That's actually the worst, I'm sorry Definitely re-apply if you can! I had an almost identical situation last cycle, but after tweaking my research statement and re-applying I got the award It seems that much of it simply has to do with the set of reviewers you get.
@differentfrommyredditname My feedback was almost completely useless. Got high marks from first two reviewers with very minimal comments, third reviewer left praising comments but poor scores... I still ended up making a ton of changes but had very little guidance to go off of
Just got a response!
> Good Morning,
> Your application has advanced to the second round of reviews. We
> should receive the list of awardees from DoD either the last week
> of March or the first week of April. We will provide an update to ALL
> applicants once the list of awardees has been provided by DoD.
Ya, agreed with both of you @cellbiogal and @neural_tomas that it seems unlikely that it means an early rejection... *crosses fingers*
No, I never heard back. I just sent another email
I have the same update! Though I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing... in past years it seemed to indicate that your application was rejected at that round (though in that year they only updated the status on the day everything was released). I'm going to shoot an email to NDSEG people to ask -- will update this post with what they say.