NeoOzymandias

They typically provide an email address that you may contact to request feedback. It typically takes a month or more for them to get back to you, however. PS - Another strike-out for NIAC, darn.

If you're not a dependent, then are you providing more than one-half of your own support (less this fellowship)?

I received the notification email at 2:52pm, and I was selected for the award this year (third time's the charm!). Congrats everyone! And keep at it if you missed out this year. I vigorously addressed the critiques from my previous submissions, and that appears to have done the trick. They also released NIAC selections today (RIP my proposal there).

Your notification will come in the form of an email with the subject line: "NASA NSPIRES - New information is available for a submitted proposal" from NSPIRES-admin@nasaprs.com Then you'll have a nerve-wracking opportunity to log into NSPIRES and hunt for the submission status (it's under "Proposals/NOIs" > "Submitted Proposals/NOIs" > select 2018 as "Submittal Year")

FWIW I applied to ARO and haven't heard anything...meanwhile another student I know did receive the fellowship from ARO. So maybe they did send all the acceptances out. Or maybe not. It's STI-TEC, you just can't tell! Especially when their website is still advertising application status updates in "early April".

There is a banner on the NDSEG site saying "application status notifications in early April" but who knows with STI-TEC, unfortunately. (Somewhat related I just found that the social media buttons on the footer of the main NDSEG site don't actually link to the NDSEG pages but are just placeholders.) The SMART fellowship sent out semifinalist notifications at the beginning of February, but I believe that's run by Scholarship America instead.

Just received the following email: Dear 2018 NDSEG Fellowship Applicants, We are writing to you today to retract a part of our statement regarding the selection of the 2018 Fellowship class. In our email, we reported budget cuts as the basis for the number of fellowships awarded. We would like to provide clarification on the allocation of funding for the program. We incorrectly reported that the National Defense Science & Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) program has experienced budget cuts; however, the Department of Defense (DoD) increased the spending on the National Defense Science & Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) fellowship program compared to the previous fiscal year. In an effort to ensure that the program remains competitive with similar fellowships, the Department made programmatic changes to the FY17 NDSEG program that increased the cost per student. This increase in costs per fellow has, in turn, reduced the number of fellowships available. Moving forward, the Department intends to review the programmatic changes instituted during the FY17 fellowship class to properly balance the competitiveness of the program against the overall number of students that are trained in areas of defense relevance We apologize for any confusion that our statement may have caused. We appreciate your understanding and your support of the program. -The NDSEG Fellowship Team

According to the Wayback Machine, this occurred between 04/20 and 04/27, so that comports with your timeline. At this point, I not even daring to hope of being pulled off of the alternates list, though.

Holy cow, they actually deleted it? Can a government contractor do that (that is, remove information related to a public program)? Well, here's the text image they shared for future reference. And a transcription: "Thank you for your feedback, we are taking it all into consideration as we prepare for the upcoming year. STI was awarded the management of this contract in late August, and as with transitioning any existing contract there are growing pains. Please keep in mind continuous negative comments can lead to the program's loss of funding and we are doing our best to ensure this program remains available for aspiring researchers. We appreciate your patience." Emphasis added by me.

"Don't criticize us or the program will get shut down." Very professional. https://twitter.com/NDSEGF/status/985914904598204416

I found it strange that a federal fellowship would want my previous wage history. After all, the fellowship stipend isn't dependent on your previous experience or employment. One would think that a personal statement and CV would give adequate coverage of professional and research experience. The application, like the website, reeks of a lowest-bidder copy-and-paste job. I miss ASEE.

So, with a big of digging, this appears to be the case. They're apparently embedding another website that hosts the application itself in an HTML frame. This website, to be specific, which is actually HTTPS compliant. So it's probably secure, but it's not how most web developers would set up an application these days.