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.

This happens every year. The host country is a partner so they must officially accept you as well, but a tentative offer from NSF is essentially a full acceptance. I don't think there are any instances of a tentative offer being rejected b a host country. Also, this is not significantly earlier than last year. Japan was announced on January 31. Each country is announced a a different point throughout the month, it seems both because of host country details and to space out the workload for NSFs EAPSI staff. For example, Japan was Jan 31, Australia was Feb 14, and Taiwan was nearly into March, at like Feb 27.

I've never had a grant where I've totally excluded references. If no mention is made, I usually take it as an excuse to cite (within the state page limits) and then list citations in excess of the page limit. For example: on a proposal with a 3 page limit, I might have 3 pages of text, in-text citations inclusive, followed by 2 pages of citations. Your second part might be more field-dependent. In ecology, I know some people who have done an entire dissertation on $5000 or less - these would not be "small grants," which I would consider something in the neighborhood of $500-$2500. If 5k is only going to fund one (or part of one) project, I would focus on the specifics of what it will be used for rather than outlining your entire dissertation.

WHAT ARE YOU ASKING?

Just got an email on the Ecolog listserv looking for reviewers for EAPSI proposals.

Why should this matter? Student stipends and tuition waivers are not permissible for DDIG budgets.

Are... Are you a grad student?

Seriously?

There are no set guidelines so long as you use a standard format that includes pertinent information ( Authors, Date, Journal, access info). Consider, however, how GOD DAMNED ANNOYING it is to have to search through a citation list for every bit of info. Presumably, the reviewers are at least moderately familiar with the major works or researchers in a field, and thus would recognize major citations or at least a given author's research area.

There are so many variants on the masters degree that that's a worthless stat (and also, likely wrong). My dept offers a thesis and non-thesis masters, neither of which is part of a continuous program. All thesis-based students (the majority) are fully funded with stipend and waiver, while non-thesis students receive nothing.

Well, now you have.