InquilineKea

Is anyone else here applying? I'm wondering - does it matter that much to them if you've held leadership positions or not? And what do they look for in applicants, as compared to what the NSF Fellowship looks for in applicants? I'm also wondering - could trying to define my own research project count as "leadership", if it means trying to get multiple professors to advise me on my project, even if my advisers don't invest much time or effort into my project? (and what if my project ultimately delivers interesting but unpublishable results?) Ultimately, it's practice for the future, especially since very few 1st-year grad students try to define their own research projects, so it might be better than nothing. I also try to get more geoscience people interested in social media, and I've managed to recruit quite a number of science people onto Quora. I've also set up a huge number of boards there - many which have lots of followers, and who have posted additional links onto the board (which makes the boards even more useful as a potential resource to others, and has stimulated some discussion). In general though - grad students aren't going to have much credibility as leaders - period. They're going to have to build some track record first if others are to spend time on them. The one thing is that I'm extremely interdisciplinary, so I can never attract followers in any group or club. I generally try to define my own direction independently, and then get followers later - which is something I've done a lot of on Quora. But what if I, say, have 1,000+ followers on Quora and hundreds of followers on Google+? I'm not a particularly big fan of those metrics, but one physicist who knows how the NSF works did suggest that I include Quora follower count on my NSF application. And having followers could possibly indicate "leadership potential" (whatever that means) in the future. Also, as a last question - could having a position in an online gaming clan (long ago) count as leadership experience at all? What about being the owner of a Facebook group that had hundreds of members? (though - alas - Facebook has pretty much annihilated its old groups). And can being a panelist on Reddit AskScience count as volunteer work? I do know for sure that NSF Fellowships do look favorably on social media as possible platforms for science outreach, but NDSEG is different. I also have a pretty low signal to noise ratio (the "success" of any proposal depends on timing, competition, potential collaborators, and location just as much as its intellectual merit, and since it is not always possible to know *all* of these factors - I try to invest in many things in hopes that one of them will become a runaway success - sort of like back when I created 50 Facebook groups and a few of them attracted hundreds of followers - one of them even got me in touch with a relative of Francis Crick who maintains much of his old documents and has collaborated with his biographer). I know all of the previous stuff sounds really corny, and I don't feel that comfortable mentioning it all. But I kind of feel like I have to do it if I am to have a shot. In the end - I suppose - leadership is about influence, and the Internet is one of the best metrics of one's amount of overall influence in the end (it's sort of like citation count in a sense).

Is it a good idea to make my personal statement 80% focused towards Broader Impacts? (that actually could potentially be one of the strongest points in my favor given my significant Internet-based outreach). I've read a number of NSF Fellowship essays now, and a lot of them talk about the applicant's personal development through college. I'm not sure if those points are especially informative when it comes to addressing "Intellectual Merit" or "Broader Impacts", and most of them don't sound especially memorable, but maybe there's a reason why so many of them talk about personal development rather than "Broader Impacts"? A lot of winners have personal statements that also have a lot of overlap with their previous research too.. Also - I have ADD and the form requires me to disclose disability. I'm not sure whether or not I should do it... It could really help with broader impacts (and explain my GPA during my first couple of years - I eventually got medication mid-way through college and my grades shot up), but it does carry A LOT of stigma with it.

Hello everyone, So I'm applying for Geoscience NSF Fellowships for the first time this year. I'm wondering though - does it matter that much whether we target our applications to Climate Dynamics or to Paleoclimatology or another category? If we target our apps to Climate Dynamics, will we get different people who read our application as compared to, say, those who read Paleoclimatology? Are we also going to be compared with ALL geoscience applicants, ALL NSF applicants in all fields, or simply applicants in the same fields as ourselves? I'm also interdisciplinary to an extreme, so I don't know where to start (my two primary advisers, too, are unusually interdisciplinary as well). The adviser I spend the most time with will actually most likely be a physicist who is moving into climate modeling (though he isn't that widely-known in the climate-modeling community yet). My background is in astronomy and physics, and planetary habitability (especially how atmospheres relate to it) is the main research topic that I'm interested in - basically - my research interests are very close to those of Jim Kasting. My physicist adviser has actually suggested that I target paleoclimatology because my school is particularly strong in paleoclimatology, but it isn't known for climate modeling (though it is trying to expand in that direction). Does anyone also know if Planetary Science is usually targeted towards Physics/Astronomy or some area of Geoscience? The competition in Physics/Astronomy is likely to be far more vicious than that of Geoscience. Also - how much does GPA matter? My GPA is unfortunately low due to horrible mistakes I made early on, but it seems that Geoscience is a field where people can get into top schools even with a sub-3.5 GPA. I was one of those people with sub-3.5 GPAs who did get into top schools, but I wonder if standards are different for the NSF. Geoscience is also one of those fields where applicants don't have common backgrounds (because people come from all over the place) so maybe that might make transcript comparisons harder? And what types of people do they choose for the review committees? What are the chances that the review committee might contain someone who might already know you, and what is the possible impact of that? Some Geoscience fields are pretty small in scope. == Also - does anyone have experience with applying for NDSEG or Hertz fellowships as well? What about the other fellowships within the geosciences?

If so, what was it like? Link here: http://www.uniurb.it/ussp/

If it has been 2 months and I haven't received mine, should I be concerned?

Well, I wouldn't be surprised that they're ignoring my requests per se. What I'm surprised by is that they have 100% response rates, and that even when they *don't* reply to my requests, that their response rates don't go down even in spite of that.. Good idea about contacting the organizers about crash space - that is something that should be done at first. But the problem is that they generally encourage you to go to their hotels at their specially-discounted rates, which are usually huge ripoffs even after the "special discounts".

