ChanEcon

If our sub-committee is not only econ, then I don't understand why there is a sub-committee. I don't see an econ profs judging HR projects... Thirty six is also a reasonable number. Think of all the PhD students in economics in Canada and abroad. As MSP said when she told you that you were first on the waiting list, I am convinced that you're getting it. It's just a long and painful experience. In my case, it's a bit trickier. We'll see, another four months!

New data! I think the list contains the name/project of people who accepted an offer and their original offer. So somebody going to the US could have been offered a CGS initially, but had to refuse it. If the list is complete, there are approximately 25 to 27 (about 15 sdf and about 12 CGS) topics that would fit the economic sub-committee. I was fairly generous, meaning that I think I also raked some commerce projects. If Canuck was right, and there were 36 scholarships offered in the econ sub-committee, then approximately 9 people never accepted the offer in the worst-case scenario. Two of those are probably the Vaniers. Depending on what the remaining seven got (20k, 40k, 60k or 80k) and the years of the students in the waiting list, there has to be movement. If the list is incomplete, I should have spent the 20 minutes reviewing the Bellman equations... At least it's a bit of optimism! Now we know why everything was so slow: they were constructing that .pdf document. Now that it's done, there will probably be some time to count the money awarded and send emails. Best of luck to all!

It's possible, but it would surprise me if a program would take such a risk. It also goes against the post you wrote that all SDF/CGS offered would be given. I cannot offer any other hypothesis to explain the wait. I always fear that the people that could lift the hold don't know that everybody is waiting after them... Upside (somehow), in only four months, it's Christmas!

It's not the good news I expected (having previously checked my emails, good SSHRC news for you would have been bad news for me), but congratulations! Now you would be able to hold the scholarship, so that's good. I'm in maths boot camp. Painful.

Let's all have a wonderful eventless week!

Excellent job SpaceJump! This board has never dealt with as much valuable information. It's nice to know that no money was cut between the first announcement and now. It leaves some hope. The only question that is still unanswered is whether money only moves within a sub-committee. The question is relevant for Canuck and I, since we know that there are two Vaniers and "a few" recipients never accepted the offer in our sub-committee (so-called MSP sub-committee). Does anybody know anything about that?

Yeah, thanks for your continuous efforts! I am just glad MSP is not sick.

Is this the beginning of a Stockholm syndrome? Say hi to MSP for me! If she is sick, we should circulate a card for her.

A lot of students get paid to be waiters... especially in the summer. There should be a SSHRC restaurant on every Canadian campus. No BLTs, only Chicken-Gherkin-Salad. Enough non-sense, have a nice weekend!

I've been fairly optimistic so far, but there is always a very negative outcome related to this hold. Following the previous budget, all operational budgets have been frozen, while wage will continue increasing. This decision leads to a cost reduction of about 2 percent for all departments/agencies, maybe less for SSHRC because it's mostly a granting agency so their HR share in budget is lower. To realize these savings, they have to cut their scholarships. An easy way of doing that would be to "save" whatever amount has not been granted so far. This hold could mean that SSHRC needs to assess the savings that must be done, and would then give out the money that they can afford if any. I don't know how probable that is. They might just be taking their time... but that could explain the hold. @Transboundary: "Unfortunately, at this time, I am not able to check your status" is a very strange sentence. The hold doesn't affect your status... I don't understand. Anyway, keep on waiting in the free world!

As much as the post is encouraging (there is a second round for everything, turn, turn, turn), it is also kind of distressing. The postdoc results first came out in February 2010. If we transpose the period to results that came out in May, it would mean that the results of the second round for PhDs would come in two months... It's not necessarily the case. There might be more resources devoted to the PhD competition for example. Anyway, congratulations to sagmoo for getting the post-doc scholarship! Looking forward to Canuck's post on Tuesday! Good night!

Imagine filling out the forms, running after the profs, and sending off your documents for the 2010-2011 SSHRC competition to hear in December that you actually got the money the last time around. Obviously, it would be good news, but it would be so frustrating. My bet is for the first round of recalls mid-August.

