D. student. You learn when you do research. An exception might be skill-based classes like statistics or programming, but even then, be careful. I will only take 4 courses and 3 1-hour seminars. Done by half way through year 2.

No, headings are not required and you can certainly win without them. I suggest looking at Alex Lang's website and reading past winning essays. Many don't use headings, especially for the personal statement. However, my approach was that I was going to give the reader no excuse for not giving excellent ratings. The reviewers literally have to summarize in writing why they gave you a certain rating. Make their job easy. Basically, I gave them explicit justification for giving me high ratings by clearly identifying BI and IM. Of course, they could simply think my IM wasn't very good...but if they were sympathetic at all, I gave them exactly what they needed to justify an excellent rating. Certainly you can do this in a more narrative format, but to me it seemed riskier. It seems more likely that a reviewer will read too fast and miss the subtleties of the narrative than that s/he would see headings and think "oh no, not headings!" Remember, they are reading your application in the matter of a few minutes and they are going through tons of these things. You've got to view this thing as a game. Exploit the rules of the game to your advantage. You have the rubric - every part of your application should be geared toward satisfying the criteria laid out before you...IM and BI. This is just my opinion and, again, many folks have won without headings. I mostly just wanted to provide guidance for those interested in using them. What we really need is to compare success rate of headings/no headings to see if it really makes a difference...that would be an interesting data set!

One more quick thing for clarity: I actually used headings that said "Intellectual Merit" and "Broader Impact" in each section above. I used very small spacing between paragraphs to maximize words (set the font to size 4 and use one empty line between paragraphs). So it looked like this: Graduate School: Advancing Research of Blah Blah Blah Intellectual Merit: Blah blah I am so smart. Broader Impact: Blah blah I will save our dying world. Next Section Title Intellectual Merit: Broader Impact: And so on.

Someone asked about IM BI headings. I used these last year when I got the award. I was applying in a special category of someone out of grad school for 3+ years, so mine will look different that yours, but this might help. My personal statement looked like this: Inspiration/Introduction 1 paragraph Undergrad career highlights IM: 1 paragraph about GPA and scholarships BI: 1 paragraph about leadership stuff. Grad school highlights IM: 1 paragraph about research/publication BI: 1 paragraph about leadership stuff and presenting at conferences Post-grad school job as a teacher overseas IM: 1 paragraph about my teaching success BI: 1 paragraph about working overseas and how I used the internet to teach (youtube, facebook, etc) Future Goals IM: 1 paragraph about how my research is going to be good BI: 1 paragraph about my aspirations to work internationally Conclusion 1 paragraph repeating highlights of above Last year the personal statement was 3 pages, not sure what it is this year. I also included two short sections at the end of my research proposal, one addressing IM and one addressing BI of the proposed project. Be explicit about IM and BI, that is what they are judging you on. Hope this helps give some structure to your writing. Good luck!

Hi guys, Just wanted to throw in my two cents of advice. I was lucky enough to get the award last year (in the ecology section). A few thoughts for you going through the process: 1. I used IM and BI headings and I think it was helpful. Reviewers read a ton of these. It's as much about making their life easy as anything else. 2. Write your personal statement as a story, but use IM and BI headings. Stories are memorable. A bunch of good-sounding sentences are not. 3. Obsessively study past winner essays, then write essays better than the ones you read. Google "Alex Lang NSF GRFP". His site is the best resource out there. 4. If you don't have excellent LORs, you are wasting your time. Harsh, but true. They should be from profs or scientists when possible. Mine were 3 profs. 5. If you don't have BI, you are wasting your time. You need to demonstrate that you are a leader and that you impact society. If you can't do that, you will not get the Excellents that you need in BI. 6. Your documents must be perfect. No mistakes. Lucid writing. Edit them about a million times. Bounce them off your advisor. Have your friend who is an English major read them. Twice. 7. You must sell yourself. Everyone who applies is smart and ambitious. You must have a story that stands out. Make it a package. This is why the LORs are so important. You must stand out as a package, not just have a good idea. 8. I'd suggest writing a longer document, then cutting it down to the best. My original research proposal was 4 pages. It was nearly impossible to get it to 2, but when I did, it was all the good stuff. 9. I probably put 80-100 hours into my application, the majority on the research proposal (reading papers and writing). Good luck to all! Go Google Alex Lang now!

Hi guys! Glad to see some fellow future Spartans on here. I will be living in Spartan Village, an apartment complex on campus for international students and students with families (we have two little kiddos). Rent is cheap - about $800/month including all utilities - but the apartments are small and not that nice. My wife and I really wanted to be on campus though, so we are going for it You can see some details about Spartan Village here: https://liveon.msu.edu/apartments Click on "Document Library" on the left to get to the application, if you are interested.