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IRdreams

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  1. I gather that they rank (rather arbitrarially) the applications that they think are good on broader impacts and merit combined. They then give awards to the top of the list determined by how many awards there are in your field. Those a little bit lower down the ranked list then get HM. The rest get the modal response of rejection. I would think of HM as a great accomplishment. You were considered very near the cream of your crop. Why you missed out may have nothing to do with broader impacts and every thing to do with what the rest of your pool looked like. The other issue is that even though we include something as a broader impact, the reviewer still has to all about it to score well so the process is inherently rather subjective.
  2. No email yet, but the screen is the fellow screen that others have talked about and I have viewed the award letter. Can we call this offical? Directorate for Education and Human Resources Division of Graduate Education April 05, 2011 My Address Dear -----------: Congratulations! I am pleased to inform you that you have been selected to receive a 2011 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) Fellowship. Your selection was based on your outstanding abilities and accomplishments, as well as your potential to contribute to strengthening the vitality of the US science and engineering enterprise. The stipend for 2011-12 Fellowship Year is $30,000 for twelve-months, given in increments of $2,500 per month. Fellowships are funded for a maximum of three years and may be used in any three, 12-month units, starting in Summer (June 1) or Fall (September 1) over a five-year period that begins in 2011 (your award year). Please see the next pages for the following information detailing the Fellowship Terms and Conditions: location of the Fellowship Guide, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), and the "Program Introduction for Fellows 2011" training presentation; Fellow actions items and responsibilities; instructions to formally accept your Fellowship; and instructions on how to view your rating sheets. We encourage you to consider additional opportunities offered through the GRFP. Email notifications and "Dear Colleague Letters" are the typical vehicle for communications of this nature. We look forward to hearing about your achievements and contributions during your graduate study and beyond. Again, congratulations on your selection as a Graduate Research Fellowship Program Fellow. We wish you success in your graduate studies and continued success in achieving your career aspirations. Sincerely, James Lightbourne, Ph.D. Director Division of Graduate Education
  3. Same...but I'm worried it might be a bug. I want to victory dance...but I don't know if I am able too really.
  4. Crashed the server for a minute there
  5. Does anyone else get a weird login like demofelw1 when they refresh?
  6. I would be sooo happy if a reviewer suggested that as a broader impact for me.
  7. There was also an incident last year. not as bad as some site tho...if you ever want to see scary phd forum behavior google poliscijobrumors
  8. I gather last year the emails were staggered.
  9. I just keep telling my self rejection is the modal response. Yet here I am waiting up and I teach in the morning...maybe that is why I am waiting up. I keep having day dreams about buying myself out of teaching.
  10. I've got a pretty supportive cohort at my school. But I don't know that that is the norm. For example, junior faculty here have noted that my school is a "hug fest" compared to where they graduated, which pretty much the same tiered schools so that's not effecting the outcome.
  11. going bananas (or going nanners for those who like South Park)
  12. So when I got admitted, I took the relax advice. Which I think is good advice. However, I also had a deficient math background so in subsquent summers I've had to take math. Therefore, if I were to do it over again I would probably have started taking math earlier. Though...the relax advice is still good. You are getting yourself into a long haul in which many people burn out. Recharging your batteries as it were is probably a good idea. This is especially true if you are a direct from UG who wrote a thesis. I remember that Senior year sucking and the break probably helped ease that.
  13. I think part of what the petition is complaining about is how the NSF will now handle TAships. I gather that it used to be that you could get an exemption from the NSF that allowed you to TA and have the fellowship if your adviser felt that TAing was critical for your professional development. Apparently, they are disallowing this practice. Since the fellowship has reserve status, this change likely will not hurt students just going into their programs that much. However, later applicants might not be able to develop a suitable teaching resume as a result of the policy. It is a little bit of a bummer. I think the NSF is concerned that you would get NSF$$$+TA$$$ and they are trying to stop that, but in many programs you just get NSF$$$ which is more than TA$$$ but you still TA since proving to that SLAC that you are a good candidate requires significant teaching.
  14. When I click on it, I just get the normal pull down list with no mention of 2011...Time to start some rumor buzz: perhaps this is significant?
  15. So I've noticed that some CVs make the distinction between invited presentations and presentations. What is the difference?
  16. Well the other issue with this is that advising abilities vary a lot. There is one guy in my department who seemingly advises all people of a particular subfield. He basically gets 4-5 new students every year. Even though he has a lot of students though, he turns back extensive comments usually with 48hrs. So partly this has to do with the work ethic and energy level of the adviser. Advisers who are organized workaholics seem to able to pull this off pretty well. However, the next question one has to ask themselves is can I work with that type of person for 5ish years?