As a side question, would it be a good idea for an incoming student to join a credit union near Brown, like the Rhode Island one? I still don't have any credit and all the credit cards keep rejecting me, so I'd like some way to earn it...

And if you do get confused, what does it feel like, and how do you react? *shrug* It feels so flattering that I often just end up pretending to be what they assume of me (that I'm a prospective UG freshman).

Hm, some time ago I sent 6 couchsurfing requests in Providence, and all but 2 got ignored (and they were ignored by people who had supposedly 100% response rates and open couches too). I don't have much of a profile yet, but it seems that other grad students and people who live in co-ops are most likely to reply to my requests. Especially if they say that they don't have much time during the day. Does anyone else have any experiences to share?

Haha, how long did you try each of the chairs for? I feel that you don't really know what sitting on them is really like unless you actually can use a computer on them (since this is where neck and back pain issues can crop in, and where an ideal chair can prevent them)

PS: How do you feel that apartments/homes at Brown compare with apartments/homes at Washington?

Okay, I've decided to visit Providence (along with Cambridge, MA) for a month now and I'm starting to actually physically visit apartments. One undergrad did warn me that the part north of campus was the sketchy area with crimes - does anyone else find this to be true?

Here's a thread that should hopefully inspire you all: http://3dpancakes.ty...d_with_low.html For the record, my GPA isn't sub-3.0, but it was sub-3.0 for a while and I almost gave up hope. But after a lot of hard work and luck, I ultimately did manage to win top-student fellowships at both UChicago and Brown with a GPA of 3.16 [1] - I've explained more over at http://academia.stac...ph-d-admissions. [1] With all that said, you absolutely absolutely must do well in your upper-division courses in order for this to happen.

They were *very* accommodating and nice to me. And you get to learn *so much* about how people perceive the school and about the town around the school. It's an awesome experience as long as you don't mind uncleanliness or homes that are over 100 years old. In fact, most people will get a better experience than me too, since I'm vegetarian and can't eat dairy, so I couldn't eat most of the food they cooked.

Heh, I archive the most important stuff in Gmail, but my inbox is already 84% full. Interesting - so water doesn't flow through safeboxes at all?

Oh interesting. Are campus fellowships any different from NSF Fellowships/Fulbright Fellowships in terms of taxability?

Hm okay - I'll try that. I wonder which of these two is the better option for a first-timer though? http://providence.craigslist.org/apa/ http://providence.craigslist.org/roo/ === http://providence.cr...k=850&bedrooms= is one sample query I'm using. http://providence.cr...k=850&bedrooms= is another. I'd like to be as close to the university as possible though (although I did register for the official 1st year grad student housing and am waiting for results on that). With that said, RI public transportation is free for Brown students so I can live a bit away as long as I'm on a bus line (and if it slashes the rent down to $600 - wow - there actually are options in that range). === I wish I could get a brown email address. But the admin told me that I'll only be able to get it in-person once I'm on campus after June. But I'll visit again in April so maybe I'll find some grad students to contact soon. Oh cool - where in Washington did you come from?

This pretty much repeats my thoughts exactly. Speaking of which, I'm thinking of going paperless as much as possible because of this. So I'm thinking that a tablet PC (like a Lenovo Thinkpad) would work wonderfully well for that. The Lenovo Thinkpad seems to have a thinner stylus than the iPad, so it's a lot easier to take notes on it. Plus, I might not even have to print most papers out ever again (although I'm not sure how hard the screen will be on my eyes). Another thing about backup: there's always the small risk of a "catastrophic" failure in your room or office - say - some burglar breaks in your house or your house catches on fire, in which case you might potentially lose all of your hard drives. To insulate against this risk, I've simply bought CrashPlan so that I can back everything up to the cloud. I'm not sure if that's the best solution though - there could be others as well.

Hmm, isn't there a student exemption from the SS tax though? http://www.irs.gov/c...=120663,00.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Insurance_Contributions_Act_tax#Exemption_for_certain_full-time_students

Hmm interesting - how can you find apartments that are well below $1000? The Providence Craigslist isn't especially helpful on that (very few apartments in the College Hill area..)

Yeah - I agree with this for the most part. That said, there are some undergrad courses at some schools that are taught really well (and that have exceptional resources one can get).

Is anyone here debating between renting a house and buying a house here? I've posed the same question at Also, do the rents usually go at $1000/month, or are any cheaper options available? === By the way, Brown has a special arrangement with Harvard where PhD students can take Harvard courses at no additional cost. Is anyone planning to take advantage of that?

Thanks very much for all the replies so far! That graph was very helpful! Yeah - these are also good points. The question is - how often do things go wrong in flats that I might rent? The one thing is that I'll most likely have to rent a house that's around 100 years old, so I might have to expect more problems to come up. Interesting point about selling the place while proceeding with the next step - hmm - how time-intensive is it to generally sell a house?

Yeah - that's pretty much the route I take with my social anxiety. But there is a possible risk in that they might learn very little about you after it's all over. Sometimes, you can learn a lot about someone by the questions they pose, but a lot of the questions people ask in the first interview are pretty much pre-scripted anyways. == On a side note, think about this: a lot of students are international students, and they generally face social barriers that domestic students don't face. So a lot of professors are prepared to interact with (and to tolerate) students unfamiliar with the social mannerisms that are generally expected out of Americans.

Okay - thanks very much for the additional advice! Yeah - I had totally forgot about how to ship my clothes - that's something else that I'm going to have to prepare for.