JustScienceThings

Reviewer 1: "The technical approach is systematic, well-resourced, and likely to succeed in [its objectives]. Letters are strong, citing independence, initiative, and consistent engagement in scientific discussion during lab meeting. The transcripts are puzzling, with several low grades in relevant coursework. Many brilliant scientists do not achieve high marks in traditional coursework, but the application should provide some contextual information [for these low grades]." Reviewer 2: "Though, low GPA during undergrad is a concern, the applicant provides a highly original self-developed research proposal. The proposed studies are highly challenging but have a great potential in [advancing knowledge of the field]. Previous research experiences of the applicant in both wet lab settings and bioinformatics perfectly suit the applicant's current proposal. The applicant also is well supported by strong supporting letters... Overall the applicant demonstrated outstanding research performance and provides a high quality research proposal." Rejected. Not even an honorable mention. Glad to know that academia cares more about grades than the proposal, whilst simultaneously and explicitly acknowledging that grades are not reliable indicators of research ability or potential. And with that, I am officially giving up on neuroscience and the PhD pursuit. Academia wouldn't even give me one single interview in my third cycle applying, yet somehow I'm good enough to bag a $85K/yr entry-level job in industry working with Feng Zhang. Re-read that last sentence and think about how messed up the academic processes must be for that to occur. (For the context of those outside of biology, though Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize in 2020 for the discovery of the gene-editing molecule CRISPR Cas9 [recall headlines about designer babies], Feng Zhang was independently working on it at the same time and was the first to engineer and prove its efficacy in mammalian cells. Many believe that he should have shared the Nobel Prize. That's who I'll be working with.) TLDR: I'm done waiting for academia to recognize me. I'm moving on. Best of luck to everyone else in your ongoing PhD pursuits! Keep your head up, take care of your mental health, and don't forget that there's always great opportunities out there - even if you can't immediately see them.

Yes. According to it, they received “over 3142 applications” this year. As I said earlier, if you haven’t heard back in a positive manner by now, then you were rejected. Sorry mate.

Can confirm. She said that if you have not already been notified, then you were rejected. Rejection notifications should be coming out in mass within the hour.

By all means do this! Some schools are even known to reach out themselves, unilaterally. It's actually quite easy for them to do: they just need to cross reference the list of awardees against their rejected applicants. I've heard of a few people that successfully leveraged NSF for admission. So yes, definitely reach out and let them know that you are now free labor to them... universities and academia LOOOOOVE free labor. I wish I was pulling an April Fools joke, but I'm actually dead serious.

By this admittedly arbitrary metric, your chance of winning the Mega Millions lottery jackpot is approximately four orders of magnitude more likely than winning NDSEG... tangentially related fun fact: the statistical probability of getting hit by lightning is about 3 orders of magnitude more likely than winning the lottery.

I struck out completely on my grad school applications - went 0/9 with no interviews at all. I have to assume that I will not get either NSF or NDSEG, so I've already accepted a really good offer for a job in industry. At this point, I'm just curious whether all of my work crafting the proposals for these fellowships was in vain. I gave up on grad school months ago when it was clear (by the lack of interview requests) that academia refused to recognize my work and commitment to research. This is my third cycle, I have 7 coauthored publications spanning seven years and now work in a Harvard lab. Industry is better.

Just remember: tomorrow is April Fools Day. Nothing is to be trusted…Just to raise the anxiety here. Best of luck all!

I applied to both the ARO under the Neurophysiology of Cognition AND to the ONR under the Cognitive Science for Human Machine Teaming. Haven't heard back yet. Last name starts with H. Something that occurred to me is that notifications could be going out in the order they received the applications (ie organized by ID number), which would appear random to us as outsiders.

The NDSEG.org site says we should expect this coming week or the one following. Don't stress today. It's Friday. The weather is nice. Go out and have fun with your friends!