anacron

Could someone post a link for the retroactive increase for 2013 winners. Thanks! Edit: Email was spam filtered.

Looks like it was a waitlist after all, just go the rejection email. Glad I accepted the NSF on monday.

Just accepted the NSF, so good luck to those still waiting for NDSEG.

I wonder if this is due to budget concerns and cuts from the sequestration. There seems to be a lot of uncertainty from all agencies regarding the availability of funding for research. This would certainly explain why the DOD (and DOE for that matter) is (was) so late in releasing final decisions. I've emailed the NDSEG folks about the NSF deadline and the reply was that they're still waiting for decisions from DOD departments. Given that the deadline for NSF is in a few days, I hope they get it together ASAP.

I'm in the same situation as OP but I decided to accept the NSF GRF funding. Here are my reasons: 1) Funding is approximately the same (NDSEG pays slightly more) 2) Even though the NSF GRF doesn't cover full tuition, my department will be waiving the rest. 3) Much more flexibility on when to take funding (CS PhDs in my department have been successful in winning one-year industry fellowships from Google, Microsoft, etc.) 4) NSF GROW - I'm really interested in doing research abroad so NSF GROW is a great opportunity. The clincher was the flexibility; I like having the option to defer funding so that I can apply for industry/national lab fellowships during my graduate study (I'd hate to be locked in for 3 years and miss some of the eligibility criteria).

I wonder why they chose to send out "waitlist" emails given that they've never done so in the past. Weird decision, IMO

Still waiting; computer science; and funding agency would probably be HPCMO

I looked for my CSGF notification email from last year and it turns out that they notified everyone on Apr 12th. So we may hear something next week.

As someone who is currently on a department fellowship and filed taxes, they do not withhold taxes on fellowship stipend because the university does not consider it payment for work (i.e. they do not generate a W2). If you read the IRS publication about fellowships, they are non-taxable if the stipend went towards educational expenses (tuition, fees, books, etc). Housing/living costs are taxable and should be reported as income. Your university should generate a yearly tuition expenses/fellowships form (I think its a 1098 or something) which will report your fellowship stipend. After reading up on the IRS material it wasn't too hard to file my taxes. The usual disclaimer applies: I'm not a tax advisor blah blah blah =D

I'd advise against it, I got similar ratings last year and just worked harder on my research the following semester. I ended up leading a very cool project that got lots of people excited and finally won the award with an improved application. Point is, you'll have 2 more chances to apply so take the reviewer comments seriously and use this as extra motivation to improve!

Got the waitlist email. Computer science and currently attending.

Award notification got spam filtered but found out from congratulatory emails from reference writers. Applied for the computational science branch of computer science. E/E VG/E E/E Reviewers were incredibly nice in their comments and were raving about reference letters (goes to show just how important these reference letters are).

Just got that email as well. I assume this means that we are on the shortlist and they're just waiting to find out how many awards they can give out? I applied for this last year but never got this email, so I don't really know if this is out of the ordinary for NDSEG...

Waterloo is quite well known for theoretical CS: scientific computing, numerical analysis, quantum complexity theory, etc. If you were interested in theory then I would have suggested that Waterloo might be better. However, if you know OS/systems is going to be your focus then Penn state might be better since there's funding and the prof wants you. Is there anyway you can delay this decision until after you get your MS? I think you'd have a good shot at 'better' schools with an MS from Waterloo, especially if you end up publishing and doing a thesis.

Chances are unlikely at the top schools like U. Waterloo or U. Toronto since you've been out of undergrad and unfortunately because of the unemployment. One of the big factors, like you mentioned, are the reference letters. It might prove difficult for profs. to write strong letters for someone they haven't seen for a few years - of course, this depends entirely on how much interaction you've had with them in undergrad and post-graduation. Why did you pick computational science specifically? Most of these jobs require a PhD to even be considered for employment or at least want an MS + several years of experience. It seems like your interests are geared more towards research fields than industry so I'd tread carefully because industry jobs might be hard to come by especially since you're not interested in a PhD. For a Master's only program I'd try to maximize employment outlook by picking relatively broad and established specializations such a software engineering or systems. AI/machine learning aren't bad choices especially given the whole big data and cloud movement. If computational science is absolutely what you want to do then you might want to look at PhD programs instead.

Part of the game is to be a concise as possible since the readers only have a limited amount of time to go through apps. You do yourself no favors by rambling on for 5 sentences when 1 would do. In any case, I doubt they'd throw out an app just because you added a few of extra sentences. If you really have that much research experience, or that much to say then you could potentially put up a website with all the details and add a pointer to the site in your statement.

thought I'd add my two cents since I am thinking about the same thing... I name dropped some pertinent classes if they were strongly related/necessary to my research area. I'm doing projects for some classes that are part of my research so name dropping was my way of saying that I'm making progress on research.

Since you're not providing contact info, its not such a big issue. All you're doing is saying that you worked with this person at some point. I did this in my cv (without asking) and sent that cv out to each reference writer - didn't have any complaints. However, if you feel compelled to double check why not just put their names down and also email them... you can make the appropriate change once they respond. In my experience, this isn't a big deal. With hundreds (if not thousands) of applicants, its infeasible for them to get in contact with each mentor that you've had. You actually answered this question yourself... it would take some time to get all the responses so its basically pointless trying to contact everyone. The adcoms won't have much more time than to read 3 references.

I think you should focus your SOP on research experiences that you've had and how those experiences (in whatever area) would help you contribute to other areas - diversity in research is a good thing. If you can link the various experiences under a common theme then you would have a strong SOP. Personally, I would refrain from name-dropping too many research topics (i.e. being too broad) unless you have something meaningful to say and if you can link those areas to your undergraduate research. Be concrete and give examples of potential projects that you could work on in the areas that you mention. Don't just write down a laundry list of research areas. Keep in mind that you can always change your mind once you get admitted..

Good point, I shouldn't have limited it to simply simulations but I assumed it was much more likely that InquilineKea's research was related to climate modeling and simulations. In fact, my proposal is about large data analytics. Either way showing that your research needs massively parallel machines and that you have already done research on these classes of machines would be a huge bonus.

I don't think this plays any part during the review because they're not providing access to supercomputers... though I guess you could interpret the practicum as a way of giving you access. By definition computational science uses supercomputers to run large scale simulations, so the real question is: Does your research project come under computational science and can you provide a convincing argument for it?

No and no. You gre scores will not matter at those schools.

Well, I'm definitely glad I asked! I went back and added 'impact' sections to each essay and tried to address different points of the merit/impact criteria where appropriate.

Are you guys talking about a broader impacts section in just the proposal or all essays? Seems like it would be overkill trying to do that for each one...

I applied last year and will be applying again this year. I ended up with one of those pseudo-honorable mention thing, so hopefully things will work out this time around. Just out of curiosity, did they select first-year graduate students during last year's competition? I feel like the bar would be slightly higher for students who are already in grad school - even if it is just a semester into it.