kurtz105

If anyone cares, NSERC released the competition statistics today. Surprisingly, PGS/CGS-D's are up by about 8% and PDF's by 12% compared to last year. Still pretty low compared to historic levels, but at least the trend of sharp cuts has stopped, for now. http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/government-canada-supports-scientific-discovery-thousands-researchers-students-1793261.htm

Sorry to hear that. I was hoping this year's thread would end on map1's happy note. And yeah, IRDF is pretty cold comfort.

Well that's an achievement at least! What committee/field is that for?

Yes, fairly often. I even had a friend who got a PDF last year after being on the wait list.

Oh oops, I was wrong or they changed the policy since I last checked a few years ago. You CAN get top ups from your supervisor's NSERC grant: http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Students-Etudiants/Guides-Guides/PGSCGSRegs-ESESCRegs_eng.asp#other

My friend in Vancouver did get his (for PDF).

Just note that supervisors are not allowed to top up NSERC award holders using their NSERC Discovery Grants. If his/her money is from elsewhere though, then damn that's great...just be prepared to take a big pay cut for your postdoc!

I didn't look at the latest info, but I think one can get some extra money ($5000?) by holding a PDF in the UK. On the other hand, cost of living there is so much higher than here.

No clue, but the main reason for the decline in PDFs and PGSs is that they have been funneling money from those programs into CREATE, which I guess will only continue this year unless they have decided to get the CREATE money from elsewhere. If there are more than 100 PDFs this year, I'll be surprised. My 100% pure guess is that there will be 80 PDFs this year...

Wow... I hesitate to post this because it's only anecdotal evidence, but Andrew Granville's comment at the bottom of this article says that someone at U de M with a perfect GPA was rejected by NSERC this year. (They might have had a crummy proposal of course, but what are the chances someone with a perfect GPA wouldn't put a decent amount of effort into their proposal?) I hope it's not as rough a year as that might seem to indicate. Good luck to everyone!

The PDF budget USED to be in that ballpark. It's about half that now, at best. I saw that while NSERC got a 15 million increase, 12 million of that is earmarked for the Colleges and Community Innovation Program, whatever that is.

I guess there must be an upper bound, but I believe that right now anyone who can actually find an industry partner and has a reasonable project will get one.

I am guessing that the first round of waitlist letters went out, since at least one person got one in early May, and I think I read above somewhere that one's response to a successful PDF had to be in by the end of April. But maybe there will be a second round of waitlist offers...although the chances of that are pretty slim I think. I don't think anyone is really reading this anymore, but to those who are still doing their PhD programs. If you're concerned about the PDF numbers this year (there's no reason to think they'll go back up and it'll affect you sooner than you think!), you should really write or talk to, and get your fellow students to write or cosign, letters to your department chair, someone higher up in your uni, or even the local MP. Nobody except us really cares about this, so it's up to the grad student community to change it.

Congrats wait28! I'm on a different waiting list, but I haven't bothered getting my ranking. I know nobody is happy about the overall results, but people should be actually angry I think.

Wait28 If you look at the list linked to above, only 9 computer science PDF's were given...so I guess if a single person turns it down, you'll get the award (!). Has anyone on any waiting list received a letter yet? By the way, am I the only one really angry at the total PDF numbers this year?