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You can definitely use your programming skills to boost your quantitative analysis. Think about big data you would want to analyze. Figure out if you can get it. Your PS know-how will give you the edge to build good models and interpet the results. Not having to rely on a tech expert will allow you iterate faster. Think about FiveThirtyEight and PolicyViz. You may also consider simulation and how you might be able to explore situations through that. PS isn't my field, but you might want to look into think tanks that hire PS people. Intern there and see what kind of jobs there you would like -- or what kind of job there you would want to create with your programming skills.

Start a dialogue with the match professors. Who do you feel you can work with best?

I agree with the posts so far with regard to publications, collaborations, networking, and funding. One thing that hasn't been emphasized is communication skills. Write well and then write better. Present well and then present better. These are ways you get remembered, get papers accepted, and get funded. These signal to departments that you will continue to do those things and departments are looking for people who do those things. Another thing you should so is start reading about academic job searches now. That will give you a better idea of what you're up against while hiring and really drive home what really matters. Your field, Computer Science, has a ton of advice on the web: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~weimer/grad-job-guide/guide/index.html http://33bits.org/2012/10/01/five-surprises-from-the-computer-science-academic-job-search/ http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~mernst/advice/academic-job.html http://www.pgbovine.net/guo-faculty-job-search.pdf Note many talk about how much easier it is to get to the interview if you already know someone at the school (or if one of your recommenders do). Networking and collaborations. I've heard from multiple people that the NSF GRFP is good if have if you want to be a professor, even more so than harder to get fellowship. Personally I don't think it would be a deal breaker. However, anything that differentiates your CV can help especially where you don't have connections.

The paper doesn't measure productivity at all. It just says that the productivity implied is unrealistic. As others have pointed out, the way they view this is up for debate. There are many other problems. One, this is a small numbers thing and is likely easily skewed especially as you go down the list. Two, this is measuring things that have occurred infrequently (small numbers) over a very long period of time. One school could have done great 10-30 years ago but not so well with their recent graduates. As for "advisor fit," I still believe that's first and foremost. If you go to a prestigious school with poor advisor fit, you will suffer for it -- however, your labmates will be much more likely to become professors! The key is to find good advisor fit with an advisor that has good connections and good resources. At prestigious schools, most advisor will have good connections and resources. However, you can find advisors like that at not as prestigious schools. Sadly the numbers are probably way too small to do an advisor ranking this way. I would love to see it though.

On the other hand, there are more worthy applicants than there are awards, even with the numbers having been significantly bumped up. Those 2nd years that weren't awarded in previous years and are trying again aren't necessarily "worse." A lot of work goes into meeting that bar of 'award worthy' but in the end there's always an element that is outside of an applicant's control, like getting unlucky with a reviewer (someone whose other applications make your z-scores less competitive, someone who doesn't like your subfield and won't advocate for you, someone who is tired because your application was at the bottom of their stack, etc) or getting tanked by a letter writer like PhDplease! In a sense, these applicants are stiffer competition because they're starting with already strong applications from the previous year and making them even stronger. Several people here will tell you that they won on their second try and can articulate how they learned from the experience and addressed the reviewers' feedback. I know my undergraduate application was a trainwreck. I think replacing the 'tossed together in the last week' with 'meticulously crafted using knowledge from 5,000+ GradCafe posts' probably helped. I've always believed my 1st year application was stronger than my 2nd year would have been because I didn't get any papers accepted my first year while I'm sure other applicants did. Further, would the growth in sophistication of my proposal 'kept up' with the growth in everyone else's? Who knows!? Also, I had heard that while the awards are given to fields of study in proportion to applicants, they're given out by year roughly in thirds. I would guess that there are more 2nd year applicants than undergraduate applicants, making it a tougher pool. [ Does anyone have hard data? ] I know several people in my program who didn't apply until their 2nd year because they either didn't know about it or thought it impossible until they were encouraged by people who pointed out the acceptance rate lately has been too good not to try. Some people come from undergraduate institutions or labs that don't emphasize the award. Finally, graduate school is a time of learning and growing. Someone who might not have been 'competitive' as an undergraduate may be quite competitive by the time they're a second year. We're not always going to be roughly the same level of "competitive" with respect to each other as we were in undergrad. It could be finding the right research project, coming in contact with great mentors, being in the right kind of environment, or having better resources to do either research or outreach that can help someone really shine. (At the same time, the reverse can be true making some "competitive" folks less so. It feels weird saying that because we're all graduate students which makes us all pretty strong to begin with.) In summary, your competition isn't necessarily worse. Of course, I still believe your chances are too good not try. Good luck everyone!

No. Roughly 2/3rds of applicants are already at their graduate university after all, it makes sense for them to hardwire. Addressing the availability of resources is a positive thing. In the past it has been part of the prompt and I've seen reviewers comment negatively if it is missing. Even if you're coming from undergrad and don't know your graduate institution, it's fine to write with a particular lab in mind. Awardees have done this successfully in the past. Furthermore, the mantra is "fund the researcher, not the research" when it comes to GRFP -- they know applicants are early in their careers and things may change. Awardees can change their project as long as they stay in the same field. Reviewers are looking for a well-thought out, well-researched, well-written application is indicative of a future promoting science.

