cogpsy

Hi all, Haven't been on here in a while, but I was hoping for your help. I coordinate the grad students NSF application process for people in my department, and one thing that I consistently have trouble conveying is that your reviewers may not be able to give their full attention to your essay. Of course, since reviewers are smart, capable people, none of the first years believe me Now, I'm not trying to start a conversation about whether NSF reviewers are good or bad -- my perspective has always been that NSF reviewers (for the GRFP and beyond) are super smart and super well-read, but that they're also human. Having to read so many applications in a row must hurt their brains, and I can't imagine writing so many comments in such a short time. That said, there are a lot of reviews that just don't make any sense! I'm talking about reviews that reference different projects than those reported; reviews that consist of the same sentence copied and pasted 10x; reviews that are incomprehensibly garbled; reviews that are just plain strange (e.g., "the applicant's broader impacts were lacking because his proposed reserach relied on a dependent measure was linguistic in nature, which just isn't that interesting") Anyway, I'm hoping to compile all these whacky reviews to share with future applicants. They're also hopefully good for a laugh (or a vent!). So, if you had any strange reviews, please post them! I'd really appreciate it (and feel free to add context in need be).

If you send your grades, the worst that can happen is that they won't look at them. The best is that they will. Unless there's a financial burden to you associated with having to send out a whole new set, it sound like you've got nothing to lose and something to gain by resending. Good luck!