hello! :)

I know it may be a little late, but i would encourage you to apply to few more safeties. The competition is going to be great this year and while you are a pretty strong candidate, given your profile there should be a few more safety schools on your list. While there is a good chance it might not happen, I would hate for you to not get into any schools and be forced to take another year off. Just my opinion (based on people with similar profiles in previous years)

Just called them. No awards have been issued. NO ONE can log-in. Everyone's safe for now

Wow, they called you back? That's very nice of them!

I think that a Saturday notification is also possible, if the NDSEG program office receives the list from the DoD late in the work day tomorrow. I hope that won't be the case, but I'm not ruling it out...

Anyway, good luck everyone!

Yes! Did you also request your scores to be sent to University of California - Los Angelos ??

I just passed my qualifying exams two days ago. Ever since, I have been an emotional wreck! The entire process left me with absolutely no confidence in myself as an academic or a human being.

Our qualifying exams consist of two days of written exams, then a week later an oral exam. Following the writtens, I felt absolute joy - I answered the questions to the best of my ability, I even stunned myself with the knowledge that seemed to just come gushing out for four hours straight. I was thinking 'this is what it's all about! It's a gruelling process, but now I know more about this subject than I ever have or ever will again!'.

Next thing I know, I'm sitting in a room with my committee while they tear to shreds everything I was so proud of, and while I struggle to answer even the most simple questions. I felt like a fool, and so embarrassed that they had exposed me as a fraud. This girl can't even answer the question 'What is a gene?!!'. I had studied my subject in such depth but had forgotten how to even string a sentence together.

Having spoken to others it sounds like this is the purpose of an oral qualifying exam - to break you and find out what your limits are. It's a rite of passage I suppose. I've just never felt so low! Is this character building? After it was over I was brought champagne and flowers, yet I felt like I did not deserve it one bit. I'd love to hear from others who have recently gone through quals and if they are reeling in shock like me, or are (as they probably rightfully should be) out celebrating a victory. Sheesh, what is it about grad school that makes one consider even the successes a failure?!

wouldn't it be sorta ironic if we receive news on Friday the 13th of all days?

Just called, and they pretty much read the "we expect to hear by April 15" fbook message to me.

If you think Eigen's posts are confrontational, you're really going to get eaten alive.

@ECGscholar--
If you take the attitude in this post with you to graduate school, you are going to get eaten alive. If you're lucky, it will be a fellow graduate student--with our without a tax break--who does the chewing, rather than a professor.

I'm glad we could have a well reasoned discussion of the issue.

As an undergrad, I had three conference presentations and one in prep manuscript. Leaving my MA program, I have 1 officially published, 2 revise and resubmits, 1 under review and a whole bunch in prep, including two first author papers. I also have 7 or 8 conference presentations. I applied to 10 schools and did not get in to any (assuming at this point). Clearly, publications are not everything.

@nate99--

Easy does it!

There's a growing edge in your posts in this thread. I do not think the frame of mind in your recent posts is going to do you any good now or later.

Please take a step back and revisit your OP. IMO, it reflects who you really are and it is the mindset that is going to get you through this situation--however it plays out.

I am in absolute shock! I am a second year grad student and I got an award!

After getting a rejection last year from NASA fellowship and a rejection this year from Fulbright already, I am so happy to finally get this validation of my hard work!

Congrats to others and to those not successful this time, do not give up! Take the reviewers critiques to heart and try try again!

I think that was a joke....

But instead of criticizing these approaches, perhaps you could share what factors you believe contributed to your success so that others may learn from it. There is no posted rubric or vast body of information about the judging criteria for the NDSEG (unlike the NSF GRFP where there are explicit criteria and even panel review sheets), so we're left with speculation.

I see this situation a little differently based on my own experience (I have publications and have given numerous presentations). When writing publications, I WANT my mentor to shred it apart. It doesn't matter if I agree with it or not, it is necessary to teach me. I believe you are looking for a pat on the head when the point of her mentoring is to make your work better. This will prepare you far better than simply giving you positive reinforcement and saying that it's perfect. The reality is that drafts are almost never perfect and you will have to take a stand for what you believe it. On my last presentation, my mentor at the time gave me advice and he kept wanting to insert things or change things. I finally told him that his idea was very helpful but I respectfully disagreed.