Here's the post about the artifact: The author never wrote back with more information. I've seen essays with headers but I don't know if they were added after the fact when they were shared online. I wouldn't worry about not having headers with your name and the essay type on top. Plenty of people, myself included, didn't have those kind of headers (or any note which essay was which) and our application materials were understood. I'm sure they have a system for handling things that is pretty mature.

The only references I included in my previous research essays were to my own presentations, posters and articles. They're pretty important because they show the reviewers that you have experience presenting your work to a wider audience and that your work has been accepted by the scientific community. To save space, each research experience had a sentence explaining what the work had gone into (e.g. "This work was accepted in publication venue1 and I spoke about it at conference2.") with superscripts to the reference. I had a single sentence at the end noting that all references were to the part of the application where you list your presentations and honors. This part of the application is a text box in fastlane outside of the essays. It's great that you have a month to revise this essay. I suggest going through your previous research experiences to see what you can tighten up to make more room to drive home your broader impacts credentials and plans. When I was revising, I looked at each sentence or point and asked myself what message I was trying send, what prompt questions I was trying to address, and if I had done so elsewhere. I also considered if that particular message was important as others. I used the rubric that's part of Robin G. Walker's GRFP Essay Insights to help with this. In my early drafts, I went into too much detail with my previous research experiences. I needed to simplify to fit all of my points. Exactly how I did it was not as important as that I had done it. I left enough information to show I had the background for my research proposal but it was mostly an abstract level summary which also spoke about how I had grown as a research who works with others, leads, presents, etc. I didn't include references to other works. I think that would be too much detail. It might vary by field of study though.

The awards are divided amongst fields of study based roughly on the percentage of applications from that field of study. It doesn't change too much between years, so you can look at last years. I downloaded the spreadsheet from Fastlane and see 166 of 2,065 awards went to Chemistry and of those 46 went to Chemistry - Chemical Synthesis. That's 8% and 2.2% respectively, or 217 and 60 awards of 2,700. However, since these are proportionally divided, you can think of the awardee rate as being similar to the total number of awards divided by the total number of applicants. Last year there were 13,000 applicants. If that stays the same he awardee rate is near 20%, or one in five. Of course, looking at it that way alone, it should attract more applicants...

FWIW, I applied as a first year and didn't get a letter from my advisor though I was offered the award. I had three strong letters, one from outside undergraduate, from people who had worked with me on research projects though. Furthermore, my school starts later than most so I hadn't built much of a relationships with my advisor at the time. If I didn't have three strong research experience letters (e.g. instead a 'did well in my classes' from undergrad), my advisor would have made more sense though. [Aside: this is my first time seeing guttata's userpic, it amuses me much.]

@charlies1902 Any experience is strengthened by having a letter writer also be able to talk about it. However, it's not necessary. The application is on the honor system and you'll attest to the honesty of your application as part of the form. Also just having members of the academic community willing to write strong letters for you implies that at least three trusted individuals trust you not to lie. Most people who can get strong letters wouldn't betray that trust. It's commonly suggested to supply letter writers with your CV and essays so they can better tailor their letters. If possible, you might also want to sit down and discuss your approach with them. Also, while they probably don't need it, it's good to remind them about the intellectual merit and broader impacts criteria. Based on what you've said here, I would briefly refer to your work with high schools as experience that led you to develop your broader impacts plan in your project proposal. If you can think of any, use an anecdote from this experience to illustrate your strategy or show you've gotten results before. You might be able to work in your Habitat for Humanity experience to show your ability to work on a diverse team and to explain how you've experienced first hand the realities of outreach -- what did you learn about what works, what is difficult to do, what a lot of time and money goes to that people don't often think about, how to recruit people, etc?

Summarizing briefly, XSEDE is a program/system that gives access to computing, storage and software resources through a unified, trying-to-be-friendly interface with existing support staff. If you have a project that could benefit from having a computer program run on dedicated or parallel machines, you could use the XSEDE resources. If you need storage space for your data, you may be able to obtain space. That's a very short version. If it sounds right for you, check out the site under 'Resources'. My understanding is that being awarded or offered HM gives you the ability to write proposals for XSEDE resources on your own, whereas other students would have to ask their advisor or a post-doc at their organization.

If you look at the number of awardees for the past three years on fastlane, there are 2,067 for 2012; 2,077 for 2011; and 2,051 for 2010. There are exactly 2,000 awarded for 2013 right now. Based on this I would guess approximately 50 to 80 HMs are upgraded due to other people declining.

Hey... are you guys seeing the maintenance message I am now... https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/ 03/28/13 - GRFP/FastLane will be unavailable from 11:00 PM ET Thursday March 28th - 5:00 AM ET Friday, March 29th for scheduled maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience

Last year it was the same for everyone. In the couple years prior it was different.