Jimbo2

the real trick is to log on after the update and it will either say welcome fellows (you got the award) or welcome applicants (HM/no award).

glad it will be saturday night. no staying up late on a weekday

Just in case people don't know what the holy grail looks like (anything to keep this thread active) National Science Foundation Division of Graduate Education 4201 Wilson Boulevard Arlington, Virginia 22230 DATE APPLICANT NAME ADDRESS CITY, STATE ZIP COUNTRY Application Number: APPLICANT ID Dear APPLICANT: 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 rate for 2011-12 is $30,000 per twelve-month fellowship year, 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 (Sept 1) over a five-year period that begins in 2011 (your award year). Please see the next page for Fellowship terms and conditions, responsibilities, and instructions to formally accept your Fellowship and 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. Division Director Division of Graduate EducationDear Fellow, On behalf of the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), the Program Directors would like to also congratulate you and extend a warm welcome to the NSF community. Please read the information below and take action as appropriate. Regards, Gisele Muller-Parker, Ph.D. Carmen Sidbury, Ph.D. Sheryl Tucker, Ph.D. GRFP Program Directors • Fellows must be enrolled in an accredited US university, college, or non-profit academic institution of higher education offering advanced degrees in science and engineering by Fall 2011. Confirmation of acceptance in an NSF-approved graduate degree program is required at the time of Fellowship acceptance, May 1, 2011. • Acceptance of the Fellowship is an explicit agreement that the Fellow will be duly enrolled in an NSF-approved graduate degree program in the field of study indicated in their application by the Fall 2011. • By May 1, 2011, you will need to formally accept and agree to the terms and conditions of the Fellowship. The “Information for Graduate Fellows” link opens the NSF GRFP Administrative Guide for Fellows & Coordinating Officials. This is a crucial document that includes terms and conditions that apply to your Fellowship, in addition to the eligibility requirements (citizenship, degree and program of study requirements, and field of study) and Certifications that you have already attested to in the application. Visit the NSF GRFP FastLane website (https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/grfp/) to review the eligibility requirements, certifications, terms and conditions and to electronically accept this Fellowship, no later than May 1, 2011. • You should familiarize yourself with the NSF GRFP FastLane website (https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/grfp/), as most GRFP actions and requests are handled through this site. The NSF GRFP Administrative Guide for Fellows & Coordinating Officials is found here, and you are strongly encouraged to take time to read it carefully. • You should contact the GRFP Coordinating Official (CO) at your intended institution of graduate study to inform her or him that you have accepted an NSF GRFP Fellowship. The Coordinating Officials Directory may be found at the link above. The CO will assist you in effectively managing your Fellowship and should be your first point of contact in the event the “Information for Graduate Fellows” does not answer your questions. • Following acceptance of the Fellowship you will need to declare your Tenure Status by May 1, 2011. Please note that you will need to declare your tenure intentions each year by May 1 of that year. Failure to declare tenure can result in delay of stipend payments or revocation of the Fellowship altogether. • You are required to provide an Annual Activities Report that documents your activities, accomplishments, progress, and productivity upon completion of each Fellowship year, whether you were on Tenure, Reserve, or Forfeit status. The NSF GRFP Office uses Activities Reports extensively to demonstrate the productivity of Fellows for a variety of audiences, including media outlets, NSF administration, and Congress. You will not be allowed to submit a tenure declaration for a given year until your Activities Report for the preceding year is submitted. • In response to the America Competes Act, all Fellows are required to receive appropriate training and oversight in the responsible and ethical conduct of research. Please check with the campus CO about the Responsible Conduct of Research training requirement at your (proposed) institution. • You are responsible for obtaining appropriate permissions and complying with all institutional policies concerning human subjects, hazardous materials, vertebrate animals, or endangered species and copyright and intellectual property. • All publications, presentations, and creative works based on activities conducted during the Fellowship must acknowledge NSF GRFP Support: "This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. (NSF grant number)." • NSF Fellows are also eligible to apply for supercomputing time. Cyberinfrastructure resources available to GRFP Fellows are described in the NSF GRFP Administrative Guide for Fellows & Coordinating Officials. • Please ensure that the following email address is not subject to a spam filter: grfp@nsf.gov. The GRFP Office will send out notices and updates using this address. It is also important that you keep your contact information and email addresses current, as NSF will use your email address to communicate with you on a regular basis about related opportunities (e.g., Nordic Research Opportunity (http://www.nsf.gov/p...073.jsp?org=DUE) webpage and NSF GRFP Engineering Innovation Fellows Program pilot (http://nsfeifp.asee.org/) website). Applications were reviewed according to the NSF Merit Review Criteria of Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts. To view the rating sheets, please ...(insert new instructions).

haha very nice. i'm hoping for a leak like there was a couple years ago, but the folks at NSF have probably fixed whatever the glitch was.

my "it'll be ok" mantra is a bit two sided... i think my proposed research essay sucks now, which means the one i would write next year should be much better, but then i'm really not sure how this year's application will go. an HM would be ok, but to be honest the $100K and funding to upgrade from a M.S. to a Ph.D. program that's the difference between the award and the HM would be huge for me.

