mtlve

Instead of stalking this forum and attaching our fellow applicants, who wants to go to DC and tackle the source of the problem? Imagine 1000s of us angry grads outside of the NSF headquarters ......................

Did you just call?

Has everyone given up on NSF today? We have added like half the number of pages to this thread today compared to the past few days. Well I am giving up on this thread this evening....(hopefully)......... Lets hope for some news tomorrow!

If you look at some of the reviews of this new NSF GRFP system, they comment on how minorities are not doing well in the process. Hence I do not think this is true. I do not think they would pull minorities from the non competitive pile, but they might move one from hm to award pile. I have talked with the people that actually help with this step of the process, and they have all downplayed the role of minority status in naming awardees. In terms of the geographic distributing, they said that they make sure there is at least one awardee from each state. If a state is missing and a person from that state is the HM pile, they may get pulled up. Otherwise, it sounded like it really was not a factor.

In that case the men probably get the benefit. I think the biosciences is the same. Female physicists and engineers may get a boost.

I really do not think that this is a huge factor. This does not come in to play until you make it to the top 30% pile, and I still question that it is such a huge factor at that point. I think that the biggest factor is who is serving on the panel to review the apps. If a panal member is a Stanford alumni that studies T cell differentiation, they will be more likely to select applicants from Stanford and applicants studying t cell differentiation. If the panel member thinks studying GPCRs is a waste of time, applicants that propose to study GPCRs will have almost a 0% chance of getting an award. Random question to add: Does anyone know if they publish the panel participants?

That is the actual statistic. Only 10% of people actually get the award, so 90% of us will not get one. Yeah I hope for one, but the statistics don't support this. It may be more this year, but I will not believe it until we see it.

I would agree with the precious poster that they should send out a waive of rejections, so those people can move on with their life (or even just put up the rating sheets). At least 50% of the applicants are not even being considered for a fellowship, so why not send out rejections to those applicants. From the figures I have seen, they will at most double the number of awards. I doubt that they will dip below the top 30% of applicants for awards or hm, so they should just send out rejections to the bottom of 70% of people and leave the top 30% unanswered until they figure out the funding situation. They would put a lot of people out of their misery this way! I would view this favorably either way. If I did not make the cut, I can move on with my life. If I did make the cut (which I doubt), I would be excited to know that I have a reasonable chance at an award/HM (maybe 33% chance of getting a fellowship). I would happily put up with a little more of a wait to find out. Right now I am just frustrated that the odds are against me (90% that I did not win), and I cannot get any information regarding whether I even have a shot at getting something. A lot of people have a lot of life decisions on hold waiting for these results, so even a little bit of information would make a lot of people happy!

I have worked for the federal government (not NSF), and good Friday was never considered a federal holiday. I dont believe that there were any federal holidays between feb and May. I think we are fine. If someone is calling today, you should ask them (but dont call to ask just this).

Alternatively they may wait until the end of the day right before they close. You would loose some of the rash callers that would decide after some time to think that it is pointless to call. Last year people were calling immediately after it was posted about getting access to the rating sheets, and an evening release would allow them to get the sheets up before all the calls started.

I guess I should have said 300pages until the release, if people are going to start adding novels to this thread

Didnt people have to tell NDSEG today? I do not think NSF even cares about the other fellowships, so they will release it whenever they feel like doing so.

Yeah I think it will take at least one day for them to do all of the stuff before the emails. The fastlane trick worked the last two years, so I am hoping that we will see it again. That is why I asked Mathguy14 to check this evening. After last year and the rating sheets this year, I am skeptical that there will not be another glitch at least one day before the release. I vote Thursday at the earliest for an official release, but I would love to be wrong. Lets hope that the fastlane trick works tomorrow (or for official emails)!

Here is the rundown for everything last year (all times eastern): Day 1: fastlane loggin trick afternoon/early evening- all awardees knew they had it Day 2: middle of night- hacker got hm list and I found it online at around 7AM NSF posted all lists online right before 9AM I believe the old applicants found rating sheets this day (was before the emails) Day 3: Emails sent out to everyone. I believe it was in the afternoon but I dont remember. We all knew the results so the emails were pointless by that time.

mathguy14 or anyone else that saw that they got the award (even people with 3 highly rated reviews), If you login into fastlane, do you see an award letter yet or anything else there of interest yet?

There was a little bit of movement on the NSF website today. I just checked and the rating sheet page is there again, but you still cant login. I have no idea how long that has been that way since I have not checked since like 8AM.

Friar, I just have to ask: What do you think of our lovely invention of computers/internet? I am suprised that someone from your time period is so willing to use them! Now back to the thread.......

And it almost has >25000 views! I really cant believe that last week I suggested that we try hard to surpass last years' 15page thread before the release! I think we took this goal a little overboard!

I was under the impression that the number that everyone is calling is the phone number to a call center. At most call centers, the employees only responsibility is to talk to people on the phone (believe me I have worked at a few of these). I may be completely missinformed about this phone number. it is a call center, "their work" is answering the phones so all of the callers are not interferring with their productivity. They are promoting productivity. I may be entirely off base here, so feel free to correct me if this phone number is not a classical call center. People should try to be extra nice when they call though, since I am sure these guys are not having fun dealing with angry grad students all day.

Most bioscience programs give you funding for your first 1-2yrs (off of NIH grants for the graduate program). Can you defer NSF for 1-2yrs to use the program funding and then just use NSF when your PI is expected to start paying? Does anyone know the answer to this?

Thanks for calling. At least they keep telling us we will know by the 15th. If this is really true, we have a maximum of a week left of waiting. Hopefully we learn something this week! I cant go on like this for much longer (esp after last night horrible game)!

I believe that people reported that a week ago, and it turned out to be nothing. If you had the account for awhile it may just be that. I believe they make you change it annually. If you loggined in and said something like Welcome Fellow and you had an award letter that would be something else. Hopefully some of us will see that today!

I think that we just need to ignore the last few pages of this thread, or we are going to have pages of comments on how offensive and immature they are. I hope that this does not mean that they have given up on getting us more money! I would be very happy to get back to my life though.

Come on Michigan St you cant loose to the holes! That would just make today awful. If Carolina continues this trend, I probably will not be sleeping since half my neighbors will be partying all night long Go Spartans! Go Blue Devils!!!

I wonder if they have made a new rating sheet page (like the multiple 2008 awardees pages) but have not fixed the link. It seems strange that they would just take the page down (unless someone figured out how to hack in there but did not tell us). Anyone want to play a new game: Name the number of pages that this thread will have when we first get a list of awardees (logging in to get award status on fastlane or other NSF screw up is sufficient). My entry: 118 pages Anyone else have a guess?