tso123d

Ugh honorable mention... I made the mistake of hoping too much that I would get this (which is kind of silly since I don't really need the funding and I knew my application was far from perfect, especially in regards to broader impact), so it was rather painful when I saw the decision last night. Oh well, at least there's still still next year.

Eigen gave a pretty good summary of the key differences. Just for the sake of balance though, let me emphasize some of the advantages for working for an established professor. First, there is the mentorship aspect. Older professors will have much more experience, which means that potentially they may offer you more guidance on your project or your field in general. Even if you prefer a hands-off approach it may be helpful to have an experienced advisor who can give you some quick ideas about how you may troubleshoot a project for instance. In terms of writing papers, it's true that established professor will tend to be less rushed, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, as the additional time you spend polishing a paper and collecting supporting data might make the difference between a lower and higher tier journal (and plus the reputation of the advisor will in many cases help with publication in the latter). Finally, while younger professors as eigen said have a vested interest in ensuring a fast throughput, the downside is that you may feel more pressure in the beginning to focus on obtaining publishable data, which might be especially difficult in the beginning, when you have other responsibilities, such as teaching and coursework that you need to balance. Oh, and in regards to the risk of an assistant professor not attaining tenure, unfortunately this can be notoriously hard to predict, especially for professors just starting out. And of course, this risk will vary greatly from one school to another. For instance, at MIT only about half of the professors (in the university as a whole) obtain tenure, while at Harvard it's even less, and of course all these professors must have had stellar credentials to have gotten those jobs in the first place.

Materials isn't one of the four "official" divisions at MIT (those are physical, inorganic, organic, and biological). Depending on what you listed as your research interests you will be pegged in one of those four and that will (largely) determine when you can expect to hear back.

FYI for those applying to MIT, as others have mentioned, decisions are indeed made by division. Pchem is usually the last division to send out the first wave of acceptances, for instance last year, pchem applicants were notified on January 20th.

I have a general about emphasizing things in your application. In the past, I have heard people say that it may be useful to accentuate certain parts of your application (especially broader impact stuff) by bolding, underlying, etc. However, I'm not so sure I'm comfortable with how blatant this may seem, so I'm still debating whether I should do it or not? Does anyone here have any thoughts on this?

I just find it surprising that they would want you to know what kind of broader impact stuff you may do 3/4+ years later. I mean, few people know exactly where they'll end up in that time, let alone what specific broader impact contributions they may make.

I'm surprised you only got an HM with such scores... Lol, what?

I have decided I'm going to MIT. Maybe I'll see some of you there this fall!

Oops, sorry I didn't notice. Thanks!

Eigen, do you mind sharing your scores? I'm curious what is enough for an award in our field.

To be honest, it doesn't seem like that rubric can sincerely be applied in practice. Let's be honest, how many seniors or even 1st or 2nd year grad students will propose truly transformational research projects? Hell, even how many professors do something truly "transformational" in their career, let alone on a regular basis?" Honestly, something really transformational happens, essentially be definition, very rarely, certainly not 2000 per year . Of course, ultimately you do need gradations to distinguish between some quite impressive applications. However, I believe the criteria the NSF ostensibly requires is too enthusiastic to be applied in practice if taken at face value. Thanks for that list though, it's helpful to see the kind of factors that NSF judges consider when reviewing applications!

In fact I've seen others take this even (much) further. For instance some included the exact keywords found in the NSF guidelines and bolded or italicized those sentences. I thought that was a bit over the top, but those applicants were actually funded, so I don't know...

I was actually wondering if that would be a factor or not. After all, it seems unlikely that the budget will be approved within the next week or so, but the NSF has not given any indication that the fellowship awards may be delayed...

Actually to be honest I'm not feeling that nervous. This is not because I'm super-confident in my chances of getting the fellowship (in fact I think my odds aren't that great), it's just that I don't think whether I'll get the fellowship or not this year will have that huge an effect on me. I've already been accepted to grad school (now those applications, I certainly did worry about ) and from a financial point of view getting the GRFP will not significantly improve my funding (the stipends at most schools I got into are similar to the GRFP since the schools are in expensive cities). That's not to say that I don't want the fellowship, I certainly do, as it would give me more independence/prestige and may make it easier for me to joint the group I want, it's just that I look at the GRFP as more of a bonus at this point. Finally, the fact that next year I will be able to reapply for this fellowship and others also takes a good deal of the pressure off.

As prolixity said, Harvard has a chemical physics program shared between the chemistry and physics department, and I was actually surprised at how many students took advantage of the chance to work with faculty outside their department; in some groups that I was interested in the mix of chem/phys students was up to 50/50. Stanford also makes it extremeley easy to work with faculty outside of your home department.