Sat, Thu, Mon, Mon, Fri, Tue, Tue

seriously though can someone give the nsf a call?

i'm extremely happy. if i didn't get into grad school this year, i'd probably be dead, face down in a drained pool somewhere

yeah that's how it was last year. you got two windows open refreshing this website and the NSF one and posts on this one start to trickle in saying they got the GRF or didn't. the emails don't go out for another few hours, so if you want to know asap, you have to do the refresh routine. last year i was just happy to have gotten accepted into grad school, so this year the fellowship will be more of a big deal

yeah that period of time when you repeatedly try and log onto fastlane because the website is overloaded is a pretty nerve wracking experience. Is $100,000 and a Ph.D. on the other side? You're pretty much on the price is right, except with more impact on your career

Here's my overanalysis: last year the GRFP was specifically mentioned in the maintenance bulletin and the current bulletin doesn't mention it. That plus it being a weekend update makes this seem a little too good to be true. I remember last year that people actually called the NSF to see what was going on. There's internet reputation available for anyone who does that haha

i'd be pretty stoked if we got this over with this weekend. if i'm going to be applying again next year, i'd just like to know way in advance

whoa this is a big deal. are there any other funding decisions being made right now other than the GRF?

have to agree. anyone got a screenshot of what it looks like when you log on and have been awarded the fellowship? (i.e., the "welcome fellows" screen)

anyone else reread their essays and think they aren't any good anymore? haha..

my friend got accepted a few days ago

here's hoping everyone doesn't read them and used 11 point font

I was talking about NSF Grants (the 15 page, PI style ones), not the GRFP, and the chances of getting one in 2011 were exactly 20%. Coincidentally, I think the chances of getting the GRFP actually are about 20% as well. Last year there were 2,077 awards from about 10,000-11,000 applicants (the 10k-11k number I'm not exactly sure about, but I believe I've heard that number before).

not sure i agree. at least in my department (ecology), the total cost of the salaries, research, stipend, tuition etc. (i.e., total costs of the research) is about $200,000+ for an average MS. The median NSF grant (i.e., a common source of funding) is $131,000 per year for 3 years, and the chances of getting one are 20%.... put all of those together and being able to bring $100,000 to the table with the NSF GRFP is a considerable bargaining chip, and could change people's minds about having you in their lab because funding is the limiting factor. I wonder if this is a cross-departmental thing, but where I work, it's all about funding.

haha i'm not sure that's worth stressing over. everyone knows the big moment is logging in when the website is super slow and seeing if it says "welcome applicants" (you lose) or "welcome fellows" (you win). in regards to the person asking if you can switch programs/get in with an GRF even if they rejected you, funding is nearly always the limiting factor in admissions decisions, at least in science (not sure about engineering). if you get the GRF, it pretty much is a golden ticket and you can call professors back and explain the situation. the only thing to watch out for is that you may be working on research that requires a lot more funding than is needed to cover your stipend/tuition.

you could certainly mention the results that you anticipate if there's a trend in your work. if you don't get in, i would recommend not taking a year "off," but rather continuing to work and get another year of research experience. without classes, you should be able to get a ton of experience, build reputations with LoR writers, etc. i wouldn't recommend retaking the GRE unless there's a really bad subscore within the 1330. from the perspective of a PI, i would be much more concerned with research experience, familiarity with lab equipment, reputation, ability to think independently, and writing skills than the results of a math/vocab test. good luck at the upcoming interview!

if i remember correctly, they do not explicitly break it into 1/3, 1/3, 1/3, but the way that they review the applications facilitates the numbers to exhibit this distribution. (so yes and no at the same time). and there are actually 4 tiers of applicants.

haha anytime. i've been following this thread for a while now and it had got a bit dead.

Half of the fellows have already been decided upon. These are the ones that clearly make the cut and don't require extensive debate on whether or not they get funded. The remaining half must be distinguished from HMs, which takes time, and is what was going on as of two weeks ago. Of course, everyone receives news on their application at the same time.