wonderingwillow

In my department, if you win an external scholarship you usually lose your graduate award, which makes up half of the guaranteed funding, but you still get a TAship. My department seems to have a shortage of TAs. Contrary to the posts above, I think that if award holders were to turn down a TAship it would be frowned upon.

Well you can now indicate on your CV that you were awarded SSHRC. If you choose to decline then you would just indicate on your CV that you declined the award so regardless of what you decide you still have that SSHRC CV entry. I completely understand your point. Sometimes winning an external award does not end up providing any more finances than the guaranteed funding due to various restrictions and in your case the added expense of tuition. It's a shame that universities do this. We dedicate so much time and energy to the applications and agonize over the whole process and then if successful often times we end up not much better off than those who were not successful and are being funded internally. A few things to think about in addition to what has already been mentioned: 1. Would you indicate on your next SSHRC application that you were awarded SSHRC and declined. Or would you leave that off of the list of scholarships? I wonder how the adjudicating committee would respond to a declined SSHRC. It is more common for people to decline an award because there are restrictions that prevent them from accepting it. In your case, you have your eye on the bigger prize and the committee might not respond well to that (assuming that they even suspect that - they may not question the declined SSHRC). Your department and supervisor might not respond well to you declining the award. Departments like it when students win external awards because they can then reallocate what would have been their graduate award etc 2. Will you have a peer review pub, more conferences, stronger research proposal or stronger references by the fall application deadline that you think will tip you over the edge to a CGS? If your application is more or less the same there might not be much of a point in turning it down. Just a few things to think about. If you do have a good relationship with your supervisor, perhaps discuss this with them. Maybe your department can offer you some 'top ups'. Good luck and congratulations on being awarded SSHRC!

I did not yet receive a letter. I'm in Kingston. I thought for sure if applicants in Toronto and Montreal received letters that those in Kingston would too. Perhaps some letters were sent out on Thursday of last week and another batch sent out on Friday. That could maybe explain the 'delay' for some of us. The competition seems tougher this year. It seems that fewer scholarships were awarded and higher scores are needed.