amandarinorange

All this talk about the "scheduled maintenance" is getting me anxious too (unsurprisingly), so I called my dad, who's a grant proposal reviewer at NSF. He said the downtime probably isn't related to the fellowship, since it's only a small part of what they do, and relatively minor in the scope of everything going on at the NSF. However, he did also say that right around now is when applicants should be hearing back. He's not involved in the decisions committee for the GRFP though, so take his viewpoint with a grain of salt. I'm still hoping he's wrong that that we'll all be hearing back in the next few hours.

Another (rare) possibility is for programs to do a second round of interviews (according to my prof/advisor). This would probably depend on the school though, and even then seems more of an anomaly than anything...I'm just passing along the shreds of hope to which I'm clinging. @Watson: Thanks for the info! I didn't know UVa would accept people off the waitlist without an interview, so that's good to know.

A little info for those of you who applied to Cornell's social psychology program: As of 1/13/12, the faculty had not yet convened to look at applications, but they probably will be doing so very soon. About 5 applicants will be invited to the interview weekend (February 3rd, I believe, though my memory may be failing me), from which 1-3 will be offered admission. Best of luck to everyone! I hope this information relieves some of the anxiety rather than exacerbating it.

I posted the Berkeley interview. I received an informal email around 5pm (eastern time), basically asking whether I'm available on Visitor's Day (February 16-17), and stating that further information is forthcoming.