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Cool, another Aaron! I'll probably run into you and monotreme; my advisor's main affiliation is the Nicholas School. I will be bringing a car, but I plan on using it as little as possible. I'm hoping to find a place relatively close to campus for biking (I'm recently coming from Fort Collins, CO, which is a great bike town). I am really excited about Durham! Did any of you visit cool restaurants, etc., during visits? The 9th Street area seemed pretty happening (one of my friends who lives in the area took me to Sam's Quik Stop when I was there; best specialty beer selection I have seen), but there are probably lots of gems that are not on that street.

Excellent - I've been waiting for this thread to start. I'm Aaron, starting my PhD in the Ecology program this fall. I'm planning to move to Durham in August. I haven't thought much about housing. I browsed craigslist some but got frustrated because of numerous posts from the same apartment complexes, etc., which made it hard to search. Have you all come across the university site for community housing? http://www.studentaf...ommunityhousing I am hoping that it starts to fill up with more options this spring...

I also have an NSF fellowship and I disagree with bolani. The reserve years are there to give you (the recipient) flexibility in your program. There is no requirement to use it in your first year. From the Fastlane FAQ website: "8. Can I put the first year on reserve of my GRFP fellowship? Yes. Any 2 of the 5-year award period can be put on reserve. You can do this via NSF GRFP." Source Years ago fellows were required to use their funds immediately, and I understand that they built in the reserve years to account for unique situations that people might experience. I have used two of my reserve years to do research/work outside of graduate school and found no trouble having these "adventures" approved. All it requires is a formal explanation/justification of why you are reserving your fellowship. I think that not getting into grad school is a perfect reason to use one of the reserve years... and NSF doesn't know whether you applied to schools or not. From my experience an applicant is more appealing with the NSF but is not a shoo-in. The fellowship is a nice way to get your foot in the door of some nice programs, though.