NDSEG 2019-2020

[fishandfreckles]

whyy do they torment us so

[ScienceGeek]

aw, just when i thought my dwindling hopes couldn't get lower lol

[BCHGang]

Just now, whatdothedatesmean said:

Is it possible they still did something on the backend??

My application update date is still the same

[GIIC]

I’m pretty sure we are the latest fellowship year in history lol. Last year was early April?...year before like March. Awful times.

Edited April 6, 2020 by GIIC

[BCHGang]

Dumb question: how would you all react if there was an NDSEG reviewer/sysplus admin participating on this thread?

Edited April 6, 2020 by BCHGang

[cri3times]

3 minutes ago, GIIC said:

I’m pretty sure we are the latest fellowship year in history lol. Last year was early April?...year before like March. Awful times.

Pray its not like 2011 or 2018.. I looked at the previous years recently in my anxiety.. FWIW I called sys-plus and the project manager said he was highly confident it would be this Friday, but at the latest before the 15th.

Year	Date Released
2019	29-Mar	Friday
2018	13-Apr	Friday
2017	11-Apr	Tuesday
2016	1-Apr	Friday
2015	1-Apr	Wednesday
2014	10-Apr	Thursday
2013	3-Apr	Wednesday
2012	13-Apr	Friday
2011	16-Apr	Satruday
2010	12-Apr	Monday

Edited April 6, 2020 by cri3times

[shazad]

and the award for Most Neurotic GradCafe Thread of the Year goes to

[GIIC]

Welp, anyone watched Tiger King? 

[whyndsegwhy]

3 minutes ago, cri3times said:

Pray its not like 2011 or 2018.. I looked at the previous years recently in my anxiety.. FWIW I called sys-plus and the project manager said he was highly confident it would be this Friday, but at the latest before the 15th.

Alright then, I will try to just breath until Friday. Thanks for reaching out! And if it isn't Friday, well RIP the sanity of this forum, including myself. 

[BCHGang]

Just now, whyndsegwhy said:

Alright then, I will try to just breath until Friday. Thanks for reaching out! And if it isn't Friday, well RIP the sanity of this forum, including myself. 

If that's the case, then I'm outta here

[fishandfreckles]

6 minutes ago, cri3times said:

Pray its not like 2011 or 2018.. I looked at the previous years recently in my anxiety.. FWIW I called sys-plus and the project manager said he was highly confident it would be this Friday, but at the latest before the 15th.

Year	Date Released
2019	29-Mar	Friday
2018	13-Apr	Friday
2017	11-Apr	Tuesday
2016	1-Apr	Friday
2015	1-Apr	Wednesday
2014	10-Apr	Thursday
2013	3-Apr	Wednesday
2012	13-Apr	Friday
2011	16-Apr	Satruday
2010	12-Apr	Monday

 did she say by friday or on friday? lol I suppose I have no choice either way..

[hopefulstudent1997]

I had a 4/3 update, but no 4/6 update (I think I'm the first one on this thread with this?) Hope this doesn't mean I'm out... This is so intense. It better not take till Friday.

[PopSoc]

Just now, hopefulstudent1997 said:

I had a 4/3 update, but no 4/6 update (I think I'm the first one on this thread with this?) Hope this doesn't mean I'm out... This is so intense. It better not take till Friday.

I had the same

[cri3times]

4 minutes ago, fishandfreckles said:

 did she say by friday or on friday? lol I suppose I have no choice either way..

He made it sound like on Friday. But he also said it could be earlier. Could be later. He said it depends on when they're notified or something. Given the previous post which said that all of the decisions were already made (which makes sense), it doesn't make sense to me why they don't know the exact date.

Btw, he mentioned that they have received several hundred calls over the past few days. I mentioned the application dates, but he didn't give me any info (also remember @Physicsisphysicsasked before and they said they were meaningless). 

[OhTheStress]

16 minutes ago, shazad said:

and the award for Most Neurotic GradCafe Thread of the Year goes to

We're all insane

[fishandfreckles]

6 minutes ago, cri3times said:

He made it sound like on Friday. But he also said it could be earlier. Could be later. He said it depends on when they're notified or something. Given the previous post which said that all of the decisions were already made (which makes sense), it doesn't make sense to me why they don't know the exact date.

Btw, he mentioned that they have received several hundred calls over the past few days. I mentioned the application dates, but he didn't give me any info (also remember @Physicsisphysicsasked before and they said they were meaningless). 

wow they aren't very helpful lol. appreciate you asking though!