Furthermore, she is preparing you for reviewers which can be ridiculously harsh on your papers. Understanding your needs versus what her role is as a mentor would be helpful for you to not internalize the criticsm. If you need positive reinforcement and encouragement, you should ask her for it. Ask her things like, "What are the stregnths of this paper/presentation?" Be upfront and tell her that understanding the stregnths as well as the weaknesses is valuable for you to improve and maintain morale. If your morale is dropping because of her harshness, use that as an opportunity to assert yourself and tell her. I've had to do this before. I worded it something like, "I appreciate all of your effort as it is helping me create a quality paper. However, some of the comments seem harsh or overly critical to me which is affecting my confidence. It would be helpful if you could strike a balance between the positives and negatives."

She's a new mentor so she is relatively inexperienced. She is probably completely unaware of how she is coming across. You could significantly help her and help yourself by providing her constructive criticsm.

Just in case people don't know what the holy grail looks like (anything to keep this thread active)

National Science Foundation Division of Graduate Education 4201 Wilson Boulevard Arlington, Virginia 22230 DATE
APPLICANT NAME ADDRESS CITY, STATE ZIP COUNTRY
Application Number: APPLICANT ID Dear APPLICANT:
Congratulations! I am pleased to inform you that you have been selected to receive a 2011 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) Fellowship. Your selection was based on your outstanding abilities and accomplishments, as well as your potential to contribute to strengthening the vitality of the US science and engineering enterprise.
The stipend rate for 2011-12 is $30,000 per twelve-month fellowship year, given in increments of $2,500 per month. Fellowships are funded for a maximum of three years and may be used in any three, 12-month units, starting in Summer (June 1) or Fall (Sept 1) over a five-year period that begins in 2011 (your award year). Please see the next page for Fellowship terms and conditions, responsibilities, and instructions to formally accept your Fellowship and to view your rating sheets.
We encourage you to consider additional opportunities offered through the GRFP. Email notifications and “Dear Colleague Letters” are the typical vehicle for communications of this nature. We look forward to hearing about your achievements and contributions during your graduate study and beyond.
Again, congratulations on your selection as a Graduate Research Fellowship Program Fellow. We wish you success in your graduate studies and continued success in achieving your career aspirations.
Sincerely,
James Lightbourne, Ph.D. Division Director Division of Graduate EducationDear Fellow,
On behalf of the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), the Program Directors would like to also congratulate you and extend a warm welcome to the NSF community. Please read the information below and take action as appropriate.
Regards,
Gisele Muller-Parker, Ph.D. Carmen Sidbury, Ph.D. Sheryl Tucker, Ph.D. GRFP Program Directors
• Fellows must be enrolled in an accredited US university, college, or non-profit academic institution of higher education offering advanced degrees in science and engineering by Fall 2011. Confirmation of acceptance in an NSF-approved graduate degree program is required at the time of Fellowship acceptance, May 1, 2011.
• Acceptance of the Fellowship is an explicit agreement that the Fellow will be duly enrolled in an NSF-approved graduate degree program in the field of study indicated in their application by the Fall 2011.
• By May 1, 2011, you will need to formally accept and agree to the terms and conditions of the Fellowship. The “Information for Graduate Fellows” link opens the NSF GRFP Administrative Guide for Fellows & Coordinating Officials. This is a crucial document that includes terms and conditions that apply to your Fellowship, in addition to the eligibility requirements (citizenship, degree and program of study requirements, and field of study) and Certifications that you have already attested to in the application. Visit the NSF GRFP FastLane website (https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/grfp/) to review the eligibility requirements, certifications, terms and conditions and to electronically accept this Fellowship, no later than May 1, 2011.
• You should familiarize yourself with the NSF GRFP FastLane website (https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/grfp/), as most GRFP actions and requests are handled through this site. The NSF GRFP Administrative Guide for Fellows & Coordinating Officials is found here, and you are strongly encouraged to take time to read it carefully.
• You should contact the GRFP Coordinating Official (CO) at your intended institution of graduate study to inform her or him that you have accepted an NSF GRFP Fellowship. The Coordinating Officials Directory may be found at the link above. The CO will assist you in effectively managing your Fellowship and should be your first point of contact in the event the “Information for Graduate Fellows” does not answer your questions.
• Following acceptance of the Fellowship you will need to declare your Tenure Status by May 1, 2011. Please note that you will need to declare your tenure intentions each year by May 1 of that year. Failure to declare tenure can result in delay of stipend payments or revocation of the Fellowship altogether.
• You are required to provide an Annual Activities Report that documents your activities, accomplishments, progress, and productivity upon completion of each Fellowship year, whether you were on Tenure, Reserve, or Forfeit status. The NSF GRFP Office uses Activities Reports extensively to demonstrate the productivity of Fellows for a variety of audiences, including media outlets, NSF administration, and Congress. You will not be allowed to submit a tenure declaration for a given year until your Activities Report for the preceding year is submitted.
• In response to the America Competes Act, all Fellows are required to receive appropriate training and oversight in the responsible and ethical conduct of research. Please check with the campus CO about the Responsible Conduct of Research training requirement at your (proposed) institution.
• You are responsible for obtaining appropriate permissions and complying with all institutional policies concerning human subjects, hazardous materials, vertebrate animals, or endangered species and copyright and intellectual property.
• All publications, presentations, and creative works based on activities conducted during the Fellowship must acknowledge NSF GRFP Support:
"This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. (NSF grant number)."
• NSF Fellows are also eligible to apply for supercomputing time. Cyberinfrastructure resources available to GRFP Fellows are described in the NSF GRFP Administrative Guide for Fellows & Coordinating Officials.
• Please ensure that the following email address is not subject to a spam filter: grfp@nsf.gov. The GRFP Office will send out notices and updates using this address. It is also important that you keep your contact information and email addresses current, as NSF will use your email address to communicate with you on a regular basis about related opportunities (e.g., Nordic Research Opportunity (http://www.nsf.gov/p...073.jsp?org=DUE) webpage and NSF GRFP Engineering Innovation Fellows Program pilot (http://nsfeifp.asee.org/) website).
Applications were reviewed according to the NSF Merit Review Criteria of Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts. To view the rating sheets, please ...(insert new instructions).

