jasbee

Not recommended 2nd year grad student in psychology - cognitive neuroscience: E/E, G/G, VG/VG I think it's kind of weird all of my raters gave me completely different scores from each other and the same ones for each section. The G/G reviewer left like 7 positive comments and only one fairly minor "possible improvement" note, and they lowkey seemed pretty enthusiastic about the whole application so I don't know why I only got a G/G from them, but oh well. If anything my comments from my VG/VG reviewer were more critical than the G/G reviewer. It's completely a crapshoot so I'm trying not to take it personally, but my lab funding is a mess right now so this still sucks a lot for my future as a grad student.

Didn’t get it (or even honorable mention). I guess it’s not nearly as painful as what a lot of people are experiencing right now with the current epidemic or watching my dog die while I pet her in our vet’s parking lot this morning (due to covid we wouldn’t have been allowed inside with her and they had a bed set up for her outside which was probably much better for my dog than the vet office she absolutely hated). My PI’s funding situation is a disaster rn so at this point who knows what’s next for me. I’m not surprised I was rejected since I’m a second year with zero publications, but today just really sucked.

Well I’m just drinking and eating candy and watching watching Princess Bride in my parents’ basement (I relocated for covid). Today has sucked so I just want to get my bad news and pass out rather than anxiously toss and turn.

Good luck to everyone! I was super impatient to hear back (hence making that whole chart thing) and was planning on staying up until GRFP results were posted, but we had to go to the vet to put my family's 14 year-old chocolate lab down this morning and I'm pretty emotionally/physically exhausted (she lived a long, full, happy life and we knew it was going to happen soon-ish). Here's to hoping the results come out super early and the universe decides to give me some good news tonight...

To continue from everyone's posts yesterday - I'm a second year neuroscience PhD student applying for the GRFP for the first time. I went back and forth between applying under Life Sciences - Neuroscience and Psychology - Cognitive Neuroscience, because my overall PhD program is under the life sciences umbrella but my lab is in psychiatry department and specific project falls more under the cog neuro side. I ended up applying under Psychology - Cognitive Neuroscience, and I guess we'll see if that was the right decision or not... Does anyone else have a weird feeling they're going to get honorable mention? I'm almost convinced I'm going to get HM since my application was overall good (I think the personal statement was pretty strong and I do some fairly unique scientific outreach, but my project proposal wasn't as good as I would like it to be - I wish I had another page to clarify everything), but I'm a second year PhD student with no publications and think I'll probably get dinged for that and there's so many qualified people applying. HM would be nice, but with my lab's current funding situation I could really use the stipend.

I checked the GRFP twitter after I saw your comment and that's really odd because they tweeted something a few weeks ago for women's history month that they have now taken took down in favor of this new women's history month tweet. I definitely don't think that's related to release times or anything - it's just a weird choice to take down a women's history post and put up a new one. Do women not deserve 2 tweets in one month? (kidding - I'm a #womaninSTEM and def don't think the GRFP took down a tweet because they dislike women)

I would wager false alarm because the time frame is super long, not the right day (following the pattern), they don't have the message on the GRFP login page as well (https://www.research.gov/grfp/Login.do), and they had false alarms on Friday/Saturday nights in the past. But honestly, who knows with covid and everything, it could be?

Yep I'm officially giving up on hearing back tonight - hoping for better luck on Monday...

You should also see an update on the login page for the GRFP portal https://www.research.gov/grfp/Login.do

Alright I'm running my scripts again that take forever, so I decided to finish fleshing out the chart I made earlier since people seemed to appreciate it. Going back more years didn't really add much more info - it just shows the release pattern has been really consistent for the past decade (but with the current pandemic, pretty much all normal routine is out the window so I wouldn't be surprised if things were different this year).

I also saw some posts on twitter related to this a few months back so I would wager at this point @mitochondria_1 you're in the clear - one of the guys that posted his app wasn't reviewed since it was too medical seemed to have research that's not at all disease-related (especially relative to mine), but obviously I don't have his application in front of me to tell for sure. Based on skimming through prior threads, more people than I would've expected/hoped said at least one of their reviewer's comments showed they clearly weren't paying attention when reading their application (to the level of including the completely wrong research topic in their comments) and considering how many qualified people apply I don't think anyone should take it personally if they don't get the GRFP since it's all pretty arbitrary - but damn that money would be nice ?

Glad that could help! If the pattern they’ve had for years holds, they’ll indicate on the GRFP login page on a Monday or Thursday that the website will go down late that night into the early morning and everyone will get emails some time in that given timeframe super early on Tuesday/Friday saying if they got the award/HM/not recommended. If I had self control (and wasn’t self isolating in my parents’ basement) I could just refresh the GRFP login page once every Monday and Thursday evening and that would give me a heads up if I should expect an email soon. Realistically, I’ll refresh more than that, but until that change happens on the portaI login page I won’t be refreshing my email or logging in to check.

While waiting for my code to run for the paper I'm working on, I looked at the NSF threads from the past couple years and found for each year when maintenance was announced (or at least when someone posted on gradcafe that it was announced), what the announced timeframe for maintenance was, and when results were actually posted. Based on the pattern, I doubt the maintenance on 3/20 was related to us (this happened in prior years). I know last year was delayed due to the government shutdown and who knows what's going to happen with COVID this year, but I hope it'll come out this Friday or next Tuesday? No reason to actually expect that, but I can dream...

I'm about to start the second year of my neuroscience PhD, and as I work on my NSF GRFP application I'm trying to decide what primary field best fits my research. My proposed project will relate to human EEG/fMRI activity during working memory tasks, which sounds like it would fit best in the Psychology - Cognitive Neuroscience category. However, my neuroscience PhD is under the biomedical sciences umbrella at my university, so my program would likely match Life Sciences - Neuroscience better. Prior forums have mentioned that some fields have more funding or are more competitive than others, so I was wondering if there was any advantage/disadvantage to applying under either category. I looked for lists of approved project proposals online in each category to try to get a better feel for which field matches my experience/research better, but was unable to find anything besides the list of awardee names and institutions on the GRFP website. I've spoken with people in my lab, and they were also unsure, so I would appreciate any insight you may have.

Just got through to the PI I want to work for which is such a huge relief and she would be excited to have me so I'm going to my top choice! Sorry for the freak out - I still honestly have no idea what I would've done if I hadn't heard back from her.