guttata

http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/waspy-renaissance-arlington-capital-view-hotel/

For the record, during last year's orientation we each had individual rooms (I forget which hotel we stayed in exactly, but I presume its the same one or nearby - Crystal City metro stop?). Due to the sheer number of people, everyone ended up with a different style room - some were in double doubles, some people had literal suites. Personally, I had a corner room (nice double window view) and king bed. Seems to me like it would be much more cost effective to *at least* double up, but who knows - they didn't!

Log in to Fastlane to see your panel reviews. They've been available for months at this point.

I think you are on the right track with your assessments: 1) Don't take on debt for your graduate degree. Don't do it. Don't. Especially not when, in non-regimented programs, MA/MS degrees are increasingly taking longer than 2 years to actually complete. 2) Time for a self-evaluation. Considering the state of academia/funding/job competition, what are your future job prospects in the field? If you're struggling to get into school and fund yourself now, what is going to change (or what are you going to do to change yourself) when you are competing for increasingly small pots of research funds against the people that already beat you for slots and funding at lower levels? There is nothing wrong with asking your professor, dept., or college if there are TAs available in other related depts (unlikely), other in-house fellowships, or the possibility of departing students opening up slots (even deferring to spring if there are fall graduations coming up). At the same time, since you are a minimal investment by the school at this point, there should be little resistance if you talk to someone about withdrawing your commitment in the light of not receiving funding.

Oh, good, you'll be fine then.

There is no universal process. Each school is awarded the grant as they would be a full panel NSF grant to a PI. That's part of the reason your adviser is the PI on your grant - grad students are not allowed to be PIs on full NSF grants. The procedure for your school, unless they have something specifically set up for DDRI/DDIGs, is the same as someone with a 500k grant.

Ask them for an extension, but be prepared for them to decline to offer one. Up to you whether or not to call them on the April 15th thing - the resolution is NOT binding and I'm not even so sure it's unethical to deviate, especially in instances where the funding offered is outside of the normal packages (e.g., I'm on an in-house fellowship that comes from a different source than other grad students in my dept, and I had a deadline of mid-March to accept while everyone else had April 15). While you ask them for an extension, ask all the other schools you are interested in 1) for an estimated timeline for an offer and 2) a ballpark amt for what you can expect their offer to be. Explain that a school that is not your first choice has presented an offer with an earlier deadline that may or may not force your hand, depending on what they can tell you. You should also remember to take anything they tell you with a grain of salt - since you're asking for early info it will be unofficial and not binding.

lol

In last year's thread no one received an email about contacting SATO (gov't flight booking agency) until ~March 19. I'm not expecting to hear anything until the middle of next week.

It's "wildfires" now. Forest fires are a good thing.

Got my official acceptance letter from Australian counterparts last night. Hopefully they start getting DC flights set up soon...

There are no announcements about upcoming announcements. First people to hear anything for a given country are the awardees. Next will be waitlisters, after 1st choices decline. Mid-March there will be an official email to rejections after all the spots have been filled for the April orientation. Finally, late April or early May panel and individual reviews will go up on FastLane. This was my experience during a rejection last year and acceptance this far this year.

Got my official offer to Australia about 10 min ago! Pretty ecstatic - see everyone in DC!

You do realize that you'll never be able to pay back that mortgage because by buying a $10-20k house in Detroit you're gonna get shot in the head?

Announcements are all put through at the same time (roughly, since it appears EAPSI has to mail them by hand rather than by batches like similar programs). If you didn't receive a notification for your country when others did (+/- a few hours), you didn't make the first cut. However, they do maintain a waitlist and move down if people cannot accept or do not respond to their acceptance. Especially with as many spots as Japan (65, if memory serves), there's a chance that they'll have to go to the waitlist for at least a few spots. It's not something to bank on, since no more than a few spots can be expected to open up, and fewer in the more popular countries like NZ and Australia, but it is possible. You're not officially out of the running until you've missed the orientation.