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You can apply three times if your first time is as an undergraduate senior. There are three major pools: 1. Undergraduate seniors 2. First year graduate students 3. Second year graduate students (There's also the very small extenuating circumstances pool but I don't think people who have applied three times already are generally eligible for it.)

sje: It's perfectly normal. One of the goals/benefits of the NSF program is to give younger students more practice at this. Think of it as a learning process. Get help from your mentors on how you can narrow your idea down into a proposal. The reviewers divide the applications by year and are definitely expecting less sophistication from undergraduate seniors than they are from second year graduate students. The program also understands that your proposed project may not be what you're actually doing, so don't feel like you're being locked in. As long as you stay in the same major field, you're fine. So try your best, it won't hurt and it's a great learning opportunity and a potential funding opportunity SeriousSillyPutty: For the NSF GRFP, your last chance to apply is in your second year of graduate school. They know that students in this phase have classes, so don't worry about that, it's perfectly normal. Also, with the GRFP you can choose 3 years out of the next 5 to take the fellowship -- so if you have other sources for funding for 'class mode,' you can apply the funds later. Don't feel that you have to though. The NSF GRFP is about funding the future scientist/professional and your coursework is part of that. I urge you to start applying now. As for other NSF grants, some of those may come when your research is ready for it or at other points in your career.

When you contact the professors, be specific about what aspects of their research you are interested and what skills and background you have that support your interests and theirs. This link is not your field, but offers generally good tips and things to think about: http://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~ejw/advice/ If you can schedule these meetings before you are accepted, it might help your application. However, professors might be more interested in scheduling meetings after they know you are accepted. Also, on the funding issue, some of the big granting agencies make their awards available publicly online. Of course, this will only give you a partial picture and may not tell the story of who is good at finding funding sources from other departments for various projects or has industry funding, but it's a start. If you find webpages of MS students with similar interests, experiences or background, you might want to connect with them. They may be able to tell you about funding. For instance, at some schools it is easy to get TAships as a masters students and at others not so much. The students may be more aware of this than the professors. (The department's director of graduate studies may know about this as well so you might want to write them too.) The students may also know what labs tend to support masters students. This may also be beneficial because MS students can answer other questions about the MS experience.

Also chiming in with ktel here. Furthermore, external funding often gives you more freedom or more prestige. Evidence of obtaining such funding makes it easier to get funding in the future. The experience gained in going through the process is also very useful. Finding funding is a significant part of many academics' lives, don't forget to be building those skills throughout your career.

I had a professor recruiting me tell me that he thought I was a very strong candidate for a high tier fellowship at a school (not Temple). He never said 'when' but always talked about it with a "which I'm sure you will." I didn't and I didn't hear from him regarding this matter. He might not have known. I don't know if these kinds of things are distributed to the faculty. I didn't get any notice either because of course, it wasn't me applying, but him nominating me. I didn't hear anything from the department probably because they didn't know anything was going on at all. It may be that the professors and administrators you dealt with were as much in the dark as you were. I spoke to other accepted seniors and learned they had had funding offered. I later spoke to the graduate chair and he said he could probably offer the standard first year funding. That came a few weeks before the decision deadline. Note, at that school the standard policy was to guarantee first year funding. For PhD programs in my field that's the minimum because great careers can be had with an undergraduate degree. I know in others, you're not necessarily guaranteed -- hence the advice about not going without funding. There have been many posts to thegradcafe about being accepted without funding. I was in contact with other schools which I was open about when asked. I didn't tell how much the others were offering though. I wasn't asked about any pressure (since they all respect the April 15th deadline), just where else I was considering. It sounds like you're making a good decision now, though it's tough to manage the abrupt and unplanned change in your life. It's clear you can no longer develop a good working relationship with the professor you had been contacting. If you still want a PhD, you can apply in another season and use your gained knowledge to find a better fit with a better offer.

Late to the current posts, but I figure I might as well comment for the next time they do applications. I'm guessing they call the East Coast first because of time zone issues. Note, they won't leave a message. However, they do their best to set up a phone call (email, etc) if they can't reach you. I suspect if they sent out emails to everyone but the waitlist, they would end up with a flurry of calls from the waitlist wondering if something went wrong with their application. It seems like they try to carve out funding for this program when they can. Here's hoping they can open it up again next year!

