Eigen

Please don't cross post. Closing this one as the other thread has replies.

Just do it realizing that you're likely screwing over School X, as well as probably denying a prospective student at School X a spot. There's nothing School X can force you to do, CGS is not that kind of agreement. It's a gentleman's agreement at heart, and is about an intent for fair recruiting more than anything else. You just need to realize what you're doing to the school, the potential impacts to your career depending on how badly it screws over School X, etc.

I used to spend about 2 hours each morning reading literature- I don't have time for that regularity anymore, but I set aside at least one afternoon a week to peruse the ASAP articles from each of the major journals I follow. I tend to read in sprees now- need to track something down, take a day, go into the literature and read a couple of dozen papers relating to it.

I'm really not seeing what A did that pissed you off so badly. They're throwing a party, and invited someone you don't particularly like. I'm not sure why you see that as inappropriate. Perhaps you should trust the judgement of someone you consider a great mentor?

Pretty much no career or academic impacts to any GPA from what I've seen. People care that you got your degree, what and where your publications are, if you had national awards, if you already have grant money that you bring along with you, if you have a history of patentable ideas, etc.

If your advisor says it's fine, why would you care what random people on an Internet forum say?

No, you should not feel bad at all. I was the first person to win a fellowship from my definitely not top-tier R1, and it's been a great experience. It definitely smooths along interactions with researchers outside of my institution- having the NSF is a nice feather in your cap (and on your CV) that will certainly help you along. People worry too much about prestige, in my opinion. It matters, to some degree, if you want to land a job at an R1 as a researcher- but what matters more is showing that you're a good researcher. In my small sub-field, some of the highly respected folks are at smaller schools, some didn't go to top-5 schools. They've made a name for themselves since. I would also ask yourself if the types of people who's opinions you care about care more about where you went to school or what kind of researcher you are- likelihood is, the people that matter won't care.

Have you accepted a particular school's offer yet? If so, you'll have a program officer at the school who mediates interactions with NSF. When I was awarded the NSF, I was in my 2nd year of another fellowship, and I wanted to keep it for another year before swapping to NSF (first year reserve). I got my program officer to ask NSF (and they were OK with it) and the other fellowship agency was as well. The purpose behind not taking two federal fellowships (irrespective of reserve/tenure) is that they come out of the same pot, so to speak. I'm relatively sure that the Ford and NSF could be leapfrogged OK, but you'd want to ask via your program officer(s) to be sure.

Have you talked to your advisor about it?

Just FYI, under the NSF review criteria (not just for the GRFP),broader impacts are primarily outreach. Here's the most recent "dear colleague" letter detailing broader impacts: For grant writing, GRFP among them, you really want to be sure you know what the review team is looking for, and give it to them. See the above bolded phrases? You'd want to use language as similar to that as possible to talk about what you're doing. Look for keywords in the criteria, use those keywords to describe your research/broader impacts. Heck, even bold the sections where you use those keywords. Do the same thing for intellectual merit. Panels reviewing the GRFP are usually also those that review other NSF grants. I also personally recommend NSF's proposal writing guide (http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf13001/gpg_2.jsp#IIC2d). Not all of it is applicable, but it has a lot of fantastic information in it that helps you with grant writing in general and NSF criteria in particular.

Good advice from Gina. The other thing to ask around (check with senior grad students in your program) is how important the coursework actually is. In my department, for instance, a lot of our first and second years spend way, way more time than they should on coursework when the faculty don't really care. The courses are designed to be done with minimal effort, but the students are focusing on them to the exclusion of research, which is what's really important. I know this isn't the case in all programs, but I would strongly suggest cultivating a good relationship with a senior grad student that can help answer questions about things like this.

I wouldn't say you're overreacting, but I would say this is a very good introduction to getting scientific research funded. My initial thought would be to take away the fact that your proposal was not clear enough on the broader impacts relative to the time the reviewers have to read it. Did you use underlining, bold, and specific introductions like "The broader impact of this study is XXY", or say that it matched up with the broader impacts from Project Nest & Project Feeder? Getting funding in the sciences is a confound of several issues: How good your idea is, how popular your idea is, and how effectively that idea is communicated. There's also a nice topping of "how cranky the reviewer was on the morning the read your proposal", but there's nothing you can do about that. Funding (including the GRFP) is an organized crapshoot, and there's only so much you can do to mitigate the effects of the review process. You feel like you weren't given enough thought and consideration given the time put in, but that's part of this. Reviews of a whole dossier take minutes. The same will be true for grant funding reviews, as well as peer review of articles you write. For coping, I suggest venting, being frustrated, putting the review aside for a month or two, and then coming back to it. When you come back to it, approach it productively: What, if anything, can you do to mitigate this happening to you again. Is there any merit to the review, or any of their suggestions. Take what you can away from it, make changes as appropriate, and move on. I've had to deal with this from peer reviews of articles- reviewers rejecting manuscripts based on the fact that I "missed referencing essential work from Smith et al", when I devoted the better part of a page to the discussion of Smith et al. Sometimes you can write a response, sometimes you just have to eat it and move on.

Would depend on the reason for the W, and whether it was a WF or an early withdrawal.

