MrGradStudent

I didn't get an award, but my ratings weren't that bad. At least the comments were generally very positive, so there's really not much I can go on to address weaknesses for improvement next time. So...

Hello. If there is someone here who won the award this year but didn't win it last year (preferably no HM either) and is willing to give me some advice, that would be much appreciated. I got a flat rejection so I'm looking for some good advice on how to improve my application from rejection to winner! Please private message me. I'm interested in seeing what you did with your life (both in terms of research and otherwise) to make yourself a better candidate. Thanks!

It will not be clear in the morning. but from the looks of it, they will go several more batches and upgrade some current HMs into awardees. I'd be surprised if they don't have huge numbers in those upgrade batches. I would say you have a 75% chance of getting money if you haven't be notified. The other 25% gets HM.

Means you at least got HM!! Unless of course if my previous theory about a complete system malfunction occuring which accidentally rejected all awardees and accepted all rejectees is true...

Well the stimulus money is there. The best thing to do is probably to lower the award money by 5-10k for the secondary batches and just give all the HM's some money and eliminate the moneyless HM's this year, since a moneyless HM isn't really that great...

Now that I think of it, it kind of makes sense. All those who have not heard definitely have HM, but the stimnulus is going to boost some HM's into fellowships, but they are not going to give rejected people HM's. So my guess is that there will be much fewer HM's this year. That's the logical rationale. That being said, they should've notified the rejected people much earlier than this...

that's only the first batch. There's probably 3-4 more batches coming, which means 30-40 more!

The real question is: is it possible to be social about science and to be scientific about society? What if society was actually based on a purely nonscientific system? then how can you find scientific values in it? Also, what if science was based on purely non-social constructs? Then how can you be social about it? These are the things we should be thinking about.

PhD will be in Engineering Sciences: Hand Lotion Fabrication and Manufacturing

My guess is that you get the award through the second batch of funding. While people who actually got rejected will receive another email telling them they got HM, while the people who were actually rejected were actually people who got the award through the first batch. So there's still hope!

at least some one has a sense of humor.

i'd rather do hedgehog funds.

Is it a wise idea to drop out of grad school if we did not receive this fellowship? Maybe this will increase the demand for graduate students and the nsf will fund more to less thus increasing the chances next time?

What i was originally hoping for was that everyone who didn't get the award now will get the rejection letter so that there is still hope for all of us, but clearly this is not the case. this only means that we must all move on to better things. Perhaps without the constraint of this fellowship, we can all free ourselves and become even better researchers than ever? The possibilities!

With the extra stimulus money, maybe they will actually fund EVERYONE who applied, but simply differentiate between actual winners. right?