If we acknowledge that the more recent years are better predictors than the farther away years, then we can do better than regression. We have to make several assumptions (like an original prior, that the years are i.i.d. normal, and that weekends, holidays, and leap years don't play in the decision). Each year's prior is the previous year's posterior, and we update our estimate and our uncertainty with new data. Then the box plots of the posterior distributions for each year are on the left, and our prior (our best guess based on the data) for 2012 is on the right.



The 95% HPD credible interval for the 2012 prior is the 93.63 to 98.53 day of non leap year, or from April 3rd to April 9th. And the most likely day is April 6th. So that doesn't narrow it down too much, but thats what I get from the data.

I'm going to agree with lewin00. You're interpreting that she doesn't like you, but yet she her broader actions (the high mark on the paper, the research position) say otherwise. She is hard on you, but she obviously still respects you or she wouldn't be trying to help you at all.

My favorite reaction was, "I'm so upset for you; I'm going to go punch a squirrel."

Normally I love squirrels, but at that moment, I was happy that a squirrel was going to be punched in my name.

My favorite reaction was, "I'm so upset for you; I'm going to go punch a squirrel."

Normally I love squirrels, but at that moment, I was happy that a squirrel was going to be punched in my name.

I had a surprise cake once... The cake looked like cat litter. The surprise was that it really was cat littler.


Just kidding. It was delicious. If you haven't seen it before, the poop looking things are actually tootsie rolls.


I can't really explain my name, except it's just me saying hello. And I love doggies and laughing is my favorite sport!

My favorite reaction was, "I'm so upset for you; I'm going to go punch a squirrel."

