NSF GRFP 2020-2021

[operationivyleague]

E/E, E/E, E/E Honorable Mention. Psychology (Cognitive Neuroscience). Also guess my application wasn't excellent enough ?

[Modulus]

Anyone else get four reviews? VG/E, VG/G, VG/VG, G/G

Well, that's disappointing.

[EggplantFondue]

offered but with pretty shit reviews: E/E G/G E/VG

how does this decision process even work? I heard somewhere that there are favored areas each year and that this year's was AI. How much does that matter? sorry, just curious about these really huge spreads of review scores 

[caffeinated_lurker]

VG/VG, E/E, F/G... What a range for me. Obviously nothing offered. Congrats to everyone who got HM/Offers

Edited March 23, 2021 by caffeinated_lurker
typo

[Catskillfm]

9 hours ago, candyorange said:

that's crazy! what field did you apply under? 

Geoscience. The reviews themselves don’t give any criticism so I’m not sure how to improve for next time ?‍♀️

[lkaitlyn]

To @EggplantFondue: An NSF reviewer from a few years back who did an AMA said that NSF reviewers give number ratings we can't see, so the whole G/VG thing doesn't tell you much about what they actually said. On top of that, they use z-scores to standardize between reviewers, so that's how some people with several VGs and Gs get it while others with all Es don't — if you happened to get easy reviewers, your Es didn't mean as much, and conversely, if you got hard reviewers, positive reviews from them meant more. Not sure if they're still doing it this way but hopefully that helps explain a little? (TL;DR: This is a subjective mess.)

[dobzhansky]

I would've had no idea that results were released today had someone not texted me. Email went to the "promotions" folder in my inbox (gmail); didn't even know that folder contained separate emails. E/E, E/E, VG/VG, awarded.

[burner]

Hey everyone, so I'm in that weird position where I've received the NSF GRFP but I've gotten rejected from all 9 schools I applied to. What do I do now? I'm happy from the good news this morning, but feeling like it doesn't really matter... My research area is neuro + machine learning btw and I'm graduating from an Ivy league school (pretty avg GPA). 

[PsychStudent1]

1 hour ago, burner said:

Hey everyone, so I'm in that weird position where I've received the NSF GRFP but I've gotten rejected from all 9 schools I applied to. What do I do now? I'm happy from the good news this morning, but feeling like it doesn't really matter... My research area is neuro + machine learning btw and I'm graduating from an Ivy league school (pretty avg GPA). 

I think that you could reach out to schools you were rejected from, and let them know you received the NSF and could thus bring your own funding for the first three years! I have heard of cases where a previously rejected student was accepted after receiving an NSF!

[Modulus]

Hey folks, if anyone has any ideas of what someone who is not eligible to reapply for GRFP should be looking at next vis-a-vis other fellowships/grants before trying for an F31 in a few years, please let me know.

Clinical Psychology - Personality and Individual Differences research focus.

[emglass]

VG/E, E/E, E/VG: Awarded (Biomedical Engineering)

Applying out of undergrad, degree in Computational and Applied Math and Statistics from liberal arts college, average/good GPA, close to 5 years of research in various research labs at various institutions (including one REU and another paid research experience), one first author paper published, one first author paper in preparation.

Edited March 24, 2021 by emglass

[kittensneezesforever]

E/VG VG/E E/E Awarded (Chemistry of Life Processes)

I am currently doing postbac research and graduated college in Dec 2018. Small liberal arts college. 2 years research in undergrad with two papers (one first author, one second author) and a first author paper in preparation from my current job when I submitted.

[EnGarde]

On 3/23/2021 at 9:40 PM, burner said:

Hey everyone, so I'm in that weird position where I've received the NSF GRFP but I've gotten rejected from all 9 schools I applied to. What do I do now? I'm happy from the good news this morning, but feeling like it doesn't really matter... My research area is neuro + machine learning btw and I'm graduating from an Ivy league school (pretty avg GPA). 

I agree about reaching out to programs you applied to with the news about your award.  If you receive a reply that it's too late for their Ph.D. admissions, and since the award cannot be deferred, ask them whether you could begin within their MS program and then roll over into their Ph.D. program.  You can also look around for a relevant MS program (anywhere), explain your dilemma, and ask for a timely reply.  This worked for an ugrad from my institution who was switching fields for grad school (from physics into computational neuroscience) and was over-ambitious in applying to only the 3 top grad programs in the country in his new field; he hung out in a master's program in computer science for a year or two and then successfully transferred his award to a Ph.D. program.  Good luck.