It depends on what you want. It looks like you're most interested in NSF and DOE, so let's look at those: Research: NSF allows you to research anything in your Field of Study. DOE constrains you to researching things that fall within the DOE mission. I don't know how much your field is likely to fall outside of the DOE mission, but it is something to consider. Money: DOE offers significantly more especially with the books/equipment/travel budget, but both are great stipends for a graduate student. Prestige: NSF is more well-known and thus may be more prestigious. This might be a factor if you want to stay in academia (become a professor) as the people who gave talks at my school about it specifically mentioned they see it as a plus while hiring. DOE has a much lower acceptance rate (less than 4% versus around 15%) but this may not be well-known, especially given how new the program is. Summer plans: NSF expects you to work on your own research during the summer. I've heard you may be able to forfeit months out of a year to work with someone at an internship, but I'm not entirely sure how that works. Not sure what the DOE's policy is, but I'm guessing if you wanted to work at one of their labs they would work something out. You may want to email them on this if it is important to you. Other: DOE expects you to tell them 60 days in advance of any foreign travel, whether you use their money or not. If you have an ailing relative overseas and might need to board a plane at a moment's notice, this might not work for you. Congratulations and good luck with your decision. Let us know what you decided and why. I'm sure it will benefit future forum-readers.

Jana Olson is right -- be sure to check with all stakeholders. For the NSF, always check with your coordinating officer. They're (most likely) at your institution and they're on your side. This forum is more for ideas and 'hey I've been there so don't spend the next 8 non-business hours worrying about it'

According the pdf linked below, in FY2010, there were over 3,200 applications and 150 awards, so less than 5%. It sounds like the aim is to continue giving 150 awards. As this fellowship ages, more people will know to apply and the number of applications may go up, but I don't know by how much. http://science.energy.gov/~/media/budget/pdf/sc-budget-request-to-congress/fy-2012/Cong_Budget_2012_WDTS.pdf Page 5 of PDF "Over 3,200 applicants applied for the 3-year fellowship awards. A rigorous merit-based review and selection process resulted in 150 awards to outstanding graduate students pursuing advanced degrees in areas of basic research relevant to Office of Science mission areas." Page 7 of PDF "The goal of the SCGF program is to eventually support a total of 450 Fellows in steady state, with a new cohort of 150 Fellows each year."

Congrats jaywalker! I also suggest letting both schools know. I haven't heard of a department offering funding on top of a fellowship that nice anyway (other than TA positions depending on whether your fellowship allows it and whether they as a department require 1 or more semesters as a TA). If CUNY is notoriously bad about funding, there are probably other students there who have gotten creative with making ends meet. Maybe you can contact them and see what they do to get by and then re-evaluate which school to attend.

No luck here either. A presentation I went to on this fellowship did say it was difficult for computer science students and most of the winners in memory had very strong ties to a specific other-science application.

If this does happen, I'm guessing that we don't have enough people hear to estimate a percentage. Also, if it does happen, I wonder if they do it by field of study since the rankings aren't global. For example, if a Social Sciences person declines, do they take the next highest ranked Social Sciences HM? In that case, likelihood would be somewhat dependent on the number of other/better funding opportunities in your field of study.

