robertac93

You have to have been out of school for at least 2 years, iirc. That's why I wasn't eligible either. -Rob

I am not, although one of the guys in my lab does batch submission. A few years ago when I was still in industry I used Ansys for stress and life computations and I got pretty good at commandline scripts for running stuff, but that knowledge quickly seeped away.

We use them for particle tracking and deposition models with mesh morphing, etc.

Oh yeah we have a whole supercomputer cluster that we use and through it we have access to lots and lots of cores. We're just slowly transitioning stuff to Fluent from STAR, a few of my labmates have begun heavily using it.

I wasn't a computationalist before the quarantine, but I am now apparently. Managed to learn how to use STAR CCM+ relatively quickly for lots of CFD, only to learn that our lab group wants to start switching to Fluent...

5:00 EST.

Protoss almost exlusively. I'm just getting back into regular matches, haven't played in eons. I normally just play squadron tower defense or Mafia in the arcade section.

My guess is that it definitely means the dates in April don't have any real meaning. It's still possible that earlier dates could have meaning (i.e. those who made it past the first review panel and into the DoD reviews). I also don't believe that SysPlus is just blaming the DoD for their slowness. Call me naive, but I don't think that they'd just try to shuffle off blame on someone else just because they can. It would be very easy for anyone in the know at the DoD to clap back at that and call them out later on. Best guess? We'll be waiting a while yet If anyone wants to play some SCII or League of Legends let me know!

I totally get this, what I meant is that those who are in that situation should be able to theoretically have made their decision. "If I get the NDSEG, I'll go to school A. If I don't, then I'll go to school B."

I would think that they should have already been able to make those decisions. Two hypotheticals, either they win the NDSEG or they don't. Either way they can have made their choice pending the NDSEG decision right?

Somehow I'm not surprised that it looks like we won't find out until* tomorrow. Given all the problems this fellowship has had in the past (even if it wasn't SysPlus), and then thinking about the issues with the application this year...I'm just not surprised. They also have no incentive to get the decisions to us faster. They get paid to manage it regardless of when they notify us. *edit

This makes sense on the surface, but the whole series of April updates don't really jive with any real logic. Updates on 4/3, 4/6, 4/7, and 4/13. If the 4/7 folks are alternates, what are the 4/3 and 4/6 folks? What would they have been going in to do on 4/3 and 4/6? If the 4/3 folks were those that made to the DoD review panels and were not selected, that could make sense, but then what would the 4/6 people be? That close series of dates really wouldn't make much sense. All in all, I'm still not convinced the dates are meaningful. That said, it certainly does seem like the small number of folks with updates today indicates they're likely to be the winners, so definitely congrats to you all! Interesting that there are no ONR updates today, but the smaller sample size for ONR makes that not too unlikely.

I know we had several people e-mail/call SysPlus, didn't they said we'd be notified by the 15th at the latest, but they were aiming for Monday the 13th? How did this thread come to a consensus that today would actually be the day? I worry that we've all just gotten ourselves anxious for today for no reason

Ok then I feel much better. I have a patent that had an initial 'non-final rejection' back in like October so I removed it from my application because I assumed that might look bad, and then my old company's lawyers submitted a rebuttal document and now it's back in review...whatevsies.

So much anxiety on how they wanted us to handle the ONR BAA title. I put in the correct number (N00014-20-S-B001), but for the title I just put the research area from their webpage, no idea what they actually wanted. What did you all do for the "other info" tab? It said: This section is optional. Should you choose to complete any one section of the form, you will be required to fill in the other sections. If the other sections do NOT apply to you, write "N/A" in the box. Did you actually write N/A in every box you didn't fill something out in?

Also weird...am I the only one that had a 4/6 update but not a 4/7? I still don't put any stock in these dates, but that seems weird.

I'm quite surprised at the low number of ONR vs ARO and AFRL.

Yeah I ended up listing the title of the research area on the ONR website as the title of my BAA, rather than the title of the generic ONR BAA that didn't actually have any info in it, but that still has me worried that they might have disqualified me for a bogus reason like that for 'not following application instructions.' Oh well...

I'm ONR / Mechanical as well. I had a 4/6 update, but not a 4/7 update like some of the other folks. I'm really not convinced that the dates mean anything, I don't feel good about my chances at all. As a side note about the ONR BAA, did you notice their primary BAA just directed you to the ONR website for specific research areas? All the other BAAs had those items listed specifically in the BAA document, but the ONR one was different. Made me question how I was supposed to reference the specific section of the BAA in the application...

Those are last years awardees.

I think this is one of the primary flaws with academia in general. I'm in no way passing judgement on the guy with 20 publications, but publication count =/= quality applicant. One or two really strong publications that actually advance the state of the art can be better than a bunch of minor publications that don't do anything. From my understanding, there is an initial screening to separate the wheat from the chaff (people with very poor GPAs / GRE scores), this was likely done by a computer with limited human interaction. Those that passed this initial screening went to the subject matter experts, who evaluated the strength and relevancy of the proposal. Having a large (or small) number of publications to ones name in no way guarantees they wrote a strong (or weak) proposal. W.r.t. to the various dates, I really don't think it means anything. I highly doubt they're trying to play mind tricks by lying to people about that. When I worked in industry I did campus recruiting for several years, and our recruiting system would play funny games all the time. I'd upload an interview record form, and when I'd go to check the next day, it wouldn't be there, so the application had no update. We already know SysPlus has some buggy systems, given the recommendation issues that arose. If they say the dates mean nothing, they probably mean nothing. Lastly, recognize that there is a significant crisis going on right now. I have no doubt that things are slightly delayed as everyone reacts to this pandemic. Yes, I'm just as stressed as everyone, but agonizing over things won't do any good. They're doing the best they can to get back to everyone as soon as possible.

Well there goes my theory! I also realize now that the date is shown in 'Applicant > Application.' For some reason I thought I found the date on a different page...

Created an account just to respond to this thread, as I too am awaiting NDSEG results... I think people are fishing in the dark for nothing with the 'last update' date. I just logged into mine, and didn't actually observe the date because I honestly didn't know where to look. I then went to Applicant > Application and actually clicked on my application. When I go look at my 'last update' date, it says 4/6/2020. Now, this could just be a coincidence (recall I didn't see the date before I clicked on the application), or more likely - the 'last update' date updates when you go and look at your application. For reference, my discipline is Mechanical Engineering and my proposal was through the ONR. In reality - the SysPlus rep said the date means nothing, which I'm inclined to believe. For someone who has a date that isn't today, can you test my theory? Actually go into your application and then back out and see if the date changes? Either way, good luck to everyone!