allornothing

Congratulations to everyone who has received good news so far. The process is absolutely exhausting, so I'm sure it must be a huge relief. I'm trying not to be too concerned that I haven't received my results yet despite having them sent to an Ottawa address. I'm currently enrolled at an American institution, so my department is of little use in this area. Just wanted to send a message of support to all the others who have yet to receive their results. Hang in there.

I'm also at a foreign institution. My understanding is that we deal directly with SSHRC, so the letter will be our only notification about whether we have been awarded a SSHRC. The only thing the department will do is sign off that you are enrolled once if you receive the award.

The letter that you receive from SSHRC will let you know if your applicaition has been accepted, waitlisted or declined. So, if you are waitlisted, you will find out at the same time that you find out that you were unsuccessful. From what I remember, last year we did not receive a score with our initial letters, but received scores with our final acceptance/rejection letters. This is likely because the scoring that takes place within the universities is different what is done for the external applicant who apply directly to SSHRC. Can you imagine if they gave us scores in our first letters and they went down in the second round? Talk about asking for complaints from overly anxious and highly motivated grad students. Not giving us multiple scores is probably the smartest administrative decision SSHRC makes.

Based on the communication on last year's thread, it appears that all the initial letters (funded and not-funded) are mailed on the same day. I was not funded last year and received my letter at the same time as those who were funded. How soon you get that letter obviously depends on geographic location (the poor people living in Vancouver were in agony last year). Once people start to accept and reject their offers, letters are sent out at various intervals to people on waiting lists.

I will preface this by saying that my experience is with the PhD level business award. The SSHRC Master's competition usually works differently but, I'll post what I know in case it is helpful for you or others. Last year, my application was forwarded from my school to SSHRC. I found out in June (it was really late last year) that I was not awarded a CSG/SSHRC in the general competition. In late July I got a letter saying that my application had been sent to the Business Competition and was funded (I couldn't accept this award because I'm studying in the United States...this goes to your point about the "politics" of the initiatives). My application was only tangentially related to business, and I had not specifically applied to this category. My personal guess is that they are having a tough time finding applications that are specifically related to business and are pulling from other elsewhere to insure that the money is going to well-qualified candidates. My experience last year was that, because of the novelty of this scholarship initiative, helpful bloggers and my school's administration did not have a lot of advice for me. I ended up having a couple of helpful (if ultimately disappointing) email exchanges with SSHRC. If you have specific questions, I would not hesitate to contact them. Best of luck!

Congrats to the newest round of Bombardier winners. I'm pleased that SSHRC has turned to email to speed up communication. I hope that this is a sign of things to come. Perhaps an automated system for tracking applications? Dare to dream.

Dave, I'm sorry to hear that your wife is in the same unfortunate position as I am. I hope that she contacted SSHRC to ensure that this is definitely the position that they are taking towards recipients of the business CGS studying at international universities. I would hate to think that anyone missed an opportunity for funding because of information that I received and passed on. Unfortunately, I think that SSHRC's hands are tied here. As jasper.milvain noted, this money has been tagged as part of a stimulus approach and, for political reasons, is unlikely to travel past the boarders. I actually appreciate that SSHRC is moving applications around to try to get as many of us funded as possible. That being said, I don't agree with the notion that worthy proposals are not being funded because Canadians are choosing to do part or all of their studies internationally. I would certainly be willing to write a more formal letter to that effect. Best of luck.

Final answer: no. For whatever reason, they are not letting applicants downgrade the business CGS to take it to an international school as they do with the general CGS. At least there is one more business SSHRC available for some other worthy candidate.

Not according to my preliminary conversations with SSHRC but I've asked that exact question. No response yet.

My situation is similar to finitejane (yet somewhat less enjoyable). Way back in June, I received word that I was not award a SSHRC but was placed on the waiting list (with a 16.4/30). Yesterday, I got a letter notifying me that I had been awarded the Bombardier Business SSHRC (22.8/30)