I think the numerical scale would have some of the same problems E/VG does -- it would still confuse people to have higher numbers than others who won. Even if z-scores were given, we'd have the same confusion due to 1) re-ranking and 2) differences in winning z-scores across panels -- even in the same major field of study since many of them have multiple panels. This leaves the actual rankings within the panel groups, but there's a problem there too: geographical bonuses that come into play AFTER re-ranking if you're in Q2. I think what might be useful is a modified, coarser grain releasing of the panel rankings: 1) Don't give out ranks to those offered awards. Yes, this means those offered awards don't get as much information, but I don't think it's a good idea to point out who likely got an award due to geography. Furthermore, it might even lead to things like encouraging people to list their rank if they won (since high ranking people might) or high ranking HMs comparing themselves to winners. 2) Divide the remaining applicants into rank-deciles, covering the whole range of remaining ranks. Fudge this a little so that the Q3 and Q4 don't overlap a decile (because having an HM and a non-HM in the same decile might cause problems). Let them know their deciles "e.g. Top 30% of non-awardees." Since panels review 250-300 applications, assuming ~15% get awards, this leaves at least 200 applications, so the deciles would cover about 20 people each. (At this point they could also just take the remaining 200 and renumber them 1-200, but I think fine-grained rankings like that would be misleading because the process to come up with ranks isn't that precise.) 3) Give everyone their reviewer comments of course! 4) I think everyone (award or no) should also get their public K-12 textbook scores (E/VG/G/F/P) too. It's something closer to what the individual reviewer is thinking and I think that's important for everyone's future proposals. I think having positive comments with an E and positive comments with a G do tell us something, even if we're not quite sure what. Reviewers care a lot about science and students and are working hard all weekend to get through the applications while trying to be fair, but they aren't infallible and time is short -- that's why we're now mining comments to make more sense of the feedback, but this is something that's going to continue to vex us for the rest of our publishing and grant writing lives. The decile-rankings and the E/VG ratings will tell different parts of the whole story to the non-awardees.

Awesome additions guys! I've added a few and incorporated Pitangus' suggestion to divide these up for easier reading. I kept the personal statement and research experience together because there's some overlap in how you want to handle them. INTELLECTUAL MERIT - PROPOSAL -- whether proposal has a clear hypothesis/question it is trying to address -- whether proposal is novel/innovative -- whether proposal is original (your own) -- whether proposal is transformative (rare) -- whether proposal is well-written -- whether access to resources is addressed in proposal -- whether expected results are addressed in proposal -- whether validation of results are addressed in proposal -- whether proposal is sufficiently detailed (this is a tough one... too detailed and it might not be well-written/clear and have no room for other objectives) -- interest of proposal among scientists -- relation of research to theories of founders/experts in the field -- relation to previous work the applicant discusses in other essays/supporting material -- whether the outcome measure is well-related or "distal" to the intervention (likely more of an issue in social sciences) - PERSONAL STATEMENT/RESEARCH EXPERIENCE/SUPPORTING MATERIAL -- strength of academic record -- research capabilities, independent and in team -- publications (includes submitted/in review articles, especially if you don't have other pubs yet) -- presentations (includes talks and posters) -- participating in any other funded proposals (e.g. help writing grants) -- leadership potential of applicant, including personal qualities such as persistence and drive -- previous research essay draws connections among past projects and internships, and explains their significance (both personal + BIs) - ALL * strength of recommendation letters and what they say about all of the the above (including proposal if applicable) BROADER IMPACTS - PROPOSAL -- whether proposal integrates/supports science education with research -- whether proposal integrates broadening diversity with research -- whether proposal benefits society or some large group outside major field -- potential of research to support "citizen science" -- applicant's plan to disseminate results broadly, especially with non-science stakeholders if applicable, but further too - PERSONAL STATEMENT/RESEARCH EXPERIENCE/SUPPORTING MATERIAL -- benefits to society, education or diversity in all past research projects -- applicant's activities to increase science education and recruit young scientists -- applicant's activities to broaden diversity in science -- applicant's leadership roles in broader impacts activities (including TAing) -- quantity of applicant's BI activites (e.g. reviewer lists lots of examples or length of time) -- applicant's plan to -continue- broader impacts activities -- "unique perspective" due to unusual life circumstances which gives applicant insight into the needs of underserved communities - ALL * specifics for BI activities in all sources * strength of recommendation letters and what they say about all of the the above @Dynamom: Maybe next year's thread's kickoff should be a group mining expedition of all the previous threads. I read them all at some point (including all 170+ pages of the year-less one) and incorporated trends but didn't write the information down back in November when I probably should have.

