cathaea
-
Posts
71 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Everything posted by cathaea
-
This is breaking my heart! I'm so sorry. You wouldn't have gotten forwarded though if you weren't competitive -- sounds like it was an usually competitive year with even fewer awards than usual. I'm sure when I get my letter tomorrow I'll be drowning my sorrows as well.
-
I am so sorry.
-
That seems lower than previous years doesn't it? That number is consistent with another post. I wonder then why someone else got a letter that said 1907 applications were adjudicated and 1085 awards offered.
-
Can someone confirm what the total # of SSHRCs awarded vs. # of applicants? There's 2 different figures that have been posted so far.
-
I'm in Ontario, mail has already come and no letter. Ughhhhhh.
-
The OSAP website is down because it's being updated. This means nothing, right?
-
Ha, this is true. A Psych doctoral candidate could have a lot of fun with students' responses to these kinds of national scholarship competitions.
-
This is cruel. I would so much rather that SSHRC had waited until Monday to say "We mailed your results last Friday!" then having to sit through a weekend of uncertainty.
-
That would make sense and would explain why 4th year SSHRCs might require more evidence of conferences/pubs (bc they're competing against other 4th years who do).
-
I think these kinds of discussions are really field-specific. I know in English, it's super uncommon to have pubs before your 2nd year but if you were applying for a SSHRC going into your 4th year, for instance, there would be a slightly higher expectation that you maybe have 1-2 published/forthcoming articles. That being said, I'm in a discipline that is still very much focused on finishing on time and avoiding everything that has the potential to distract from that and lots of people avoid writing articles to focus on their dissertation. I think publications are helpful across the board, certainly, but there are many students who get SSHRC without them, many fields in which pubs are far less common and it's obviously not the only measure of research potential.
-
Honestly, 50/50. I was the only person in my department to get forwarded to SSHRC so that has to say something positive. That being said, my proposal wasn't as airtight as it could have been and it was a little on the short side because I didn't want to bullshit the committee. So, some of my chapter descriptions are weak because it's so tentative rather than forcefully assertive about what I'm going to do. I also had zero pubs and conferences on my resume because my supervisor hates the idea of going to grad conferences and I hadn't yet gotten the CFPs accepted that I had submitted over the summer/fall. I do think my references were probably good and they were both written by highly respected professors who have a reputation for writing kick ass letters.
-
Dakon, you make a lot of sense.
-
^ So agreed. Knowing is better than not knowing, regardless of the results.
-
Ack, a twitter feed! How is this just coming to my attention? I just don't seem to be able to focus at all with these looming results. This is killing my average!
-
Let's think happy thoughts -- we're in the home-stretch and will probably be out of our misery by early May!
-
So, best case scenario we have another week of this. Great. But thanks for your sleuthing oxfordphil!
-
Don't be! I was a direct to SHHRC applicant 2 years ago and I got one with a pretty terrible plan of study (the deadline crept up very fast on me since I was out of school, so I rush-wrote it in one night), not stellar grades (last 2 yrs avg was something like 80.7) and probably decent references (I didn't know them super well but I did okay in their classes & they're both tenured/respected profs who would have told me to take a hike if they didn't want to write it) and I got one. Granted, I did have exceptional circumstances that affected my grades that maybe they considered but honestly, I think you guys all have really good chances.
-
Well his proposal was about Hegel & Romanticism so that seems good for you, assuming committees like Hegel! This might sound weird but I'd actually be bummed to get a Super SSHRC because I'd be a lunatic not to accept all that money but then my school won't let me TA and teaching is the one bright spot of my otherwise dreary academic life.
-
Applicants forwarded by schools have pretty close to 100% success. Direct-to-SSHRC applicants seems to be lower but there's no stats on the MA competition so it's hard to know. If you got forwarded by your school, you've got an excellent, excellent chance of getting one.
-
Just to warn you, MA results are always 2-3 results later than Doctoral ones. I always find this surprising since it seems that MA apps are much more likely to be rubber stamped than seriously adjudicated (bc they rely so heavily on your school's recommendation to forward you -- nearly everyone who gets forwarded to SSHRC by their school gets one). Fingers crossed for everyone -- remember, the waiting simply can't last forever!
-
^ If you're in Humanities, the lack of publications usually isn't a big deal at all. It takes years to get published and I've been told that it's not until year 3-4 that having forthcoming publications becomes important. I know two people who won Super SSHRCS last year with zero pubs (one of whom also had 0 conferences too) but since they were just finishing up their MA year and entering PhD1, no one was expecting them to have done much work in their fields yet. And, in my case, my supervisor feels strongly that I should only go to the major conferences (in my field there are two respective conferences a year that are important) and avoid colloquiums/grad conferences/anything else because it's unnecessary, you won't make valuable connections and you'll waste time that could be spent writing articles for future publication and/or writing my dissertation. So I have very little activity in my field because I have only recently started working on material worth showing off at conferences. Also, re: the other question about similarities between projects. My MA thesis was thematically related but I changed periods entirely. In terms of how similar the projects are, the only thing I've been told by multiple people is that you need to show growth (this is true even in terms of re-submitting SSHRC apps if you're unsuccessful) and ensure that they're not funding the same project twice so to speak. As in, if you got an MA SSHRC/OGS/other tri-council award for your MA thesis and your PhD thesis isn't much difference, what's the point in giving you more money to repeat the same research. So as long as you avoid that and make it clear that your new research is original, you'll be fine. Also, I just want to add to help counter our anxiety that there's really no magic formula to getting these awards. I got an MA SSHRC for the worst proposal/mediocre grades/probably not very good references for instance. By contrast, highly successful, smart, accomplished people miss out on these awards just as frequently as less deserving people do. I know it's so hard to believe this when we're all broke but getting these awards is genuinely not a test of any worthiness. Deciding between proposals is, ultimately, an arbitrary process couched in the guise of other "credentials" to distinguish between applicants. It's a crap shoot, but all you can do is improve your odds by writing strong proposals, knocking the socks off your references and being active in your field. And pray/hope. Lots and lots of praying/hoping.
-
This is precisely how I feel. The suspense is making it impossible to work even though I've resigned myself to not getting anything.
-
To be fair, the first email that said they would be "mailed next week at the end of April" could very well have been meant to mean this Friday -- in which case, the newest email that they'll be mailed at the beginning of next week would only be 2-3 days after the deadline proposed by that first email response. So the deadline's creeping a bit but it still seems like a good shot that they'll be mailed end of this week/early next.
-
Okay, on the bright side friends, this means that we will probably get the results by the end of next week. That's at least a pretty firm time-frame that we can plan around. Ugh, so anxious!
-
Yes, this! I'm dying for some updates on a timeframe.
