Just finished my PhD, but didn't ever have enough concrete ideas together to apply when I was 1st/2nd year. Fortunately, I can live vicariously through my wife. She got it this year with E/E, E/E, E/E. She applied last year and got honorable mention with 2 E and a VG in research and 2 VG and an E in broader impacts, so it was really nice for her to get it. From last year's reviews, the VG research had nothing negative to say and the two VGs in broader impacts commented that she focused too much on things she had already done and not enough on future plans. This sucked for her because she had great future plans, but figured they would appreciate more of what she had done - really good stuff - than what she said she was going to do. She tweaked things slightly this year to focus more on future impacts, but had an overall pretty similar application. None of the reviewers cared at all about future impacts this time; they all focused entirely on previous impacts, so it was fortunate that she had enough of it in there still. It's funny how inconsistent the review process can be, but I'm really glad it worked out for her this time around. FWIW, she is 2nd year grad student with 3.7 or 3.8 undergrad, 4.0 grad school, passed qual after 1 year, one middle author pub from grad school, and great undergrad work, which isn't yet published, but she was invited to give a couple talks at incredible venues, including the White House, based on it. I think her application was really good last year already, and we thought her chances were worse this year, since it seems harder to get in the 2nd year, but sure enough, she got it. Similar to others' experiences, her comments this time were mostly just reiterations of things she wrote on the application, with one not giving much more than a couple quotes from her submission. If your application was close to getting funded and you can still reapply, it seems as though you may not always have to change all that much, and may just need better luck the second time around.
