thewire

I just got the email!

I just checked the 2020-2021 & 2019-2020 cycles (both managed by SysPlus) - in 2020-2021, page 8-9 has people reporting portal updates (to Selected/Not Selected) on Friday, 3/26/2021, and emails came out Monday, 3/29/2021. In 2019-2020, page 60 has people reporting portal updates (to Selected/Not Selected/Waitlist) on Friday, 4/17/2020, and emails came out that same day. We'll potentially receive emails later this evening or Monday!

Congrats to you as well!

GradCafe takes forever to approve posts with links, but if you search for "NDSEG fellowship status?" or u/WhatToDoNow_1234 there's a very small thread!

OMG yes me as well!!

Someone on Reddit in Geosciences did ONR and got a 3/12 + 3/21 update

The 2020-2021 spreadsheet's first March update dates are pretty much the same across each service (although there's not many AFOSR or ONR data points from people that won), but with the three data points we have this year, it seems like now they update each service at different times. Also, I just got a 3/21 update - slightly smaller time interval than 2020-2021's ~3/15 first update/~3/24 second update

For any tea leaf readers, I looked at the 2020-2021 cycle which was also administered by SysPlus, and they crowdsourced a Google spreadsheet of the updates. https://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/126090-ndseg-2020-20201/?do=findComment&comment=1058825232 (direct link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qBzKN6fLLH11WsgaoQnfcC4aECeBOOXvc8FTxhs9qfc/edit#gid=466934317) From the 3rd sheet, 14 users reported receiving March updates, 10/11 of those ended up receiving the fellowship. 3 or 4 of those were waitlisted. From the 1st sheet, 7 users reported receiving March updates, 4/5 of those ended up receiving the fellowship, 2 did not say. Some selected fellows did not receive a February update. Emails were sent 3/29, but many confusing updates were posted to the system in the preceding days.

I just had a 3/15 update for ARO! Electrical Engineering, previously had 2/1 update

Which agency did you pick for your BAA?

I feel like the panelist selection has probably finished - if results are out 3/31 the DoD program offices probably have the applications by now. Although we have no way of knowing if 2/1 updates are for those that passed the panelist phase, or for those that didn't pass.

I'm trying to understand what's going on behind the scenes with our applications' evaluation. Because everyone here has had updates ~12/1 or ~2/1, I think each of these times corresponds to a different step in the evaluation process (eg. 12/1 was the program verifying all personal information, and 2/1 was panel evaluations being updated in our portal). It's also possible each field has different deadlines for panelists, so maybe (for instance) oceanography is still waiting for panelists to finish but aero's deadline was late January. Idk though, I'm just trying to extrapolate process information without good data

I'm starting to doubt my theory. The fact that all the updates we've received have been banked leade me to believe it's the program contractor updating the portal. Historically they've updated the portal manually, so maybe they had internal deadlines reached before 12/1 and before 2/1, at which point they'd updated all applicable applicants' portals. It's also possible there are different internal deadlines for different fields.

Yeah, I think so too. It's weird that this year's application has a later evaluation period compared to last cycle's late November to mid January, but us being currently in the evaluation period would explain why some of us have gotten updates starting from 1/31 (given that the website states it's from late January to early February). It's a little concerning that the panelists seem to only be given a week or two to review our applications, but all the information available to us seems to point to that. Hopefully we'll find out about whether or not we passed panelist review sometime soon.

Could it be that we have the same reviewer(s)? My field is Electrical Engineering/Optics