Aliake

Just a quick question. If you go abroad (UK institution) then there's absolutely nothing you can do with the GRFP correct?

I can certainly understand your frustration. While I cannot comment on the existence of an appeal process or applicant feedback system, I can say that I don't think you are overacting. The only defense I can think of for the reviewer is the fact that he may have assessed your broader impacts based on your holistic academic career thus far. In fact, I believe two of my reviewers did just that. Their comments focused on the fact that I was a volunteer at the children's museum in town and was a student mentor for summer research programs on campus, They barely touched on what I had said in my actual proposal. This is obviously confusing, and unfortunately I think there's just a human error element regarding the way reviewers interpret the criteria. Some place much greater emphasis on the proposal than the rest of the app and vice versa. Now, if you've also been involved in outreach, etc. then there's absolutely no good excuse for such a short and irrelevant comment.

Unfortunately I cannot answer this, but rather I am wondering the same thing. I do believe that your status (graduating senior, 1st year, or 2nd year) does influence the weight placed on your proposal. I'm a undergrad senior and was awarded with E/VG, E/P, E/G... yes, the middle reviewer gave me a poor because I did not explicitly define and title a section "Broader impacts". But in their summary statements, the reviewers were overwhelmingly positive because of the fact that I had two first author pubs and was involved in a significant amount of STEM outreach. Ultimately, I think the proposal serves as a baseline (i.e. student scored X points on proposal so we'll look at the rest of the app), and that baseline threshold increases as you advance each year academically. Like the GRE, the proposal likely only sways minds in the most extreme cases such as 6 E ratings. Just my thoughts.

On cloud 9^9!!! Undergrad senior in materials science. Awarded with a E/G, E/P, E/VG. (The E/P said it was one of the best proposals he had read, save for the fact that I did not explicitly state my broader impacts.) So the proposal definitely isn't the end all, be all. Each reviewer highlighted my STEM outreach efforts, Excellent letters, and GPA (4.0) as primary reasons for recommendation.

I know it varies from program to program, but I applied before the January 23rd deadline to enroll in a Materials DPhil and heard back this morning. I'd expect most departments are trying to send out decisions before April (my acceptance email identified that I have to confirm before April 30th so hopefully everyone will be notified of their acceptance, rejection, or placement onto a waiting list by then at the very latest)