DealBreakerC

Congrats. That same thing happened to a friend of mine but he had held the fellowship for two years at that point. And yes, the upgrade came with retroactive pay. It was perfectly timed as he was leaving for a bachelor party in Cuba the next week.

Just got back from a conference to find a lovely little brown envelope in the mail box. Was awarded a Doctoral Fellowship with a 12.75 / 20. Congrats to all the successful applicants. For those of you who were not successful this year, keep grinding the work out and it will come. The only real difference between my application this time and my previous one (7.2 or 7.6) was a conference presentation, a publication, and a co-authored book chapter.

Really? Do you just mean to pay fees and tuition kind of thing? Because the schools I am familiar with (all in Canada) actually provide a bit of top up money and/or provide tuition waivers to people who win major external awards like SSHRC.

Nothing to be embarrassed about. Besides, my score last year was either a 7.2 or a 7.6. I know plenty of people that have gone from a flat rejection one year to a full $35,000 for 3 years with the only significant change to the application being a publication on their CV.

Yep, same with me. I'm in Edmonton and no letter in my box. And I'm going out of town for a conference tomorrow before I will have a chance to check the mail.Between my conference talk and not knowing the news I am going to go absolutely crazy.

Best I can remember from my rejection last year is two reviewers each give a score out of 10 (no detail in the information about how they determine their score) which are added for a total score out of 20. I understand a lot of work goes into reviewing and evaluating the couple thousand application which make it to the final level, but it would be great to get a note or two about what was good and what needs to be improved. Or maybe next year ask us if they can use our data to generate a report as to what the 'average' SSHRC doctoral award winner looks like in terms of # of pubs, GPA, presentations, etc.

The "official letter" letting you know if you got the award or not and if so, if it was the Bombardier ($35,000 for 3 years, or fellowship $20,000 for up to 4). The letter also gives you a score your reviewers gave you and some information about how these scores are generated. I do not know if anything else comes with successful letters, but maybe an acceptance form?

I am not belittling anyone in an admin position. I realize they may be being contacted by many students. And I do know this admin's name, however I would not throw their name out there for all the world to see as that would be unethical. If you look back through my posts in this forum, you'll be able to see that my fundamental issue is with SSHRC's system for this award. The TL;DR is SSHRC (unlike the NSERC and CIHR) notifies the applicant (i.e., the individual who is most anxious to find out the result) via snail mail rather than an online portal.

What's really getting me is that some admin person knows whether I got the scholarship or not but I don't. There is something wrong with this if applicant doesn't find out first or at least within hours of someone at the school. I kind of have a vested interest in me after all

I am in the exact same boat. I'm hoping that having a good working relationship with my department's grad admin assistant will help me find out as soon as possible.

SSHRC is a bit of an oddball in that they notify us by snail mail. The others (CHIR & NSERC) use an online portal to notify students. Funny thing is (at least in my memory) SSHRC CGS Masters awards are done through an online portal. SSHRC just seems to be slow in their move to the digital era.

Response from the grad awards office: " We just got the results today. We'll be notifying departments in the next few days here. Shouldn't be too much longer! " UGH!!!!!!!

Well, sent an email to my people. Hopefully UofA is as fast as your school was.

Did you email someone in your department? Or was it someone in grad studies?

That's awesome! Congratulations. Maybe I will know before my trip after all...