dendarii917

The above was based on the Results stream. I think the forums are more reliable. I finally managed to dig up the relevant parts of the previous years' forum threads: 2007: ---> Friday, March 23, 11:40 PM ET : List goes up online 2008: ---> Monday, March 31, 2:00 PM ET : Some people see "congrats, fellow" when they log into Fastlane, other eventual awardees do not. Others hack the website to deliver the spreadsheet even though it's not linked yet. In other words, NSF screwed up. ---> Tuesday, April 1, 8:00 AM ET: NSF posts full list online 2009: (1st batch) / (2nd batch) ---> Friday, April 10, 1:00 AM ET : First batch of awards only, no HMs, ~900 awards (HMs and the rest of the awards given in mid-May). Rejection letters also sent to those not in limbo waiting on the final award number. Fastlane went down for scheduled maintenance at Thursday, April 9, 11:00 PM ET previous to the list going up. ---> Tuesday, May 19, 1:00AM ET : Second batch of awards goes up. Fastlane went down for scheduled maintenance a couple hours before, at Monday, May 18, 11:00PM ET. 2010: ---> Tuesday, April 6, 12:50 AM ET : List goes up on Fastlane. Fastlane went down for scheduled maintenance at Monday, April 5, 11:00 PM ET previous to this. ----- In regards to 2009, when they only awarded the first batch, this was what the NSF said at the time: "Due to the complexity of the current budget situation, the 2009 GRFP awards will be announced in installments based on fields of study and other factors. The first installment is now available on FastLane. Awardees, as well as Applicants not recommended for funding, have been notified by email. Recipients of Honorable Mention and any additional Fellowship award offers will be forthcoming. Applicant ratings sheets will be available after all award announcements have been made. We thank you for your patience. " I think it's entirely feasible that they will do something similar early this week, unfortunately, and that some of us will be stuck in limbo afterwards. I hope not. At any rate, I think this rules out any chance we'll hear before the middle of the night between Monday and Tuesday! And apparently what we're looking for is Fastlane going down at 11PM ET, with emails and the list showing up at around 1AM following, unless they decide to depart from the last couple years' pattern. Also, I really hope next year when people are obsessing about this, someone stumbles upon this post so they don't have to recreate the legwork I just did. That way I'll feel like I didn't just avoid all the things I should be doing for nothing.... ;-) ----- EDIT: Updated to include the 2nd batch of awards in 2009, which also were a late-Monday/early-Tuesday, just like the 2010 awards. Hmm...Monday night, then?

I don't know. In the past, the people answering the phones have been very cagey with details -- "no information on that, sorry", etc. RIGHT up until when they're a few days away from announcing, at which point they start saying, "within the week". If you read last year's NSF GRFP thread, the same thing happened then: people calling were told "we have no information, we expect it to be early April" consistently, then all of a sudden they started saying, "It _will_ be within a week" and actually, it was later that day. This leads me to believe that the people answering the phones don't make authoritative statements until the NSF has told them that they _will_ have the list within days. This I agree with, they may award a conservative number of them to leave room for later budget cuts, and then pull people off the HM list post-government shutdown if we ever have a federal budget. But for the reason above, I feel pretty optimistic that there will be some sort of award announcements early this coming week. LATER EDIT: Unfortunately, I _don't_ feel optimistic that I will be happy after those award announcements in a few days. But at least maybe I'll be able to be productive again!

Absolutely - the more the merrier; the company makes me feel that little bit less crazy... ;-)

Are you implying it's not going to be Monday? Shhhh. Please let me have my nice little fantasy.

...Sigh. It's going to be a looooong weekend.

I suspect you're correct. My bet is still middle-of-Tuesday-night (or the first few hours of Wednesday morning). But I'm still going to cling to irrational hope until about 2:00pm ET. If by then there's not a server maintenance message on Fastlane... then I'll admit you're right. Make someone else read the email and check the Fastlane list, independently of me, and then report back on whether or not I'm just seeing things that aren't there.

It's April! When I hit 'submit' on my app in November, April felt like it would never come. Surely if we've all survived this long, we can survive a few more days, right? Had my first GRFP dream last night. No award, no HM, but I never got a rejection email either, and I kept waiting, thinking maybe it was a mistake that I wasn't on one of the lists, and why hadn't they told me anything, and then I noticed that no one on the award list had a last name that started with [first letter of my last name], and maybe they'd just left out a whole batch, and... yeah, I'm losing my mind. Life will totally go on after this. Don't tell my subconscious, though. Can we all agree to a friendly moratorium on terrible April Fool's jokes about one of us figuring out how to hack Fastlane to give us the spreadsheet, or whatever, for the rest of today?

So, last year on the day before the middle-of-the-night notification, there was already a "Fastlane going down at 11pm for maintenance" message by early afternoon. Does anyone know if that was only last year, or that's been the case other years, too?

Up to 73 people. You know the NSF employees responsible for deciding when to release the results spent their whole workday laughing at us all... Sigh.

