cyclopeaneye

This may be, but to be fair, last year there were a number of periods of "scheduled maintenance" during which they DID NOT send out announcements as well. However, last year we never had as much assurance as we have this year that awards will be announced some time this week, so its hard to make any real estimations. I'm just saying, it is not a sure thing that awards will be announced tonight.

If anyone knew where to get a copy of that PDF, I'd like to see it!

Last year, the NSF folks sent out their decisions late at night on Friday April 9th - the email I got was sent at about 1:30am. The date doesn't mean anything, but perhaps the time of the email does. Those who have been paying attention may have noticed that the NSF site tends to go down for 15-20 minutes every night at around 1 or 2am. My guess is that they load up all the responses throughout the day, and then the announcements are all sent out at the same time when the server resets in the middle of the night. That is to say, you can sit there and keep refreshing your inbox all you like, but if last year is any indication I'm guessing that we will all receive our notifications from the NSF the first thing in the morning sometime this week.

Hurray! I was just having some fun. I do appreciate the informative updates for other folks. Personally, I'm just here to leech up info and make smartass comments.

Protip: The "smarmy self-entitled prick" thing is a reference to an absurd exchange that occurred on this thread a couple days ago. Nobody thinks you are a self-entitled prick. You might be smarmy, but thats only becuase I'm not entirely clear on what that word means.

Wow, I can't believe that you don't have perfect recall of this entire 1300+ post thread. You remember things like a smarmy, self-entitled prick.

Wow, I can't believe you would criticize someone's phone ettiqutte like that. You type like a smarmy, self-entitled prick.

Seriously, guys. I know that sarcasm doesn't always come through in text so well, but its the 90's man! You gotta start looking out for this stuff! It goes down every night at around 4am (somebody had a Python script monitoring the page for changes who verified this). It also went down Sunday for scheduled maintenence which wound up doing nothing for us. If you read the posts over the past few days, there are LOADS of time people have posted "ZOMG! Fastlane is down! Results are going up?!" Forgive my dickly response, but its all getting a bit old.

There it is! Definitive Proof of the intended time of announcement! We all know that Fastlane has not gone down ONCE in the past few weeks, so obviously this downtime must mean they are posting results. Whew! It feels good to know that.

Conveying information gleaned from potentially reputable sources with adequate disclaimers as to its unreliability?! You Bastard!

Angry Mob Time! Get 'im! That'll learn him to share potentially useful information! :evil: edit: feel free to swap pronouns as necessary. This is an equal opportunity scape goating

Seems that window has passed... Perhaps, based on nothing at all, results will be posted within the next hour? Sure, why not?

You and I may be working for different causes.... :wink:

Waiting is for chumps! Bum Rush on the Call Center! Call and Coerce! Use your sexuality! Seduce as necessary!

You know that feeling when you have a date with a girl (or guy), and you really excited about it and you look forward to it all week, but then when the time comes and you are standing outside their door about to ring the bell, all you want to do is run away screaming? That's how I feel right now. Assuming this information is accurate: Good luck everyone!

Methinks ye neglect the quarterstaff.

Read this comic: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1472 Be sure to hover your mouse over the red dot in the lower right. Laugh. (Repeat as necessary)

Well, I suppose that means if I get this award I'll have to stop picking up shifts at the restaurant I worked at in college whenever I go back to visit my family. Oh well, I think that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. Sounds about right. They probably could have gotten it for less if they'd been willing to haggle. I'm currently renting out my pineal gland to Cartesian dualists for 15$/hr.

Point taken, I just wanted to make sure we were clear on what the study implies. Dude... That's pretty weak. I'm sure it works out for you, but it seems pretty unfortunate that you are forced to pass up neat-o opportunities (i.e. Google internships) in order to comply with the terms of your fellowship. The pay docking for conference awards also seems pretty absurd as well. What sort of fellowship is that? Also, nice use of nested parentheticals!

You make it sound as though the GRFP somehow increased the odds that people would complete their program. It seems more likely that it just so happens that the folks that get a NSF-GRF also happen to be the well motivated types who are more likely to complete their PhD program. Correlation != Causation. Although I'm sure you could pretty easily tell a story about how decreasing funding woes and TA/RA workload might have improved their chances of completing, I'm more inclined to think that NSF awardees are just more motivated than non-awardees (not that there is anything wrong with non-awardees of course!).

Which, at this rate, will be right around the same time that they announce the winners for this year.

Its that big, drafty place with intermittent lighting issues where there is nowhere to plug in your laptop.

And here is the 1000th post! I'm going to go outside for a bit....

I feel ya there. When I applied to grad school, I sent out applications to a dozen or so schools, so my anticipation of my impending rejections was drawn out over the course of several weeks. When I apply for Real Person jobs, I also tend to take a shotgun approach and apply to large batches of places all at once. This fellowship is the first time in a LONG time that I've applied to only one important thing and I think that sitting here waiting for it is all that much more awful. However, that said, I am currently getting funded in the program I am in, so the NSF fellowship actually wouldn't change my short term plans all that much. My heart goes out to those poor saps on this thread for whom the NSF fellowship will actually play a causal role in the course of their next few years!