bolani

Ok. I have NSF. I read this very carefully too before I got it(was considering delaying grad school for a year). Fact is: 1) You can ONLY defer for a year if you are a) a full time studuent getting other funding at the time, b)military service, or c) some special special situation, like family problems or something. They will not let you frolic the world, take a job, do something else, etc with your deferment. You can do this deferment for 2 years during a 5 year period. I am currently deferring because I'm on a "first year" PHD fellowship at my school, so I figured why not take the money? 2) You most likely will be able to beg a school(not ANY school, however) to take you. Some schools frankly don't care if you have your own funding. Obviously, it helps with regards to "keeping" you after you are trying to pass qualifying...why would they fail out a free student that shows a small amount of potential, but in my experience, it doesn't help you to get in to certain schools. They have their own criteria, and may not have simple things like space to have you there. So feel free to ask, but it will be ok. 3) If you get the NSF, it means you are a kickass writer(on some level). This means that you will write decent personal statements. So you'll get in somewhere (99% confidence). Moral of the story: if you get NSF and don't go to grad school, you, by default, forfeit the NSF. Even if you intend to go within one year. This is clearly stated on the fastweb FAQ section.

I turned down UMich. Good luck to those on waitlist!

I will make my decision this weekend...one of my options is IOE. So if I don't choose it hopefully you'll get an admit!

I'm guessing it's complete. If you log in, you can see if you have been awarded it b/c your screen now says "welcome fellow".

Does anyone know when rating sheets will be posted?

https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/grfp/AwardeeList.do?method=loadAwardeeList Click on the excel link at the bottom of the page.

I GOT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What? My page is back up...doesn't do anything though.

I think we should all take turns calling once an hour to see what kind of new info they give us. :-)

its still there... http://www.facebook.com/pages/Washington-DC/National-Science-Foundation-Graduate-Research-Fellowship-Program/71182286186

Does anyone else go to their status page(showing dates they received items) and their items were received AFTER the deadline? Like...transcripts and GRE scores. I saw a few months ago that they didn't have my GRE scores and thought "WTF"...so emailed them. Then they told me that they just hadn't retrieved them from the GRE people yet....the next day it showed up in the system, but as "Received Jan 29th". I guess that isn't my fault, so not a big deal, but what do you guys think? Also, my transcript is shown as "received on December 4th" even though I called them 2 days before the deadline and verified that they had my transcript. The woman I talked to ( I didn't tell her what school I sent it) said " Yes, We have a trancript on file from School X". Is this just a "we didn't put it into the system until that date" type of thing/does this happen to other people? Thanks!

You would have to read the contract that you sign. I would look up the school's policies... but since it is a master's degree w/o funding they can't apply those rules to you. Even students under the April 15th policy can accept and change their mind as long as it is before April 15, so I'm guessing you can do the same.

Yeah, the bad thing about the April 15th thing is that it is pretty much for PhDs and it ONLY is for people who got aid. It doesn't reply for situations with no aid.... bummer.

I mean, you don't really have to say anything. I think what I said to one school was "Thanks so much! I'm really excited to receive an offer from SchoolX! " and since I got an invite I said "I'm looking forward to getting to meet you and members of your department. "

ok....well technically you can do that, as long as you finish "switching" between schools by April 15th. According to their resolution thing, if it belongs to that group of schools, you can do that. It's your right...the good schools will recognize that and shouldn't really put you in a bad position like that to begin with. http://www.cgsnet.org/portals/0/pdf/CGS_Resolution.pdf