avargs

E/E, E/E, E/VG, Awarded as a second year in BME The reviewers were really positive, especially about my broader impacts. Honestly, no one really discussed my research proposal except to say it was 'clear and hypothesis driven'. Other than that, it was all about my personal statement. Feel kind of lucky, because my one VG pointed out a very valid criticism of my research proposal. It sounds like the variability between scores and the awards offered is due to the discipline you apply to. I wonder if reviewers are more positive in some fields relative to others?

This is what I'm worried about too - because this also means that any big misconceptions about the work aren't corrected during a conference call. Reviewers have to read a bunch of statements back to back, so sometimes they just miss information that's clearly there. One student I know got honorable mention because a reviewer said she didn't have specific aims... despite having a full paragraph dedicated to her specifics aims. Weird things can happen!

I'm not sure if someone else has mentioned this, but I've heard rumors that the announcements will be later than normal this year. The review process was kind of a mess because of the government shutdown - my advisor is reviewing in other fields and he said that they'll likely have to delay announcements. I could be wrong though! I do know that, at least in the fields that my advisor reviewed, they did not do a conference call with all the reviewers. That's a deviation from previous years - normally your reviewers read and rate them independently and then discuss on the phone. Those phone calls were scheduled during the shutdown so they all got cancelled. Not sure if any of them got re-scheduled, but it didn't sound like it to me.