Normally I love squirrels, but at that moment, I was happy that a squirrel was going to be punched in my name.

Hey Just me,
I don't have any advice for you, but I can tell you about my situation... and maybe you can tell me which kind of nagging is worse...

I'm female and asian american. But unlike my other asian american friends, my mom doesn't care much about pursuing higher education. In fact, she was disappointed that I had not found a husband by the end of my undergraduate degree. According to her logic, the reason why I should go to a great university is so that I can have better choices on the man that I should marry. "Doctors are preferred... no lawyers because they're dishonest," she says.

Anyway, long-story-short, she thought it was silly of me to want to pursue grad school and spend all my time in the research lab. I applied anyway and got into a great program at one of the Ivy leagues. When I told her this, she changed her tune. She is now ecstatic because she has convinced herself that I've "saved" myself throughout undergrad so that I can go to grad school at an Ivy league and find me a nice husband there. Can we say "delusional"?? haha The twist is that I do not plan to marry a man because I like women!

Hey Just me,
I don't have any advice for you, but I can tell you about my situation... and maybe you can tell me which kind of nagging is worse...

I'm female and asian american. But unlike my other asian american friends, my mom doesn't care much about pursuing higher education. In fact, she was disappointed that I had not found a husband by the end of my undergraduate degree. According to her logic, the reason why I should go to a great university is so that I can have better choices on the man that I should marry. "Doctors are preferred... no lawyers because they're dishonest," she says.

Anyway, long-story-short, she thought it was silly of me to want to pursue grad school and spend all my time in the research lab. I applied anyway and got into a great program at one of the Ivy leagues. When I told her this, she changed her tune. She is now ecstatic because she has convinced herself that I've "saved" myself throughout undergrad so that I can go to grad school at an Ivy league and find me a nice husband there. Can we say "delusional"?? haha The twist is that I do not plan to marry a man because I like women!

Awhile back, I came across these notes from someone who had served on one of the NSF GRF review panels from a couple years ago. I don't remember where I found them and I haven't been able to find them again on the web... Maybe for whatever reason this person had to take them down. In any case, I'll post them here as "notes from an anonymous NSF GRF review panelist," since I think that it provides some very helpful insights into the whole process.

Thank you, Anonymous Panelist!

* * *
Notes after serving on the review panel for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program
## Executive Summary
+ Fellowship applications in field of Mechanical Engineering are evaluated by panel of ME faculty. Remember your audience when your write.
+ Two criteria—intellectual merit and broader impacts—have equal weight this year
+ Roughly 15 minutes to read an entire application—make your point clearly and quickly.

Roughly 10% of those _who apply_ for these fellowships will receive them. The applicants are all amazing individuals.


## The Process

All of the applications are evaluated by a panel of engineering faculty from a variety of schools, including research and teaching schools. Applicants for the same field (e.g. Mechanical Engineering) are evaluated by the same panel. This year the mechanical engineering panel we participated in had more than 20 members, and evaluated roughly 400 applications. The applications are sorted by level: level 1 is for those who are in their final undergraduate year, level 2 is for those who have just started their graduate programs, and there are also levels 3 and 4. While all those who are in level 1, level 2, etc are evaluated simultaneously (with criteria appropriate to the level), the final decisions on who to fund are not done by level.


NSF has two basic criteria for evaluating the applications: intellectual merit and broader impacts. _They are weighted equally._ After a “calibration exercise” which is designed to arrive at a kind of panel-wide understanding of what would constitute intellectual merit and broader impacts, each application is read by two panelists and scored (out of 50) in each category. One panelist reading a single application takes 15-20 minutes. Panelists can not read any applications for which they have a conflict of interest.

At the end of these first and second reads, applications get two Z-scores, where



Z = [(Application's Score) − (Mean Application Score for that Panelist)] /

(Application Standard Deviation for that Panelist)
The Z-score is created to adjust for the fact that some panelists score applications much higher (on average) than others. The average of the Z-scores is used to rank the applications. Applications in the top 35% of the ranking get a third reading, as do any applications that have a wide discrepancy on their Z-scores. (The discrepancies are identified by computer and by the panelists.) The remaining 65% of the applications are retired, meaning they get no further consideration. After the third reading, applications that have widely varying Z-scores are returned to the 3 panelists for additional discussion and a resolution.