[samplingbias]

36 minutes ago, GIIC said:

Welp, anyone watched Tiger King? 

Just finished. Would recommend. XD

[NDSEG_throwaway]

Just now, samplingbias said:

Just finished. Would recommend. XD

Carole fuckin' Baskin

[BCHGang]

1 hour ago, cri3times said:

Btw, he mentioned that they have received several hundred calls over the past few days. I mentioned the application dates, but he didn't give me any info (also remember @Physicsisphysicsasked before and they said they were meaningless). 

Doesn't this reinforce the claim that the woman said it just to make people feel better?

[zamboni_driver]

I just want to point out that most people on this thread (except me) claim themselves to be strong applicants who would be "disappointed if they didn't make it past initial screening." If we all think of ourselves to be so competitive, perhaps we are not as competitive as we think.

[BCHGang]

3 minutes ago, zamboni_driver said:

I just want to point out that most people on this thread (except me) claim themselves to be strong applicants who would be "disappointed if they didn't make it past initial screening." If we all think of ourselves to be so competitive, perhaps we are not as competitive as we think.

Sure. I get this. But there was a guy who had *20 publications*. And there were people with near perfect gpas and GRE scores. If the first  round is a result of looking at primarily GRE and GPA, and those kinds of candidates didn't make it past the first round, then WHO did??

[3st3rb]

3 minutes ago, BCHGang said:

Sure. I get this. But there was a guy who had *20 publications*. And there were people with near perfect gpas and GRE scores. If the first  round is a result of looking at primarily GRE and GPA, and those kinds of candidates didn't make it past the first round, then WHO did??

I think the first round is by the subject matter experts so don't think it's just GRE/GPA based. 

[robertac93]

1 hour ago, BCHGang said:

Sure. I get this. But there was a guy who had *20 publications*. And there were people with near perfect gpas and GRE scores. If the first  round is a result of looking at primarily GRE and GPA, and those kinds of candidates didn't make it past the first round, then WHO did??

I think this is one of the primary flaws with academia in general. I'm in no way passing judgement on the guy with 20 publications, but publication count =/= quality applicant. One or two really strong publications that actually advance the state of the art can be better than a bunch of minor publications that don't do anything.

From my understanding, there is an initial screening to separate the wheat from the chaff (people with very poor GPAs / GRE scores), this was likely done by a computer with limited human interaction. Those that passed this initial screening went to the subject matter experts, who evaluated the strength and relevancy of the proposal. Having a large (or small) number of publications to ones name in no way guarantees they wrote a strong (or weak) proposal.

W.r.t. to the various dates, I really don't think it means anything. I highly doubt they're trying to play mind tricks by lying to people about that. When I worked in industry I did campus recruiting for several years, and our recruiting system would play funny games all the time. I'd upload an interview record form, and when I'd go to check the next day, it wouldn't be there, so the application had no update. We already know SysPlus has some buggy systems, given the recommendation issues that arose. If they say the dates mean nothing, they probably mean nothing.

Lastly, recognize that there is a significant crisis going on right now. I have no doubt that things are slightly delayed as everyone reacts to this pandemic. Yes, I'm just as stressed as everyone, but agonizing over things won't do any good. They're doing the best they can to get back to everyone as soon as possible.

[8008jsmith]

11 hours ago, zamboni_driver said:

I just want to point out that most people on this thread (except me) claim themselves to be strong applicants who would be "disappointed if they didn't make it past initial screening." If we all think of ourselves to be so competitive, perhaps we are not as competitive as we think.

This might be true but my thinking is that those who were actually serious about the application would seek out forums and post about the program. The amount of people posting is probably less than 10% of the number of applicants (based on previous years). Thus it makes sense that those who thought their application was competitive would be confused as to why it would not make it past preliminary rounds. After reading about 20 publications and such, I probably wasn't as competitive as I thought in that category though. Lol. 

Edited April 7, 2020 by 8008jsmith

[NDSEG_throwaway]

13 hours ago, zamboni_driver said:

I just want to point out that most people on this thread (except me) claim themselves to be strong applicants who would be "disappointed if they didn't make it past initial screening." If we all think of ourselves to be so competitive, perhaps we are not as competitive as we think.

 

It's a response bias. People who are smart, have good stats, and care about their application likely put more effort into their app so their app is then more competitive. Those same people are likely to find themselves in places like grad cafe shootin the bull and hypothesizing about sysplus updates; so I would surmise that we are not reprepsentative of the entire population.