I'm trying to compile a list of things I've seen reviewers comment on. I figure this would be good for the 'what's missing' elements when reviewers only write positives. (Though note, there is a wide range of how positive a comment is.) Here's what I have so far in no particular order. Others? IM - whether proposal has a clear hypothesis/question it is trying to address - whether proposal is novel/innovative - whether proposal is transformative (rare) - whether proposal is well-written - whether access to resources is addressed in proposal - whether expected results are addressed in proposal - whether validation of results are addressed in proposal - whether proposal is sufficiently detailed (this is a tough one... too detailed and it might not be well-written/clear and have no room for other objectives) - interest of proposal among scientists - strength academic record - publications - presentations - research capabilities, independent and in team - leadership potential of applicant - strength of recommendation letters and what they say about all of the the above BI - whether proposal integrates science education with research - whether proposal integrates broadening diversity with research - whether proposal benefits society or some large group outside major field - applicant's plan to disseminate results broadly, especially with non-science stakeholders if applicable, but further too - applicant's activities to increase science education and recruit young scientists - applicant's activities to broaden diversity in science - applicant's leadership roles in broader impacts activities - quantity of applicant's BI activites (e.g. reviewer lists lots of examples or length of time) - applicant's plan to -continue- broader impacts activities - specifics for BI activities Many thanks to all of those who have posted reviewer comments or reviewer comment summaries. I understand some people don't want to post whole reviews due to privacy issues (at least that's why I don't), so hopefully these summaries can help those who can still apply. The most common suggestion I see is the need to integrate BI activities (benefit to society, dissemination of results, diversity, education/outreach) in the proposal. Often times someone will have demonstrated such activities in their personal statement, but be told they haven't done enough in their proposal... probably because there's so little room! Maybe we should start a wiki to go along with that essay document store people were proposing up thread.

I'm in the boat as well, though I feel my application for this wasn't as strong, the acceptance rate is lower, and my advisor thinks that the NSF is more prestigious, so I'm not sure I'm feeling it as much. The extra funding, extra year of eligibility and great networking opportunities are pretty sweet though. If you check the fellow guide, you can contact your coordinating officer to terminate the fellowship before using your 36 months of support. I assume that means you can do it at 0 months of support. It's not optimal of course, but it seems like the safest thing is to accept the NSF in late April if you haven't heard from the SCGF by that time. If you end up wanting to take the SCGF, terminate the NSF with your CO.

That's rough AntClimbsTree. It sounds like z-scoring worked against you here. I haven't heard of appealing. It's hard to say anything definite about your snippets without your essays. I'm going to assume they're direct quotes. While they are positive, there's a difference in specificity and strength among them: Note the use of 'could' and 'can' here. In other review sheets I've read, these words are sometimes used when the applicant did not be specific, explicit, or lengthy enough with the proposal BIs. These sentences sound like the reviewer is trying to come up with the BIs for you. These sentences are written like the reviewer is checking off something. "Explained challenges -- check. Leadership skills -- check." There's no emotion in them. The use of 'ambitious' here is better... but it could also indicate the writer has doubts to feasibility. I'm not sure. Here we see 'strong', 'extensive' and best of all 'outstanding'. There will be many applicants with 'strong' records of success, but 'outstanding' in this group really says a lot. That's my analysis of how positive reviews can still have room for improvement. Of course, this is just my guess on the matter. It could be that the reviewers you had just don't write as effusively as others. Still, when the reviewer takes time to write in adjectives, you get more of a feeling that s/he is more likely to have given you closer to 50 than 40 for an E and more willing to fight for your application during re-ranking.

IM/BI E/E E/E E/VG Offered Award The one VG said I could strengthen my explanation of how to integrate education/diversity in my proposal. I did have a paragraph with specifics on education, but I took out a bit tying it back to my diversity activities since it didn't flow right. I guess that was a bad idea. Another issue could be that this plan was near the end of the proposal and after the 'aid science' portion in my BI heading. Maybe the reviewer was barely reading by then, thinking that half of the BI heading would be more of the same. Also, my more general advance science/help scientists BI was mentioned in the first few sentences of the opening (which the reviewer pretty much quoted in my review), I did not put a mention of the educational extensions in the first paragraph. I think doing this would help combat reviewer fatigue and make it seem like the facet was explained more/throughout the essay. What's interesting is that one reviewer spoke almost only about my proposal and recommendation letters. Another mentioned neither and spoke about my record, research experience and personal statement! One reviewer said my proposal was well-written, indicating an ability to communicate research findings. I finished the first draft of my proposal with about three weeks to spare and did spend quite a bit of time rewriting the meat of it. I also used bold section starters for each section they asked for. Lastly, I noticed that the panel groups in computer science are quite broad when it comes to subfield, so I backed off of some of the technical details and made sure I explained/defined terms and ideas. I know in other areas (e.g. Life Sciences) the panels are more focused, so it may require a different strategy there. I was fortunate to have a reviewer suggest improvements and to have E/Es that didn't get z-score filtered (too far) down.