  17. So I'm definitely seeing divergent views here. I'm wondering if part of this can be explained by different types of conferences. Would you be more comfortable branding yourself at large flagship of the discipline conferences but less so at more intimate graduate students only conferences?
  18. It is a banner on the top of the slide, but it is on every slide. I think I'm going to cover over the logo on slides other than the title slide. But I was curious in general how people felt about this issue. What sort of academic ares go to far, especially at a conference?
  19. So I need to design some slides for a conference I am going to. My university has a nice template for slides that I have seen others use within the department. However, my conference is out in the wide world. Would logo-ed slides be too pretentious?
  20. It is definitely nice rooming with someone from a different department. Grad school can be so insular and so anything you can do to expand your social circle the better I feel. My math roommate has been a godsend since my department drinks a lot when they socialize and while I'm not opposed to this scene, it is nice to have some wholesome fun too.
  21. Like others have said, you might be asked, but you really shouldn't worry about it so much. I can tell you that since the big H said yes you belong in a top program, despite what other programs may have said. In fact, the quality of your application may explain, paradoxically, why you had few admits. Many programs are concerned about their yield and will turn down students who they expect will get substantially better offers and "would never come to ---fill in the blank--- anyways." The actual Hogwarts probably doesn't have to worry about this since they seem to have a monopoly in the British Isles but in the muggle world there is lots of competition between schools for the best candidates. Schools spend a substantial amount of money cajoling admits. For example, we get 50USDpp to take visiting students out as well as the travel funds they are given in my program. So if an AdComm can predict that someone will likely say no, why would they risk program resources?
  22. Grads from your undergrad alma mater can also be a good source. I wound up rooming with someone who graduated the same year I did and we both went to the same grad school direct from undergrad. We didn't know each other, but if you are still in undergrad, you can usually pre-vet eachother since someone you know is bound to know them or know people who know them.
  23. I think senioritis is pretty inevitable, or at least it was for me. And I don't think it is connected to what classes you are taking or the fact that you left the most boring requirements to the end. I had a terrible case of it even though I was working on a thesis I had invested much blood, sweat, and tears into as well as taking upper division astronomy classes because they sound and were in fact amazing. Anyways, it clears up when you start your grad course work so just float on now if you need to with the conviction that you will be moving on to bigger and better things. On a related note, I always get transitional depression which fuels my senioritis lack of motivation. This might be something to consider. You are planning on making a pretty substantial change in life plans. I also remember senior year sucking for this reason and the fact that there were so many unknowns. Would I get a job? Would I go to grad school? Which grad school would take me? Will there be funding? Will it be in a good city? What will my cohort be like? Will I have a good adviser and committee? Am I really cut out for grad school or were the schools that rejected me right? Ect ect ect. Maybe it is just me, but it is pretty hard to be motivated with that much existential angst hanging around.
  24. I would caution you against drawing conclusions about your own application potential from the results of another individual. There are a lot of variables at play when it comes to admission beyond the numbers. In fact, generally admissions committees just use the numbers to determine whether your file should be read or go in circular storage. GRE and GPA start mattering a lot less though once the file get opened for serious consideration. LOR, SOP, research experience, and relevance of research experience than dominate the decision making process. Why is this the case? These softer aspects of the application are designed to prove two things. First, that you are a shooing to be someone's knew favorite student if they let you in. Second, that you can hack a career of research. There are substantial differences between being a good student (which GPA and GREs measure) and being a good graduate student and future researcher, though they are obviously not unconnected from the perspective that committees tend to believe that people who weren't good students also wouldn't be good graduate students.
  25. Yeah, it definitely depends. This is more common behavior in the social science especially in light of the fact that there is less available funding for students. While this is not something I am doing nor would do lightly, I know that it is done. Many people do not look at a terminal MA necessarily as the PhD program saying "Thanks but no thanks," since people fade out of PhD programs for a variety of reasons. Friends of mine have left, for example, because they discovered that academic political science research was not really what they wanted to be doing with their lives or they found teaching substantially less fulfilling than they thought they would, and they have done fine in their other pursuits, MA in hand. And obviously this advice is not even applicable if one is in a field without PhDs and MAs are the highest it goes or if there is a substantial professional rather than research orientation to MAs of the field than compared to the PhDs that are offered. It just depends.
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