Finally a new ranking is created. The top 20 or so in this ranking are in Quality Group 1—definite funding. (Notice that this is only 5% of the applications.) The next 40 or so are in Quality Group 2—honorable mention and possible funding. (The top of this group may get funded, depending on resources. Also, this group is mined for recipients of special focus awards, programs for under-represented groups, etc.) The next 40 or so are in Quality Group 3—honorable mention. The rest are in Quality Group 4 and don’t get an award.


## Criteria for Evaluation

Here are criteria we used in evaluating the applications for level 1. Keep in mind that each panelist develops their own criteria based on the panel discussion, so that not every panelist is going to use the same standards. However, they will give you the general ideas behind the ratings. Also, they may seem very harsh, but this turns out to be essential since all of the applications are very strong.


### *Intellectual Merit*

>#### Excellent
>> 1. The research proposal clearly describes truly innovative or transformative research. (Transformative research transforms the way the field or society will think about the problem.)
>> 2. The student is academically well-prepared to conduct the research. Outstanding letters of recommendation, good GPA, solid GREs. The GPA does not need to be 4.0, but should be good. The GRE’s I saw were not as high as I anticipated.
>> 3. The student has a clear passion for their work which comes across in their writing and their actions to date.
>> 4. The student has prior research or industry experience that demonstrated the ability to define, initiate, and complete projects with substantial independence. Avoid describing senior design projects or class projects, as they were not generally persuasive.
>#### Very Good
>> (2), (3), and (4) still there. Research is solid (more than incremental) but not transformative or truly innovative. Or, (1), (2), and (3) but not (4).
>#### Good
>> (2) and (3), research is solid, but no (4).
>#### Fair
>> (2) and (3). Research proposal is weak and student has little experience.
>#### Poor
>> Student is not well-prepared, research plan is ordinary and sketchy, and the student has failed to convey any passion for their work.

### *Broader Impacts*

Be sure to address this topic, as Broader Impacts is half of the score and many applicants who were Excellent in Intellectual Merit did not address this area sufficiently.

Also, be sure to realize that almost everyone who applies for these grants wants to teach at the college level. Wanting to be a teacher at the college level is not evidence of broad impact.

_The identity of an individual does not constitute a broad impact._ This was explicitly discussed at the panel and explicitly ruled out (by NSF) as a broad impact. The fact that you are a female, Hispanic, Native American, African-American, etc does not, in itself, qualify as a broad impact. Also, personal struggle (health/economic/family) does not constitute a broad impact. Whoever you are, you need the types of broad impacts discussed under “Excellent” below. However, if you are part of an under-represented group or have overcome substantial difficulties in getting to your current position, do put this information in your personal statement if you want it to be considered. After the proposals are ranked, those who fall into these categories in Quality Group 2 will be picked up for additional funding opportunities.

>#### Excellent
>> 1. Demonstrated record of substantial service to the community, K-12 outreach, commitment to encouraging diversity, etc. Straight leadership a plus, but most highly ranked applicants have ongoing outreach/service activities.
>> 2. Clear explanation of the broader impacts of the research. How will it affect society, and why should the government fund your project over someone else’s? If the project’s success would have huge impacts on its engineering field, it would fall a bit here and a bit in Intellectual Merit. (Different panelists had different views on this.)
>#### Very Good
>> (1) or (2) is somewhat weaker. (1) still has demonstrated record (not just “I will do...”) but the record is weaker, or (2) is still there but the impact is less dramatic.
>#### Good
>> Both (1) and (2) are present, but weak.
>#### Fair
>> (1) or (2) is completely missing, but the one that is present is at an Excellent level.
>#### Poor
>> (1) or (2) is completely missing, the one component that is present is only at a Very Good level.



* * *
Edit: Had to fix some dumb formatting issues.