mmk

Lies, especially after accusing them of trolling...lol

fortytwo did:

[quote name=hello! ' timestamp='1303072002' post='246411] I wonder if the award emails were actually suppose to go out on Tuesday, April 19, 2011, but someone accidentally sent them on Saturday...

I think you guys are misunderstanding the motivation of the suspicion of several people in this thread...before drawing conclusions about the 'nastiness' of the thread, a rereading of some of the discussion earlier on may be helpful...

This is true...but it would be the best evidence we could get up to this point, short of the acceptance list being posted or everyone finally receiving some sort of email.

Maybe I'm being misunderstood. I'm not talking about the email subject line. I'm talking about the part of the email that traces its path from sender to receiver. If you have gmail, open any email, view the drop down menu immediately to the right of the 'Reply' button, and choose 'Show original'. Slightly more difficult to fake that, I think.

Sure, why not. It'll pass the time. :-)

Even better than a pic of the email might be the header of said email from more than one supposed awardee...

Many people just keep tabs on the forum and are not active. Doesn't necessarily mean he's lying...

The same thought has occurred to me...

I also only have the supplemental materials reminder, though I can log into the apply page just fine and see that my application was submitted...if an award was not actually made, I wouldn't expect to be able to log into the awards page. But as jendoly pointed out, their system could still be in transition.

This is a little frustrating. What rhyme or reason is there to the order in which the announcements are being given out? Or is there even one...

I'm curious to know why more people aren't posting...granted, we are much fewer than NSF, but still...

Pics or it didn't happen.

Well. This was awfully anti-climactic...

"Open for business" and "on schedule" are two very different things, lol.

I doubt a definite-sounding answer necessarily implies certainty given the ones answering the phones likely are not determining the budget or deciding policy of any sort. That being said, we might have on our hands a case similar to the 2009 announcements, as I think has been noted several times before. If NSF does make announcements next week *fingers crossed*, it might very well be only the first of several rounds until our beloved Congress sorts out the budget dispute and NSF knows exactly how much money it has for the GRFP... In summary:

Tuesday, April 5, 9:30 AM EST Frankly, I'd like to see them announce this Friday, being April Fool's day and all...oh, to add insult to injury!

+1

There is a that you should definitely keep an eye on. To answer your question: both fellowships promise announcements in early April. In the linked NDSEG thread, however, one person contacted the office associated with the NDSEG and found they are waiting on DoD for something, presumably information regarding this fiscal year, which is, of course, still up in the air in Congress. NSF has given no indication (at least by the information presented in this present thread) that their announcement dates are dependent upon the current budget debate.

Oh, it's definitely...hmm....a toss up.

Haha, yes. But even if someone were to join the panel and learn how the system is setup, would we really know even then? As you said, the agendas of the reviewers must be considered. Who can know these except perhaps the ones with the agendas, and how can we be sure they would not have an agenda in answering one way or another your questions regarding their agenda, or that they really even know what their agenda is? It's a dizzying question and is yet another without a satisfying answer, imho, at least until AI begins to replace the review panels (enter: another interesting discussion). Hopefully the system as a whole is designed to smooth out the distribution of agendas and biases, and it does seem to do this fairly well.

Food for thought indeed. I would take the publication's statements regarding the GRFP review process with a grain of salt since it's dated, but it's insightful nonetheless. Again though, without statements detailing the exact nature of the algorithms used, it's difficult to say much other than that gender, ethnicity, etc. are auxiliary criteria that are possibly significant for (probably) a minority of applicants. At least that's what I get out of the article...it's somewhat unsatisfying. You bring up a good point.

Officially, the GRFP awards fellowships on the basis of merit in two areas. You can read about it here. I'd be interested to see a source cited for the "gives weight to..." statement. Membership in those groups cannot by any reasonable definition be classed under merit. Perhaps what you are referring to is NSF's open, significant encouragement of the participation of those groups in the fellowship competition, as well as research proposals that facilitate the participation of those groups in science and engineering (i.e. "broader impacts"...see previous link). I know of no place where the GRFP states the weight of (non)membership in those groups on your application's competitiveness or in how it is evaluated (if anybody does, I would be interested to see...). Until shown otherwise, I think we must assume all are on equal footing, with decisions by the GRFP based on intellectual merit and broader impacts.

Unsurprising. But then, I wouldn't really consider something as significant as the budget debate delaying award announcements as unusual, at least in the sense that it's a common concern and many people will have questions about it.