skiski

Some supervisors are cheaper than others

I think you are more likely to get a top up in situations where your supervisor was willing to hire you even without an NSERC PDF. In that case if you are saving them 40-50K they are more likely to give you 10-15K as a top up since they still come out, financially on top.

The top up will depend on your specific supervisor. If they have extra funds/want to give you extra funds they will, but many will not.

I believe you still need to finish by Sept.1, but you do not need to start your postdoc until then.

Certain of it. I have filled one out in the past.

It is because another applicant, likely his supervisor, wants to use him as an example of "students taught" on their application. It has nothing to do with the student's own application.

Neither does Facebook, but people still talk in any language they want on it.

I fully agree, my department may be wrong. I recommend anyone who is curious should contact their own department/university coordinator or NSERC directly. It would be nice if we could get a direct response from NSERC about how they are informing people.

I mistakenly thought that when they told me they were rejected that they had gotten their letters. They actually found out their status from their department coordinator.

yes i did, got my letter today.

I was talkin to people in department and they said that NSERC only sent letters to award winners. The reject letters will come next week (the guys i talked to didnt get reject letters just got told of reject from department). So if you are in ottawa/montreal/toronto and didnt get a letter today chances are almost certain you will get reject letter next week.

Don't necessarily compare yourself just on publication count. Other people may have more publications, but they could be in very low quality journals/conferences. The NSERC reviewers will take into account the quality not just the quantity.

I should add that in my field big name conferences are harder to get published in and much more prestigious than journals, so that is why i dont have any journal pubs

Computer science - machine learning. 11 conference publications is big name machine learning, data mining and artificial intelligence conferences.

Talked to 2 other uOttawa students - both say they got reject letters today - one for PDF one for PGS/CGS