joninnyc2

Knowing little about bioinorganic chemistry specifically (I did p-chem research in undergrad, a summer of bioinformatics, and am in a biomedical science phd program) I'd say Hopkins. They're one of the most recognizable names in anything biology or medically related things, and assuming there's an excellent potential mentor or two there for you, there are definite benefits to being at a universally recognized school. just my $0.02 though.

Did anyone else not get an e-mail at all from NSF? Turns out the username/password from last year work to access sheets for both last year and this year. Very confused as to why I never heard from NSF at all for this year (beyond the public database of results, and now my rating sheets).

They're all in grad school, and all got hm's... it's not really much of an ethical question I suppose, more of a "do i want to be the bearer of bitter-sweet news?"

well that ruined the weekend... didn't get award or hm :cry: On a slightly higher note, three of our students this year got HM at least Congrats to those who got something! Ethical question now, do I tell the other applicants (the only ones I know about are the ones that won HM), or do I let them find out on their own/wait for emails to come out?

out of curiousity, what area of chemistry are you looking at (pchem, organic, inorganic, etc)?

so it sounds like that means not today... bugger

I'm not exactly up on chemistry rankings but Johns Hopkins is ranked lower than Northwestern? Do you like living in Baltimore is another big question? Would you be at the Homewood campus (<- I think that's the name) or Medical Campus?

I agree that if the profs you want to work with at school1 were what you were looking for then not to let the entire faculty of the deparment sway you too much (assuming they're taking students and are interested in letting you rotate). Every large group of people has a few that are going to rub some one the wrong way. One of the more nebulous possibilities that I'm just speculating on here... but if it's a prestigious school that's well funded means that the research is active and very good, resulting in more funding, and better rankings for the department. Profs don't do the dirty work on research, but it still consumes a lof of their time, combined with teaching responsibilities, paper writing/editing, and most painful is grant writing for them. Add that to the standard deparment business, and recruitment/interviews and the unfortunate situation is that many of the profs really are swamped. Part of the decision for ya sounds geographic too, public transit is really handy (and helps save money). I'm in nyc, and the money I save from not paying $100 a month on gas, $100 a month on insurance, car upkeep, parking permit, etc really helps offset the cost of living difference between big city and small city where I needed a car. If you can live where you don't need to commute to work is an even bigger time/money saver for you. Also there's a huge difference between students seem "a little less happy" and something like unhappy, lacking all joy, miserable, lacking a will to live, I think you see where I'm going with that. A little less happy is not bad compared to not able to find a lab that can afford to keep a student, or a department unable to support students. See if the better funded department has any other benefits such as a travel allowance that is not offered by school2. Either way, you're in a better situation than others having two offers and having to make a choice. Congratulations, and g'luck!

last year was Thursday, march 30th if that helps... I'm guessing at least by or before March 30th again of this year though due to the site maintenance for nsf... but who knows. Should we start calling and asking when announcements will be made? :twisted:

WHY CAN'T THEY POST THE RESULTS ALREADY... Just wanted to vent, as I'm sure many reading this feel the same way

When I applied to grad school a few years ago some departments had limited funding and only provided as many accepts as they had money students to support, and had to wait until they heard from that list before they could make more offers to their "wait-listed" candidates (I use quotes because they didn't even call it that, I personally called and talked to one of my interviewers and he gave me some honest info on the situation). It sucks for you to be in this situation, but it also is tough for the school because their best candidates are the ones they made offers to (and who are most likely looking at and accepted at equal and better instituations) and who are potentially less like to actually enroll, while people who really want to enroll at the school don't have an offer and end up going somewhere else in the interim because they're not willing to risk waiting.

I put in an application last year with no luck -in looking back over my '05 application it turns out that I submitted to a poorly chosen division (I proposed a bioinformatics project for cell biology, but the fellowships coordinator at my school selected my degree program as biophyscs since that's my Ph.D. field and so that's who read my proposal). That caused significant feelings of anger for at least 36 hours since better (read more informative) feedback on the project would have been useful since it's something I'd love to (re)submit to NIH as a real project. I submitted for Nov. 1st (bioengineering), though looking back over my old essays now that the deadline's passed I wish I'd added and discussed some other points a little bit more... c'est la vie. B.S. Biophysics from State University of New York Research Experience for Undergraduates @ Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo NY Undergrad research with a SUNY Prof. ~3.3 GPA/3.5 GPA w/Transfer Credits ~85% GRE for Quantitative/Verbal Now in Grad School in New York City