I presume that the official email has to be approved by at least numerous levels of bureaucracy at SSHRC, and there's probably somebody who's always on vacation. I thought the second round would be more spontaneous. At least it gives credit to my "bureaucracy" theory. I just realized that the results were first announced 2.5 months ago, and we had been waiting at least one month before that announcement was made. That's a lot of waiting. Lurking religiously... I guess. I would love to post some good news...

What do you mean nothing has changed? Have the (few) people who hadn't answered back responded to her calls? What about the Vaniers?

And then she'll spend the first days answering the xillions of emails she received in the previous ten days, and then, it will be civic holiday... No news until mid-August... On this note, a nice weekend to everybody!

I agree with everybody, the only reason for declining a Vanier CGS is studying abroad. However, I think the odds of somebody getting a Vanier and studying abroad is very slim, because the university nominates the candidate, and universities have a quota of Vanier candidates (University of PEI doesn't have any for SSHRC, but they have one for NSERC . I think a student really has to committ to a university to get Vanier support. Refusing a Vanier is not impossible, but it would be a rare event. I would so love to play around in the offer/refusal/acceptance matrix of SSHRC... Back to waiting...

Thanks for the info. It's always nice to hear from Michelle St-Pierre. I am looking forward to the meaning of "few". Three would be few enough By the way, I'm not Mr. Chan going to UofT. In September, I will be starting at your alma mater. @Phalene: August 2nd is a holiday in Ontario. It's civic public holiday. There won't be anybody at SSHRC to answer your call.

The only point I wanted to make was that the number of scholarships was much lower this year, and that no obvious reason could explain this decrease. If we can agree on that, than I'm fine. We'll just see for the rest. Anyway, congrats on the comps and good luck for August!

Thanks for the hope!

That was just an extreme case to show that shifting CGS to regular SSHRC cannot explain the change in the number of scholarships. As to the "business related" money, here's what I found first: "In Budget 2009, the Government of Canada announced a temporary increase of $17.5 million to SSHRC's budget to fund additional Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGSs for business-related research. This temporary increase allows SSHRC to award, over two years, 400 additional master's and 100 additional doctoral scholarships for research related to business." but then, "In Budget 2009, the Government of Canada allocated $17.5 million over three years to SSHRC to fund additional Canada Graduate Scholarships (CGS) focused on business-related research. One hundred business-related CGS doctoral scholarships are being awarded in the current competition (2009), and SSHRC will offer 200 business-related master's awards this summer through a special call for applications." So I really cannot understand why there were fewer PhD scholarships in 2009-2010 than in 2008-2009. Maybe the special CGS are not accounted for...

I'm not sure how this multiquoting goes, so I'll just do it the old way. @Mudlark: SSHRC is not deliberately delaying awards. I think they just don't know how much money they have, and they are being extremely conservative and slow at approvals. That's how the civil service works. Fear is the "driving" force of the Canadian civil service. @Canuck: I just got a publication out in a refereed journal, so I am semi preparing next year's application. You have to know that I am a bored civil servant with lots of time on my hands. Also, I was kind of annoyed to get these bogus arguments from both of you, so I was ready to invest some time to prove you wrong! By the way, I am fifth on the waiting list, but I have been working 3 years outside university so the letters were probably kind of rusty, and the only comment I received from a prof was "looks okay". Overall, I am really happy with my standing considering the competition and the circumstances. I'll keep you posted.

