zhang22

Well, I'm officially out of the running and since I'm already 2nd year PhD this is my last time. Letter dated May 3rd, one reviewer, received by parents in Boston. My FON was E3. I never expected to win, but had a sliver of hope until now. Good luck to everyone else

Thanks everyone for posting so far. No rejection yet, but expecting one soon due to my status as current PhD. Please provide acceptance/rejection, date of letter or phone call, location in US, and FON.

I don't want to check my mail any more...

Tim is in my department, and I know him pretty well.

Yeah, the rejections come in large Manila envelopes, so if you get one in the mail from the EPA it is 100% bad news. People were calling it the "envelope of death" or something last year. Anyway, I might contact someone about it a bit later and report back. Might not do it for a bit though.

I applied for E3 because I'm working in subsurface remediation, but I kind of regret not choosing C2 since it's also relevant to my project. That's what I was worried about. I came into my current program with a Master's degree in hand, and had the feeling that I had a higher chance of being cut while going for a PhD. Got rejected last year, and despite writing what I feel was a much better proposal than last years, I won't be too shocked if the big envelope of doom arrives in my mailbox.

I got my receipt from receipt.application@epa.gov on December 20, and I submitted my application directly to the EPA on December 10.

The deadline was November 27, but if you have a valid reason for not submitting on time, you can do it from December 10-14. In my case, I kept a service ticket number from my phone call with grants.gov made before the deadline, and sent an e-mail with my application attached to the EPA STAR RFA mailbox a few minutes after the deadline. That e-mail address is located on the first page of the active PDF you need to open, by the way. If you made no attempt to submit on time, or made the attempt but didn't document it through sent e-mails or call logs, then you cannot submit late.

Did anyone else have incredible difficulty submitting to grants.gov? I thought I gave myself plenty of time (4 hours to simply submit) and it wasn't enough. Apparently you needed to fill out the PDF on a computer with Adobe 11, save the file, send it to another computer with Adobe 10, open the file, and then send it. I had to submit after December 10, but the EPA told me that a lot of people had the same issue as me and couldn't submit on time. Last year was a lot easier for me. By the way, for anyone in the same boat as me...you will not get a grants.gov ticket number if you submitted the application late. Normally the EPA will take the applications off of grants.gov, but if you submitted late then you must have done so through the RFA mailbox. In this case, the EPA already has your application and you will not receive a confirmation at all.

Ugh...I got the letter today...E3

Me too...going to the mailbox is the worst part of my day now. I think that if we can survive until Tuesday, then we're in the final cut. I'm not sure how many people are cut in the second round though.

I make $21,000 a year before taxes, though I get all my taxes back in April so I don't see a point in giving a "net". I live comfortably on this amount. I eat out every single day because I can't cook (learning to this summer), though I do have a 6 meal/wk plan at the dining hall to help with dinners. I have a car, but will not pay for repairs. It dies with me, and when it does I will not replace it with a new one. Rent is $375 a month including all utilities so I have big savings there. Every year I travel to China to see my girlfriend, which can get expensive with tickets that are about $1600. Besides that, I don't buy a lot of expensive things. I do buy some, like a $250 pair of sunglasses that came in the mail just today, but that's a rarity. No new clothes, DVDs, electronics, or other things that can add up cost. I find that I still save money.

Hey Marsh, here's what I think happened. Letters were dated 4/12 (Thursday) but probably weren't sent out till the following Monday. Makes sense if people on the East Coast got them yesterday. There are two cuts; one major cut and one final cut from what I've heard. If the letters were just sent out from the first cut, it's likely that there's discussion over the final cut going on right now. I'd expect the phone calls to start next week.

To all those who got rejection letters so far...I really feel for you and wish you luck next year if you apply. Can you tell me where you'e located though? The EPA office is in Washington D.C. Are you guys on the East Coast by any chance?

I'm going back home soon. I hope that I don't find a package but I'm not expecting good news either. Just takes one judge to give you a "very good" to count you out of the running. I'm also checking here too often. If I get the letter of doom today, I'll post an update.

Our odds seem to be around 5% then, with everything being equal. Better than I had thought, but a little scary still.

It would be great if there were only 1600 applicants, but I know that 2600 applied for NSDEG in 2010 (not sure how many this year). That one seems to be less general than the EPA STAR, so I'd expect even more applicants. Could be wrong there, but I know from the EPA website that they are only giving out 80 award from a total pool of $4.5 million.

I applied for E3: Surface water and Hydrogeology. I haven't heard anything yet. Notifications are supposed to come no later than May 1, and I'm guessing they'll start calling people alphabetically. This next part I'm unsure about, but I THOUGHT that 80 awards were given out and thousands applied. In my department alone, I know about 10-12 people applied. Edit: From the EPA website, "Estimated Number of Awards: Approximately 80 awards" I would imagine that we have somewhere between a 1-5% chance.