Arya Underfoot

You need to ask your program director about their external fellowship policies. It is unlikely that they will stack completely, but often the department will give you a nice bonus as an incentive to apply for external funding. If you feel that TAing would be beneficial for you e.g. you hope to become a professor or something, you need to contact the NDSEG and find out what their policy is for taking on obligations outside of coursework/research. They are funding you partly to make sure all your time goes towards these things, so in general they will not allow other work obligations.

Are you guys able to accept the award? If so, must be legit and congrats!

THANK YOU! Nice to have some insight into why the procedure looks so haphazard from our perspective

Of course any of these scenarios is possible, but none of them make any sense except the first one If they wanted to know about alternates, they definitely wouldn't assume we would all figure out how to 'hack' into their system early and then do it. Why would they set a pre-arranged time to send emails? They obviously were pushed right up until the deadline and are probably working pretty hard right now to get us the info as soon as they can. They know we're all rabidly waiting for the decision, and they're not monsters April 15th means April 15th - they'll probably get the final lists this morning or afternoon and send emails as soon as they do.

Yeah but there is absolutely no reason for a prolonged delay between them putting all awards into database and them sending emails. I suspect they are getting the awardee lists for different fields or different sponsoring organizations at different times, and just updating awardees as they get them. They have to wait for all lists to come in before sending emails.

Yeah that's a good point. I'm still more concerned about the timing for different fields, as there is a precedent for that.

I also seem to remember from previous years that sometimes the list for different fields come at different times, so they may only have a partial award list.

I still haven't even tried logging in - too scared to find out

Loans are bad, Mkay? But seriously, I would think long and hard before taking out loans to cover a program with such poor job prospects as art history. Try imagining yourself working at a coffee shop after you graduate while paying back this loan very slowly as it accumulates interest - this is the worst case (but by no means highly unlikely) scenario.

I don't think it will be a big deal at all - professors understand that their lab is not the best fit for every single student, plus this guy already said he wasn't sure he could offer you anything. I would accept the offer at your 1st rotation and if your current guy brings it up acknowledge that you will be working in lab #1. Alternately, if you think it would be helpful to your current guy to know you are no longer interested (e.g. if he's turning away other rotaters b/c he thinks he's got you and 2 other guys to choose from) then tell him sooner rather than later. Also, don't slack for the rest of this rotation, it's still a learning experience and you can still pick up skills/knowledge to bring back to lab #1. Good luck!

I feel like I've heard people saying you shouldn't do this, but without any really concrete reasons. I suppose maybe it diminishes your ability to "make connections" in your field? Being able to do the research you want with an adviser you get along with is going to be the single most important factor in your success, so if you know this is possible at UCF then I don't see any issue with staying. I think you have some good options and you'll be fine either way!!

My advice would be to contact professors at B and determine if they 1) might be interested in taking you on, and 2) have had many of their PhD's place into the kind of jobs you are looking for. Make sure that B has a large enough department that you have other options if your research interests change. I have yet to start my PhD program, but from everything I've heard and read your PI is enough to make or break your experience. As a side note, name recognition is only a consideration if you plan on going into the private sector where the hiring committees are less familiar with important people/departments from academia.

I heard back from Columbia E.E. PhD program in early January

Hey Rhodo. I think you will be fine - I took the physics GRE in mid-November, with scores not being reported until Dec. 23rd. This was past the admission deadline for several of my programs, but they are all showing my GRE scores as received and my application complete. I think it's mostly important that they have your scores by the time they start reviewing applications (usually not until January or February). One issue is if you need to retake the GRE and you don't think you'll be able to budget enough time for a second round of studying. Here is kind of a nice infographic answering the question when to take the GRE. Cheers!