snowcapk

Someone else on the board got an award for biophysics, which falls under life sciences. (Congrats dude!)

Developmental Biology, haven't heard. But I did just get an NDSEG...so bite me, NSF!

E-mails are out! I won! Thank you Jesus!

Haha, thanks cogdiss. My last name starts with a W, so maybe...yeah right though.

OMG, Congratulations camping! I only hope that they haven't put my letter up yet :roll: EDIT: BTW, what letter does your last name start with?

I just read this. But when I log in to fastlane, I see nothing. Do you think this person is full of it, or did I just not win?

Seeing as "award notifications will be made by the beginning of April," and April begins Tuesday, I thought we should start a thread. Apparently there are several rounds of notifications and rejections get sent out fairly late. I was hoping someone would post as soon as they (or their friends) are offered NDSEG fellowships, so that the rest of us will know when we're out of the running. Thanks! :roll:

Sorry to hear you guys have actual work to do, I feel like an asshole for complaining. Still, it's going to be soooo sad when I realize I've put all this time into preparing my app and checking my e-mail, only to be rejected. I will not even have a youtube video of thunderbelly "eating his/her words," so to speak, to comfort me in those trying times. Maybe I will just lie to all of you :wink:

I agree with this. It's one thing to not be able to study for an exam, and demonstrate no understanding of the new material. It's another thing to write something that utterly proves you did not retain the material from prerequisite courses and have no clue what you're doing. I doubt this was the case for anese, but I think we can all imagine an exam performance so bad that it abrogates a strong academic record.

Well, what I would do is ask director of graduate studies (DGS) in that department. He/she probably set the regulation that you need a prof from your undergrad major, so that's who you should ask for an exception. My advice is to ask whether you can submit a fourth recommendation from a SS prof, instead of asking whether you can skip the EE prof rec letter. That way it doesn't look like you're trying to hide something :wink: Bonus: if one of the four profs forgets to send his letter, your application won't get thrown in the garbage.

Twip, did you visit their website? The admitted class profile is here - your GPA and scores are near the mean, so you should be okay there. The fact that your undergrad major is EE is not a problem as long as you also took courses in economics, statistics, and political science. I assume you must have taken some of those courses, or else how would you know you want to study public policy? But if not, enroll at a local college and take them in the evenings or on weekends. (Unfortunately, having "a brain that works somewhat" will not make you competitive, even if all of your recommenders attest that you are a fast learner with critical thinking skills.) At any rate, it would be preferable to have recommendations from professors in the social sciences. An EE professor would have nothing intelligent to say about your chances of success in a public policy program. If that means you need to take some more courses and make some contacts, then get on that right away.

My guess is that they need to confirm with all of the previous recipients whether they plan on using NSF funding during the 2008-9 school year. I doubt NSF puts $120,000 away in a vault for each fellow - they probably have to allocate $40,000 per fellow on a year-by-year basis. NSF fellows defer for other fellowships (like the NDSEG), or take time off, or whatever - people think up some creative ways to spend three years' worth of money over a five year period - but NSF needs an exact count of fellows who want $40,000 for the 2008-9 school year, because there is no waitlist. Meanwhile, Retard von Already-awarded-an-NSF-and-ruining-everyone-else's-spring-break-ington is on a Watson Fellowship in Namibia and can't be reached by phone or e-mail, so the GRFP Operations Office has to sit on its hands and wait for his reply.

Definitely not. I know people who won the NSF but were never accepted (even after receiving the NSF) to the program they named in their proposal.

x2. Well thunderbelly, it looks as if I will not be watching you swallow your award notification. But that's okay, because I am now able to picture it in my head quite well, thanks to all of the details.

thunderbelly - laser or inkjet? If it spans two pages, will you be printing double-sided?

Retarded freshmen...started a flame war while I am waiting for an important e-mail... I have to go gnaw some heads off. Page me if the results come out.

I called this number: 866-NSF-GRFP. After about two minutes of hold music, I got an answering machine that gave me the message. I guess they are screening their calls - wonder why. God damn it, it's 7pm EST.

Tried calling the GRF Operations Center (spiffy name!) just now. The answering machine message says that applicants will be notified in late March, no mention of early April. Just think...ten minutes from now, maybe we will all know. :roll: EDIT: Thunderbird seems to be misfunctioning...expected the e-mail from NSF by now...

Hope...waning...

FAIL

Probably true, but the more I think about it...it says the results won't be posted until late March, and I don't care when (if) they post my name as long as they just e-mail me the result. Today. Leaving no stone unturned, I'm also trying to access my rating sheets (nsfgradfellows.org). Maybe they will flub up and make those available early. Does anyone who applied last year know whether I should use my Fastlane username or applicant ID, or is the rating sheet page login assigned randomly?

Yeah, that would be great if we didn't have to reapply...here's hoping! I noticed that the NSF GRFP homepage was updated this afternoon with the following announcement: Weak.

Hi Jack, Don't worry about geographical distribution too much. Top candidates (Top 7%-ish according to my fellowship office) win without any consideration of geographic origin. Location only matters for the borderline cases. I read in last week's Science that there are only ~825 new GRFs this year, down from 940 last year. (Maybe the number of applicants went down.) However next year they might get enough funding to almost double new GRF awards. I plan on reapplying :wink:

We must be pretty close to the award date now...last year, the results were on Fastlane by March 23rd; in 2004, by March 18th; in 2002, by March 15th; in 2001, by March 20th. One of those dates was a Tuesday. Is it wrong to hope that we'll hear soon?

Have you applied for outside funding? The dept. may be on the fence until they learn whether you'll be bringing a fellowship with you. There's always room for an NSF/NDSEG/Hertz winner, even if you weren't interviewed per se. I'm not very social, but I have known two (2) people who won the NSF and were then admitted to schools where they'd been implicitly rejected. (NSF awards are announced at the end of March.) One of those winners even bargained his way into a school that had already sent a rejection letter. My guess is that schools are sick of missing out on this money and on the good students that their admission committees missed.