[burner]

9 minutes ago, EnGarde said:

I agree about reaching out to programs you applied to with the news about your award.  If you receive a reply that it's too late for their Ph.D. admissions, and since the award cannot be deferred, ask them whether you could begin within their MS program and then roll over into their Ph.D. program.  You can also look around for a relevant MS program (anywhere), explain your dilemma, and ask for a timely reply.  This worked for an ugrad from my institution who was switching fields for grad school (from physics into computational neuroscience) and was over-ambitious in applying to only the 3 top grad programs in the country in his new field; he hung out in a master's program in computer science for a year or two and then successfully transferred his award to a Ph.D. program.  Good luck.

Thank you for your guidance @EnGarde! If you don't mind me asking, what MS program did the ugrad end up going to? Just want to assess at which tier of CS schools this sort of fellowship has sway on admissions. 

[EnGarde]

3 minutes ago, burner said:

Thank you for your guidance @EnGarde! If you don't mind me asking, what MS program did the ugrad end up going to? Just want to assess at which tier of CS schools this sort of fellowship has sway on admissions. 

I don't want to reveal identifying information, apart from that the CS program was at an R1 institution.  Virtually all good CS master's programs are self-funded, and many have deadlines later than PhD deadlines, so this should work if you can't get an invitation from a Ph.D. program  Choosing a master's program that's conveniently located for you (in case of in-person classes/research opportunities) or even better, in one of the same institutions one of your aspirational Ph.D. programs, may be most strategic.  

But you need to act quickly (and perhaps in parallel), especially if you're asking for an exception in their application procedure (fortunately this year's early GRFP announcement helps you do this).  As a backup, reach out to your own institution to see if there's a master's program locally that you can enroll in.  

Note that you must be able to deploy your GRFP award within the field of study you applied to; however the program you join does not need to have the same name, as long as your first-year GRFP-sponsored research remains in original field (hence his ability to join a computational MS program with an award in neuroscience).

[burner]

1 hour ago, EnGarde said:

I don't want to reveal identifying information, apart from that the CS program was at an R1 institution.  Virtually all good CS master's programs are self-funded, and many have deadlines later than PhD deadlines, so this should work if you can't get an invitation from a Ph.D. program  Choosing a master's program that's conveniently located for you (in case of in-person classes/research opportunities) or even better, in one of the same institutions one of your aspirational Ph.D. programs, may be most strategic.  

But you need to act quickly (and perhaps in parallel), especially if you're asking for an exception in their application procedure (fortunately this year's early GRFP announcement helps you do this).  As a backup, reach out to your own institution to see if there's a master's program locally that you can enroll in.  

Note that you must be able to deploy your GRFP award within the field of study you applied to; however the program you join does not need to have the same name, as long as your first-year GRFP-sponsored research remains in original field (hence his ability to join a computational MS program with an award in neuroscience).

Hey @EnGarde thanks for the quick reply! Just to get a better idea of the specific level of schools (because it seems like there are pretty strict divides in CS, and if you're rejected from Stanford they don't really care for changing admissions decisions even if you have an award for example) without revealing identifying info., could you list the school along with peers in the same level in CS? E.g. was it Stanford/MIT/CMU or UW/UCSD/UCLA, etc. 

Also, in regards to your last point about needing to deploy the award in the field of study you applied to: so I applied to computationally intensive research within the Psych. discipline (I felt it most fit what I was looking for). I'm assuming enrolling in a CS program (as opposed to a Psych or Neuro program) would be fine—but do you think they may be a little stricter than that?

[Anoda022]

Awarded! I can't freaking believe it!!!! 

[lkaitlyn]

28 minutes ago, Anoda022 said:

Awarded! I can't freaking believe it!!!! 

Congrats!

[ohboyherewegoagain]

Very surprised to see E/E, E/E, E/E -- awarded.

 

To anyone wondering about the process, one of the profs at my school served as a reviewer two years ago. They said that the ratings help separate all the applicants into piles, but afterwards the reviewers will conjoin and speak about the applications at length, deciding who to award and who not to, so what you see in the comments is not all they talked about regarding your app. 

[JimmyR]

I have a GRFP question and thought I'd try here first, as I don't see a more recent thread.

Has anyone transferred from one university to another as a second or third-year with a GRFP? 

TIA!