Blue Gopher

Did you check your spam box? Maybe it was routed there for some reason.

HA! The same thing happened to me. I bet Brandon is laughing at the thought of how we would all react to seeing an email from him in our inbox.

My guess is that they're trying to determine who, of the remaining applicants, is still eligible to receive an award (based on the surveys we all filled out a few weeks ago), and then performing internal reviews (the final step in the process from what I understand) for those remaining applicants.

I have to agree with marshymarsh. Despite the fact that I'd only recently started getting responses from Brandon regarding specific email inquiries, I'd still received the general emails to the remaining applicants (e.g., the email sent last June, and the one last month regarding the survey). Did you ever get the initial email confirming receipt of your application from NCER? If not, they may have never recieved your application (including letters of recommendation) in full.

Got it. I'm not anticipating anything anytime soon. Hopefully that won't be the case, however.

Did you guys hear something indicating that decisions had been made?

I emailed Brandon last week in hopes of getting an update on the EPA's estimated timeline, and his response was as follows: "No Timeline as of yet, but we are moving forward with the data collected from the poll. Forward is good!! Brandon"

This is kind of what I'd suspected, but having never received a STAR fellowship, and not knowing anyone who has, I really had no idea.

Welp, another week gone by and no word. From past experience, I know that they alert you of failure via mail, but how do they go about notifying awardees? Does anyone know?

Great question. I've been monitoring this thread to see if anything pops up. I've heard nothing thus far.

I'm curious what percent of proposals that make it through the external review actually get funded. Does anyone have any idea what this number might be?

There are two blanks. I actually selected the second blank and submitted.

Beautiful. Thanks for the pointer! Good luck all. It seems like we're in the home stretch... finally.

This is great! I'm curious how many folks that originally applied are no longer eligible. I'm assuming that the pool of folks still eligible to receive the fellowship is fewer than those that originally applied and made it through the external review. I'd read in the FAQ section of the call for applications that you must have at least two years left in your program to receive the award.

My interpretation was that they are waiting on EPA "higher ups" to determine how much money to allot to the STAR program, but that they likely won't have those numbers by March 3rd. I have no idea what that means in terms of a timeline though.

I recently received a one-year fellowship from my university and have to either accept or reject the fellowship by March 3rd. So, I decided to email Brandon to see if their anticipated timeline was in line with this response deadline. His reply was as follows: "We are waiting to hear from the Agency regarding the budget for the Program, but I do not think we will that soon. On the other hand, receiving a STAR Fellowship does not preclude you from receiving the Institutional fellowship. You can have both." I thought his response was encouraging on a number of different fronts. I thought I would pass this information on to all of you in hopes that it would be encouraging as well as answer some questions regarding institutional fellowships that some of you may have received.

That is encouraging and a shorter time line than I would (do?) expect from the EPA, given how things have transpired thus far. Atleast you guys are getting responses!

Agreed. I don't know why they don't just cancel the 2013 competition and open it back up later this year? @bsgerig - When is this message from Brandon from, and did he mention any kind of time line? Also, and this is for everyone that has gotten a response from either Brandon or Bronda, what exactly are you saying to them to get a response? I've emailed them five different times since the beginning of this whole fiasco and haven't gotten a single response. To me, that has been the most frustrating part of this whole process, the complete void of communication.

OK, THIS is the week. I can feel it in my bones... or... maybe not. Have a good week all.

Big Week!

Great news. Thanks for the updates.

Nothing here.

I have some solid teaching assistantships lined up for during the semester and a research assistantship lined up for the summer; however, if I can get external money to fund me it means that I can focus on my research more. I love to teach, but it takes up a lot of time. Plus, if I can get external money to pay my stipend (grants, fellowships, etc.) I can use assistantship money that was going to come from my adviser and put that into research costs.

I've emailed both Bronda and Brandon, for different reasons, and can't even get a response.

Correction... No news is better than bad news. Ugh!