@Pitangus While I'm curious about the raw scores, z-scores and rankings as well, I don't think they would be very helpful. The reason we're given the review sheets is so we can grow to produce strong applications (or other proposals, as this is an exercise to make us better at a wide range of such things in the future). The real problem seems to be that for many applicants the comments don't explain the rating in a way that the applicant can process and learn from. I'm guessing that some reviewers see it as giving points rather than taking points a way. Therefore, they only write positive comments--the one's corresponding to the points they gave. They don't write down the points you didn't get from them and why, so the applicants don't know the ceiling they're trying to reach and how far they are from it. They don't know what the reviewer would write for the highest scoring applications. To help with this point, I used the rubric developed by Robin Walker. The Missouri site with this information is down for a redesign, but the guide sheets are available from Illinois: http://www.grad.illi...guidesheets.pdf The rubric is on page 12 but the entire thing is super helpful.

This is a great overview Pitangus. There's a lot of information we're missing because E and VG are so very broad. An E can be 40 or 50. A VG can mean 30 or 39. Therefore, someone with an E worth 40 raw points may change places with a VG of 39 raw points by quite a margin when z-scores are applied. As for the re-ranking without changing scores, I've heard stories that reviewers will champion applications they feel strongly about at this stage, so I think that sometimes making a strong impression on one reviewer can overcome mediocre scores from other reviewers.

I agree with bgodbgg on broader impacts. I think it may be that we as students spend most of our time on our intellectual merit, even if we do spend a lot of time on broader impacts. That balance comes out in the applications. However, the weighting between the two of them is the same for the application. Also, perhaps to the reviewers, intellectual merit looks almost the same amongst most applications, so it's the broader impacts where students get to differentiate themselves. I wonder if this also comes up in the LoRs. I sent my LoR writers the criteria as well as information that included my broader impact activities at their institution. I don't know if they spent any time discussing the broader impacts side but I wouldn't be surprised if lots of LoRs can speak to intellectual merit but might not have as much to say about broader impacts. For the future, discussing these matters with LoR writers may help an application.

It sounds like you're still eligible, so definitely try again! I also had a low undergraduate GPA early in my career. I took a few sentences in my personal statement to address it and then explain how I had learned and grown from it, leading to better grades later on and an appreciation of perseverance in reaching one's goals.

Count me in as another praising peacebyinches' thoughts on the matter. In my field, people are looking for scores that don't raise questions. Doing well won't get you into any program, but can help you get funding as some fellowships will use them. "Don't raise questions" in my field's case means not too many slip ups on quant since it's all stuff with which you should be handy. It also means a verbal and analytical score that doesn't indicate difficulties with the English language. As such, as long as your practice test scores are abysmal, there's no point in studying for the verbal at all. That's just time you should be spending strengthening other parts of your application. I know some of you don't have it so easy though. A professor of mine gave the good tip "spend no more than 10 hours" -- basically enough time to get the feel for the questions and how they might trip you up and a feel for the overall test so you know what's coming and won't get distracted wondering about it during the test. I did the two practice tests using the program from the GRE website that mimicked the actual software. I also did the extra practice multiple choice questions. I looked over every quant question I missed and figured out where I got tripped up. I read through all of the analytical examples included with the software and their corresponding review sheets. Finally, I looked over the list of possible analytical questions on the GRE website so I could at least backburner thinking about the common concepts that might come up on the test and possible examples. I started a couple days before the exam. All in all, I think I met the 10 hour limit.

Oh I'm curious... but paranoid so for now I'll wait. Jimbo2: Most of the reviews I've read read more like reminders to the reviewer for when they're discussing the candidate later. I try interpreting them like recommendation letters--thinking about what's not being said or what's not being said as strongly as it could be.

Dynamom: The powerpoint presentation for the program says there were 12,000 applicants for the 2011 program and 2,000 awards. I would assume similar numbers for this year. Each general field of study category (e.g. chemistry, social sciences) receives awards in proportion to the number of applications in that field, so each field's winning percentage is roughly the same.