Bookworm349810

Thanks everyone for your responses!

I was really lucky to receive offers of admissions from a few of the programs that I applied to. I let all of the schools who accepted me know once I had made my decision (well before the deadline). Since then, a few of them asked which school I decided to go to instead (which I responded to since that's a pretty standard/expected question). However, one of the schools (let's call it University A) asked if I would be okay with telling them which school I decided to go to and also if I would like to tell them anything that can help them improve School A's program. Normally I would be fine with just telling them that I found a better research fit somewhere else because that seems to be the polite response, but I'm also not sure that would be an honest answer in this case. I basically knew a few hours into the visit at University A that I would not be going to that school because even though they had some pretty cool research, their department (actually, the entire university) was not diverse at all. Everyone was really nice, but I didn't feel like I fit into the "culture" of the department. Is this something I should even bother mentioning? It's very likely that I will see some of these professors at conferences so I don't want to burn any bridges, but I also feel like the lack of diversity was a very important factor in my decision not to attend this school (although I did take other factors into consideration). Would I seem too critical if I mention the lack of diversity? Are they mainly just expecting to hear people say that they took an offer with a higher stipend?

UIUC Bioengineering emailed acceptances in January and had their visit day in March. However, looking at the results from previous years, it seems like they still made offers in April/May, so maybe they're still in the process of making more offers. Is it possible that reviewing applications takes longer for international students? (I'm assuming you're international because you included a TOEFL score) I think at this point it would be best if you directly contact the schools to inquire about your status.

For everyone who's wondering why the reviewers don't tell us much about what they think is lacking from our applications, I had a conversation a while back with a professor who used to be a reviewer and who basically said that the reviewers are told to focus on the positives of the application and to give feedback accordingly. Assuming this is a general policy for the NSF GRFP, it would explain why a lot of us have reviewers who say good things about our applications but then don't award us the fellowship.

I am able to access the old awardee lists off of the fastlane website: https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/grfp/AwardeeList.do?method=loadAwardeeList It does say though under a heading of "2016 Offered Award List" that " *The list of Awardees and Honorable Mention recipients for the year you have selected is not yet available".

My fastlane account also hasn't updated. You're right, it might just be that people wrote the wrong fellowship name

Someone also just posted another one for computer science! Maybe there's some kind of glitch on the fastlane website?

Nice! I guess we just have to wait and see what happens then

That's comforting to hear! I hope they tell us as soon as they've decided and don't make it stretch out too much longer (I have a feeling they'll make the decisions this week and then wait until next week to release them)

Anyone else still waiting to hear back from Cornell or UPitt? I wasnt invited to interview/visit for either so I don't know why I haven't been rejected yet.