The Small/Big SSHRC argument doesn't hold the road. According to the info from SSHRC, we know the distribution of awards by year of doctoral studies (http://www.sshrc.ca/...s/docs_2010.xls) for both 2008-2009 and 2010-2011. Furthermore we know the number of CGS awarded in 2008-2009 was 422 (http://www.outil.ost...vLangue=Anglais). Let's now make a couple of simplifying assumptions: 1) the CGS awarded in 2008-2009 were all given to 1st year students. I'm trying to minimize as much as possible the budget of 2008-2009. 2) all the 1st and 2nd year students in 2010-2011 received CGS (3rd and 4th year students cannot receive CGS). I'm trying to maximize as much as possible the budget fo 2010-2011. The budget for 2008-2009: 376*105+47*105+252*60+276*40+144*20=73387 The budget for 2010-2011: 307*105+279*105+195*40+139*20=72121 According to my assumptions that largely exagerate the budget for 2010-2011 and largely understate the budget for 2008-2009, and considering the fact that new money was invested for 2010-2011 in comparison to 2008-2009, there is still a 1 million dollar missing in 2010-2011. The small/big SSHRC doesn't hold the road. The difference between the two awards is just not big enough to account for the difference in scholarships. More money doesn't mean more scholarships, but in this case, it does. I still believe there are scholarships missing, because I don't think there was a budget cut. And even if we assume that these numbers are correct and that the budget was cut by at least $1 million, it still means that a lot of students studying abroad received CGS and will have to decline them. For every 4 students refusing a CGS and declining it, there is one small SSHRC that becomes available for a 1st or 2nd year student. If students at the top of the waiting list are starting their 3rd or 4th year, it will go even faster. Your pessimistic arguments with CGS actually lead to an optimistic end. I need two people taking the Vanier, and at most 12 people with CGS studying abroad. I am looking forward to my sundae...

I'm fine with the idea that my post includes whishful thinking at the end. However, the facts are that more money was put in the scholarship program, and there are 88 scholarships fewer than before the money was put in. That's strange. Furthermore, the "business related money" money was invested in SSHRC because the economy was going through a downturn. To say that the downturn would cause a reduction in SSHRC budget seems counter-intuitive, since there was a policy effort to do exactly the opposite. I am not sure whether assuming that policy-makers contradict themselves in such a blunt fashion is a much better premise than thinking that scholarships are "missing". Again, it is possible that there are fewer scholarships, but it doesn't make that much sense, especially not to that extent. We'll see.

I was going through the 2010-2011 doctoral scholarship results (http://www.sshrc.ca/results-resultats/stats-statistiques/docs_2010.xls), and there are a couple of weird things. There was this big hype on "business related topics". If we compare the number of scholarships attributed to the econ & co committee in 2010-2011 (140) to the number of scholarships attributed to a similar committtee (formerly known as public and private policy studies) in 2008-2009 (153), there are actually fewer scholarships going to that committee. Obviously, there was a lot of effort to sale the "business related topics" category by saying that it would be interpreted widely, but the bulk of these scholarships should have gone to the econ & co committee. Yet, there are 13 scholarships fewer than before the money was announced. So much for the excitement... The 13 "missing" scholarships are actually missing in all committees. While there were 1 018 scholarships awarded last year and 1 105 for 2008-2009, there are only 930 for 2010-2011. That's about a 15 percent decrease from 08-09, while at the same time there was more money invested through the "business related topics" initiative. It could be that there would have been more 1st year students awarded scholarships this year, but the distribution is pretty much the same across the 3 years. Actually, there were more 1st year students in 08-09 than in 10-11. Are more CGS awarded? It would have to be a major shift to explain the difference, because 4 CGSs are about the equivalent to 5 SSHRCs at least for 1st year students? The final possibility is that there could be less budget given to PhD scholarships. There is a part in me saying that at, the end of the day, there will be as many scholarship this year, it's just that SSHRC is slow in sending the cash. Based on last year, there would be at least 88 letters (not counting the refusals) to be sent, which means about 15 in the econ&co committee, which means I'm in! That will keep me waiting for another week. Any thoughts on this?

The translated (I wrote in French) wording was "good". I don't know if there's an official SSHRC function that allocates wording to probabilities. Anyway, there are no emoticons to interpret this time. About the 18.6 and CGS, I think that there are probably more CGS in the econ/business section, because that's the money going for business related topics. This distribution means that there is more hope for the waiting list, because the CGS-SSHRC difference can be allocated to other applicants. It could also be that the top applicants were in 3rd or 4th year, which would also make sense, and they don't have access to CGS. There's a lot of randomness at SSHRC, but I don't think CGS is distributed randomly across points.