Epigenetics

Ouch. That explains my wildly inconsistent Broader Impacts scores, that weren't ironed out in a conference. Bummer. Damn shutdown.

I know we all like to joke about Broader Impacts in the application process but after reading my reviews I'm genuinely astounded by how little the reviewers know. I got a VG/E, E/E, E/F! Two of my reviewers gave me excellent for broader impacts and one gave me a FAIR (reminder that the scale is E/VG/G/F/P). I genuinely don't know how to take an application process seriously when the reviewers are this inconsistent. Ugh. I also had a weird comment for the VG review in academic merit that I only had one letter of rec? Unclear if the NSF system glitched or someone missed it, cause I had three.

I’m taking NDSEG! Is anyone else joining the 2019 class??

The awards are here, you don't need to log in! https://www.research.gov/grfp/AwardeeList.do I didn't get it! Honorable mention. Looking forward to joining the NDSEG crew! Congrats to those who got it!

So my PhD program has an in-house fellowship that five people get each year, and the application notification is almost a month late. So as frustrating as the delay has been here, at least we're in the home stretch.  That said I can't wait for this to be over.

That said I wouldn't completely freak out about undergraduate GPA. It matters less and less the further away you get as long as you have more recent success!

I don’t understand what you’re saying. Pretty much everyone is admitted to PhD programs without their own funding. In biology/biomedical programs, the program covers your funding for the first couple years. If you’re an applicant and get a fellowship, it relieves the funding burden of the program and can open up a spot for you if the limiting factor on admission was money. If a program can only afford 10 students but someone has a fellowship then they can admit another student. The fellowship substitutes for this program funding and beyond that it is usually the advisor who covers funding. If youre starting or in the first year of a program, the program requires your advisor to be able to pay your stipend/benefits when you join their lab. Having a fellowship can make additional labs an option as well as you more stability in that process, as your funding is yours not your PI’s. As a second year grad student, fellowships are mostly about alleviating funding for your PI so he/she can spend that money on your experiments/resources. Fellowship are also great for showing you are able to obtain funding and help with later grants and appointments. NSF/NDSEG are much shorter apps than the NIH F31, and three years of funding means I don’t have to do this again until (presumably) postdoctoral fellowships. I can’t speak for other fields but in biology/biomedical programs, fellowships are rarely/never about TA requirements or increasing your stipend. Those things are guaranteed and set in stone. But it alleviates funds for research and gives more stability to your work.

I think this has some baseline procedures/scoring information here: https://ndseg.asee.org/2017_NDSEG_Guide_For_Panelists.pdf It's from when ASEE ran it, but it seems identical to the four tiers we see, and I don't think SCI-TEC has any actual role in evaluating the applications besides coordinating everything.

Tell this to the grad schools that literally never sent me a rejection e-mail but instead waited for their university-wide system to be like "your application has been closed" in May. I had guessed by this point but people are jerks.

It says a lot about NDSEG's new administration that there's still not a published list of awardees from last year. There's still not a good explanation for why a modest pay and travel increase cut the fellowships to 1/3. I also think NDSEG didn't sell itself well or clarify expectations, after getting it last week I was trying to figure out if it meant I was bound to my research proposal or if it was like NSF in that regard. My guess is they're trying to get people to leave them alone, and sending out an e-mail saying "we notified everyone last week lol" isn't going to help that.

Same, despite the benefits of NDSEG I'd likely take NSF given the recognition, and feel pretty good about it after NDSEG. I'm almost positive that's what everyone is waiting on.

Lol it's kinda funny because they definitely sent out a wave of acceptances on March 29th, so idk about this "first week of April stuff". Last year they sent "we would've funded you but no money" to people outside the top 70 but in the top 200, and that got a lot of backlash. Maybe they're trying to avoid that weirdness this year until they have all the fellows slots accepted, and doing it "rolling". It does seem that anyone on this form who got both NSF and NDSEG all chose NSF, so I would bet a bunch of spots open up once that goes out. But given how small NDSEG is, it's still so tiny compared to NSF. If anyone hears this week though do shout it out, it seems like SCI-TEC is being opaque because their transparency last year got a bunch of people pissed off. So who knows, everything is weird and dumb and disorganized. Good luck all!

No I'm a second year graduate student.

This is incredibly interesting! I wish I had known about Hertz as a G1, I would've taken the shot there. I think it's so prestigious that few people know those who have it or have it themselves, so everyone focuses their effort toward NSF. The other problem is that NDSEG has allocated more money, but at least in prestige fields like biomedical research you're already guaranteed more money than the fellowship anyway, so the program covers the difference. So NDSEG has decreased its reach while providing benefits that only change it's appeal (like the travel benefits). I will also say I applied for NDSEG literally on a whim, I think I edited my NSF statements up/down in a day to fit NDSEG and threw it in. My previous PI I worked for as a research tech basically told me she'd never heard of anyone getting NDSEG and throw it in but don't worry about it. I have grad classmates who has an exceptional resume and didn't apply for NDSEG cause he didn't see the point. I really appreciate the context and find it very interesting to have this insight! Here's hoping I actually have any need to consider it haha.

I can't imagine it's beyond Friday because the response deadline for other fellowships (and grad school for the undergrads here) is April 15th and we need to know before then to make a decision.