Hi everyone,
I was fortunate enough to be awarded both awards. I'm not sure which to choose, however, as the two fellowships seem to be equal on several grounds. For example, each award has the same stipend amount over 3 years. I'll list some of the arguments I've heard for each one so far. Please let me know if you think of anything I have not considered or why you would recommend choosing one or the other!
NSF
More flexible in terms of what years the funding can be applied (i.e. the 3 years need not be back-to-back). NDSEG must be applied in the first 3 years. Not as significant as it seems, however, since apparently almost all students at my school use either fellowship in their first 3 years anyway.
More "prestigious" in that it is more widely known - a professor pointed this out
Has several nice ancillary programs (GRIP and GROW), but it doesn't seem like these programs are widely used after talking to current NSF fellows.
NDSEG
Pays for full tuition whereas GRFP pays $12k/yr. Significant since the school I will be attending is private and has high tuition, but really doesn't affect me (I've verified this with the grad coordinator for the school I'll be attending) since this would have been paid for in part by the school, department, and faculty adviser. So this would help out my department but not affect my stipend amount and not really affect me in terms of adviser selection.
More "prestigious" in that it's more selective (200 awardees in STEM vs 2000 for NSF). The picture is not that simple, however, since not everyone applies for the NDSEG and some fields are in my opinion more difficult to be supported by this award (e.g. I think biological research is more amenable to the goals of NSF than DoD).
Program coordinator pointed out that because this award pays tuition unconditionally, I would run into no issues if I happened to go over the 10-unit / quarter limit by taking extra classes (apparently surpassing this limit raises your tuition). Not sure if this would come up though since I would be focusing on research and not taking a lot of classes anyhow.
A final note is that several professors have pointed out that I can list receiving both rewards on my CV (I'll list one as having declined the offer). So this alleviates some of the worry over which is "more prestigious."
Thank you for helping me!