Rails111

I did #2 and #3 as well. Having easy-to-read essays and using personal stories to demonstrate what you learned and to grab attention are very important. I had asked people not in my field (biology, economics, engineering, sociology) to read my essays and make sure they all made sense (esp findings from previous research and logic in research proposal). Plus, my advisor told me over and over that nobody can effectively consume the information in writing if it's boring.

I don't think so. As someone said earlier, good applicants can come from anywhere. I'm from a very small liberal arts college (that i'm sure no one has ever heard of) and reviewers didn't knock me for it at all...plus, I know people who mentioned that they were from relatively unknown colleges and that reviewers looked upon it favorably.

I think your professors are mistaken, though there have been people who have received awards without publications. I had 1 publication, 1 submitted, and a bunch in prep. I also had around 4 presentations at national conferences I'm in my first year of grad school. Field: Psychology

You can send me your email and I'll send you my personal statement (which is where I wrote about the broader impacts)

how do we figure out our percentile rank?

I got an award in psychology! Anyone can feel free to message me and I'll send them my essays/review sheets Intellectual merit: Excellent, Excellent, Good Broader Impacts: Excellent, Excellent, Excellent

OMG i got it!!!!

For those of you who read last year's thread, do you remember the guy who got all the awardee names before NSF posted to the website? Did he figure out the "excel export" thing or was it more sophisticated than that?

lol, it was a joke. Notice the April 1st in there.

oops! nevermind. found it.

What is the URL for this site?

Thanks for posting. I read your essays -- I think your story and your theme is beautifully done.

egosumliber and iLikeTrees: I absolutely agree with both of you. egosumliber: I wish people would readily share their essays, but the truth is that many do not want to. I had contacted many (playing the probability game) and a bunch did email me back, but the majority said they felt uncomfortable giving their essays to someone they did not know. So the goal of this was to have some information rather than none (and to assume that selling yourself in the essays is incredibly important and will not be something that can necessarily be taught by this forum). iLikeTrees: yes, citations and number of service projects seem as though they do not play a major role, but both of these topics have been asked (extensively) in this thread (meaning that at least a handful of applicants were curious and that THEY thought it played some major role). I completely agree that the NSF is worth applying for no matter what - i learned a tremendous amount..so perhaps the reason I stated wasn't the best. I doubt anyone, however, can deny that winners and HM's will share commonalities and that these commonalities can be observed to SOME extent numerically. If i'm wrong, then i'm fine with that, but you never know unless you try. Yes, the value and the process IS more meaningful (but somewhat abstract / difficult to explain to future applicants without sharing the essay), so having *something* (anything) a little more concrete is better than a guessing game. And as I said before, SOME of those categories are used to address questions that applicants tend to have (i.e., dwell on), and not necessarily what the panelists look for. Again, you're right that panelists will not be counting service projects, but they will be noting the types of service projects... and so that people do not have the list explicitly what they have done in the past (which is what I assumed everyone would not want to do), they can symbolize it (to some extent) with a number and a brief description of the nature. Any more detail would probably be idealistic. Lastly, i completely agree that, "Good applicants can be anyone, come from any institution, or have any background as long as they show personal motivation and capacity to do good research." BUT my point is that some applicants do not realize this! Look at earlier posts and you'll see that some people say that they do not come from a tier 1 school and are therefore worried about that. OR they say that they think their GRE scores are not high enough, all the while not realizing that there are people with a 1000 still getting an award. The reason why it is not known is, in part, because winners are not making it explicit. So you may think that the people who will post will have these outrageous scores that will intimidate everyone, but rather, i think it will show a more complete picture and be able to illustrate your exact point that "good applicants can be anyone and come from anywhere."

Oh c'mon, lol, it would take you no longer than three minutes.

haha...in a way. I mean, I guess the point is to address many of the questions we have been trying to figure out in this forum. It's nice to take away at least some of the guesswork. I'm sure that people who do not get an award will be wondering WHY, and this may help. If only 10 of every 100 get an NSF, then that's a lot of rejections, of course. And, people next year will be looking at this forum (as we all did with the 2009 thread) and they'll be wondering if it's worth their time to apply / how high the bar is set. Some quantitative information (rather than qualitative/spectulative) would be nice...and i'm sure we would be able to spot commonalities across award winners.