I started in July, and was very happy with the decision. Gave me a good 6-8 weeks to get payroll straightened out, get used to a lab, get used to the city, meet people in the department, etc. I didn't have to ask, since two of the PI's I wanted to work with both offered. Since, however, I've recommended some of our incoming students ask, and none have been turned down that I know of.

Generally, to note, a non-taxable fellowship just means that you aren't charged tax on the amount that goes to pay for school-related expenses. It doesn't mean the entire stipend is tax free. So, for example, a TA or RA can't subtract fees, books, etc. paid to the University from wages- they are earning an income in exchange for services. They can deduct those expenses, but not just subtract it from the total. A scholarship with no service to the University can subtract, directly, from the total amount, any amount paid for fees, or other required items. Any "income" from the scholarship, however, has to be reported. Basically, the amount of the non-taxable fellowship spent on required educational expenses is not reported as income. This is made quite clear in the IRS booklet on scholarships and fellowships. The same booklet also lists deductible expenses, but in brief they are required fees (i.e., things you cannot enroll without paying) and books required for courses. As an example, my $32k NSF Fellowship (or previous state government fellowships) is a "non-taxable" fellowship. I deduct ~2.5k worth of fees and books from it that I pay to the University/keep receipts for, and report the remaining ~29.5k as income. I know this is the case in Louisiana, and definitely the case for federal income taxes.

Honestly? For a program to be a really good fit, it's both. You want to pick a lab with a number of PIs whose work interests you and you seem to fit with on a personal level. That said, you don't want to be so specific in identifying these labs that you paint yourself into a corner, and lots of people do end up doing work thats significantly different then either their perceived interests or their future work. If a program only has a few labs that really interest you, even if the program itself seems good, you probably won't be happy. If the program has labs that interest you, but you don't feel like you'll fit well with the overall program, you probably won't be too happy.

I'll also add that I've seen cases where person A has a very general idea that they never follow up on, and person B gets interested, does research, refines it, and then gets accused of stealing the "idea". An idea, in my opinion, has to be fairly well refined to be owned- and not just refined, but you actually have to have intent and interest in following up on the idea. Additionally, as partly echoed above, it's not alway the intent of a collaborator to steal an idea. Ideas evolve fast, and we don't alway remember where the initial impetus came from- it may have been a conversation, or that conversation may have sparked an interest in the general field, and we began formulating a similar idea as we read more.

Average PhD in some fields is over 8 years, Chemistry is still around 5-6 average.

Have you talked to your PI about it? Sadly, there's probably nothing you can do now, especially if you have no data/haven't pursued the idea and they have, but it's a good lesson for the future. Science can attract a lot of sadly competitive people- keeping your ideas dated in a notebook or an electronic notebook system, or email your ideas to colleagues/CC your PI.

Our department used to do pre-applications- you'd fill out a web form with your stats/research experience/a bit about your interests, and get a response in a week or two with either "we'd be very likely to accept you", "we wouldn't be very likely to accept you", and "it could go either way". The problem (as scarvesandcardigans points out) is that some people looked like they'd be likely to be accepted in the pre-application, and wouldn't end up making the cut. On the flip side, a lot of the people who were told they wouldn't be likely to be accepted decided to damn the odds and apply anyway. I liked it, but it didn't work out to be particularly useful in practice, it seemed.

A common interpretation of the phrase "living in the past" would be either someone who focuses on the past to the exclusion of the present, or someone who refuses to move on and accept current practices. So since the phrase is "movement of people.... who are choosing not to live int he past", I would interpret it entirely as a movement of people who are dedicated to building constructive relationships across race/class/orientation/gender lines, rather than focusing on past discrimination past the point of productivity, with a healthy side of implying that the current *should* be about constructive and nondiscriminatory relationships, and people who are discriminatory are living in the past. I can kinda see the argument for it supporting erasing the past/denying things happened, but if that was the case I don't think it would be brought up- implying that you don't want to live in the past usually means you're acknowledging that something in the past was bad, and you don't want to live that way anymore- learning from your history.

I mean the UC students are a bit different because they have the bargaining power of UAW behind them, which has helped a lot. Students at other schools who have been ruled employees (and NLRB has not been consistent in this, they've ruled some grad students employees and unionizable and some not over the years, about 50/50) have been either in their own union (which lowers their bargaining power, tbh, or under the faculty/adjunct union, or with the staff.

Being as it's a message particularly targetted to (and from) the southern US, a region historically known for discrimination, I interpretted the message as a "we want to move forward and not live in the past". Saying that the past was bad and we want to not be there doesn't mean we think the present is good. I think if people felt like the present was "good", there wouldn't be a need for a grassroots effort to promote people leaving discrimination behind.

And how exactly is that offensive? It's promoting people from an area that is traditionally (although perhaps stereotypically) to be more openly welcoming of a more diverse society.

On the other hand, I've heard very good advice that is "Don't get a PhD unless it's required for the job you want". IE, you can view the PhD as a purely personal endeavor, or you can view it as a necessary credential for a job. But you shouldn't view it as a general "I'll get some job after a PhD" prospect, as that's not hugely likely.