"AND NOW I FEEL LIKE A CRAZY PERSON" is a far more eloquent description of my own mental state than I ever would have been able to come up with. This forum is seriously not for the faint of heart; it's turned my mild curiosity about my NSF outcome into rabid, obsessive, can't-think-about-anything-else compulsion to refresh this page every 5 minutes. Seriously, it should come with a warning label. Too late now, though, and it is rather nice to know I'm not the only one...

You have a point. A whole weekend to forget that the NSF even exists would probably be very helpful, after getting what is so likely to be a "it's not us, it's you" sad email.

You just may be my new hero, for making this call... mad props to you, I hope the admiration and gratitude of us all makes up for her sounding annoyed with you! That means either tonight/tomorrow or EARLY next week, right? Right??! In other news, we're up to 40+ readers consistently. When will we break 100, I wonder? Not until they take down Fastlane?

I wondered this from the phrasing too: does this mean "sometime next week" or "within the next week"? Two very different things for the next couple days. Of course, I suspect knowing which the person on the phone meant wouldn't actually shed any light. I was just reading the thread from last year, from the late-Monday-night/early-Tuesday-morning when they posted awards, and someone had called NSF earlier that day and been told "should be by the end of the week". When really it was about 8 hours away. I really don't like limbo, just TELL me already. Eesh! What am I going to use to avoid research and coursework when I don't have this forum to refresh constantly?

EEEEEEEE!!!! Oh crap. There goes my productivity...

After midnight on the east coast and still 20+ people on this thread. I'm so glad to know I'm not alone in obsessing. :-)

I totally agree. Tuesday, April 5, 11:45pm Eastern time.

I know I'm being ridiculously optimistic, but I think it's already "any day now", if budget issues aren't going to matter. In 2007 and 2008, it was in March: the 24th and 31st. In 2009 it was late, April 10th - but this was the year they had to figure out how to handle the stimulus stalled in Congress, wasn't it? I can see then needing extra time to figure out how to handle announcing in 2 waves. Last year was Tuesday, April 6, but the panels were delayed that year due to weather. Soooo... I think if the lack of a federal budget doesn't delay them (sigh), we're already in "could be any day" mode.

Alright, folks. Distract me from my agony about this. Let's talk about Broader Impacts. No one at my department has ever won one of these before, so there weren't too many resources for how to write the essays. I totally "get" Broader Impacts for the research proposal -- because it fits nicely with the NSF's general guidelines on Broader Impacts for grants and stuff too. But what sorts of things did you all put for Broader Impacts in your personal statement? It's so hard when you've been out of school for years. Any volunteer stuff I did as an undergrad was ages ago (and... there wasn't much of it since I planned to go into industry and didn't "need" it). Since then, I've been working a full time (and then some) engineering job, running a household, paying the mortgage, and raising a baby. You just don't end up the president of this club and that service society when you're trying to be a grownup, too, it seems. At least... I didn't.

THIS. Well, no, I'm tense about both, who am I kidding. But still. I'm with you on the SCGF annoyance.

But if Fastlane posts a "down for maintenance" message, you'll know the news is coming hours, whole agonizing hours (!!), before it actually comes. Why would you not want to sign up for that? ...yeah.

Also, can I just say how lame I am for the number of times a day I check Fastlane, hoping to see a "down for scheduled maintenance tonight" message like that which preceded the award announcement last year? I mean really. It's not April yet. We don't even know if they have money, but we know other federal fellowships (NDSEG) are not awarding when they said they would. I have incredibly huge amounts of coursework and research I should be doing. And what do I do with my time? Refresh Fastlane. I need a life. Or some self-control.

Additionally there's this: http://news.sciencem...e-s.html?ref=hp The CR they did pass (the 3-week reprieve until April 8) included a small budget cut for the NSF, apparently? I hadn't seen this reported anywhere else. $75 million is not very much in the grand scheme of things, but I wonder if that will create enough uncertainty within NSF about what their funding would be under a real FY2011 budget that they'll feel like their hands are tied... Crap, I hope not.

I swore up, down and sideways that I would not obsess about this silly fellowship. I thought I believed I had no chance: in fact when my advisor told me to apply, I outright laughed at him. Back in grad school after 5+ years, and at a masters college that has never had a GRFP fellow in CS. I do not believe I have a chance. I shouldn't. But then WHY do I stalk this forum all the time??! Ugh. Hope can be so annoying. ;-)

Yes, I applied in computer science from a terminal masters program (first year). I listed the terminal masters school as my current and intended graduate institution, but said in the personal statement that I intended to continue to a PhD program upon completion of the MS. And, of course, that a GRFP would enable me to pursue that goal. ;-) That said, I'm not sure how common GRFP awards are to terminal masters students? Seems like the NSF has oodles of over-qualified candidates at top PhD programs to choose from. But hey, won't stop a girl from dreaming...

This. I think many of us are feeling this way: a week ago, when I would check this thread there would be at most one other person reading it. The last few days, 5-15 readers is totally normal no matter the time of day. I suspect that number will explode sometime next week, too... Gulp.