Jrxw14

Thank you for this. This is genuinely helpful. I understand the idea behind it but it really helps hearing it from someone who has gone through it too. A couple reviewers focused on strengths and one focused on weaknesses so thankfully I do have that information to apply. Sorry to hear about your results and I wish you the best in future applications.

You seem a little thick so let me spell it out for you. You can front like you take rejection well, and that’s great for you, but if you think all people in grad school take rejection well or lie and say that they do then clearly you’re another example of a holier-than-thou graduate student with a chip on their shoulder about people who aren’t afraid to express their “impure” emotions. You’ve wasted your time commenting on a post that openly does not care for a person like you or your opinion. Congratulations.

There’s no reason to be arrogant or accuse me of it. I’m simply being honest to myself about the level of work and soul that I put into that application by saying that I know I should have gotten it despite what the committee thinks. Again, especially when someone else who is not better than me got it and is also a first-year. I’m glad that you take rejection so well, but unlike you I can’t “take in stride” something that is such a personal affront to my ideas and value. The ideas and value that so deeply imbued that application with. Whether people articulate it or not I’m sure there are others who don’t take rejection well either, and I empathize with them rather than chastising them for imperfection. If you really commented to try and put someone in the place by saying “I take rejection well but now I’m wildly successful, so just do what I did.” then I’d politely ask that you refrain from commenting on my post. There’s no benefit to taking what is obviously a pained moment to try and heap more on yourself. Thank you for taking the time to comment though.

Thank you for the thoughtful reply, although you like most others don’t seem to “get it”. Despite the relatively high marks, or despite how great people SAY the application was I’m still without external funding while someone who worked no harder than me is with it. I don’t buy into the whole “rejection is only your fault, so you can’t blame it on others” notion because I know the work and effort that I put into the application that I crafted. If I have to be alone in refusing to blame myself for something that I know didn’t fall short at what was asked, I will be, I just supposed there would be others who could relate at a level beyond “I was rejected too once but now I’m wildly successful, do what I did”. I can’t to lend credit to someone who isn’t on a higher plane than but has the benefits of an Ivy League undergraduate education and not being black or studying contemporary African Americans. Especially not when I came from a small-mid sized urban campus where the under-recognized worked incredibly hard to assist in the opportunities for the relatively under-recognized student body. I’d be selling out the work I’ve done to claw up the ladder to be on the same playing field as the former category of people that I mentioned.

Over the past few days I've experienced a huge slump in my graduate career. I'm a first year graduate student in the social sciences who thought it'd be a good idea to apply for the Ford Foundation Pre-doctoral fellowship...boy was I wrong. I received a rejection a few days ago despite relatively high marks from reviewers and an application that I put everything I had into. No honorable mention, no waitlist, just a flat out rejection. What's worse is someone in my cohort received the fellowship that I wanted. I know for a fact that my work is at least as good as theirs if not better, so I'm struggling to reconcile the fact that some random academics deemed my project inadequate. Any tips for not going off when fellowship committees don't know what they're doing? Clearly I've heard all of the "many qualified applicants and too few awards" and "sometimes these things just happen" clichés, but I'm looking for something more thoughtful, ideally from others who have been wronged and watch others take what they don't deserve.