Gates Cambridge 2021-2022

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@Proofquant @shivermetimbers@statsforthis (Thank you ?)
 

1) The deadline to reply by is Friday, Jan 29 at 9 AM

2) I’m a PhD candidate (not Masters)

3) I got the offer from the GC foundation (not department). My department application is in the “Submitted” stage. I have communicated with my advisor and department previously, though. So I think that is a formality. 
 

I hope this answers y’all’s questions! Happy to provide any additional information. 

[statsforthis]

Friday seems like a quick turnaround!!

[Afro Aniyunwiya]

4 hours ago, statsforthis said:

Friday seems like a quick turnaround!!

It’s seems normal for Gates. Those of us on the social sciences and arts panels lucked out by getting notification on Thursday and having the weekend (but still 48 hours across business days to reply)

[artandjuno]

do they send rejections to finalists that weren’t selected? at this point I’m wondering when to expect that

[anotherpotato28]

I emailed them this morning asking about when we will hear back. This is what they said: "We are currently in the process of contacting candidates; you will receive an update no later than tomorrow with regards to the status of your application". Sounds like they will be sending out all rejections tomorrow. 

[peterpan1127]

1 hour ago, artandjuno said:

do they send rejections to finalists that weren’t selected? at this point I’m wondering when to expect that

Same haha

[statsforthis]

My *new* theory is that on the 21st, applicants for all panels were notified and they had to respond by the 26th. On the 27th, offers were made to fill in "gaps" where someone from the first round had not accepted. After the response deadline on the 29th, they will almost assuredly be able to let everyone else know that they were not successful. 

[noac]

1 hour ago, statsforthis said:

My *new* theory is that on the 21st, applicants for all panels were notified and they had to respond by the 26th. On the 27th, offers were made to fill in "gaps" where someone from the first round had not accepted. After the response deadline on the 29th, they will almost assuredly be able to let everyone else know that they were not successful. 

Yeah that sounds about right. Looking forward to the emails tomorrow to get out of this ridiculous limbo haha 

[DeNovo]

Just two random thoughts/questions while we're here... 

1. Does anyone else think it was strange that they did not interview via zoom/skype, etc. in lieu of in-person interviews? It seems like if people were ever prepared to do interviews online it would be this year ? I feel like the interview is a great opportunity that some may have benefited from in a normal year. But who knows - one could easily tank in an interview as well lol.

2. If you are a Gates finalist, should you assume that you were ranked well by your department for the other funding opportunities? 

[peterpan1127]

8 hours ago, noac said:

Yeah that sounds about right. Looking forward to the emails tomorrow to get out of this ridiculous limbo haha 

Just got rejection email ?

[noac]

2 hours ago, peterpan1127 said:

Just got rejection email ?

Same ?

[Proofquant]

Same!

[DeNovo]

Same. 

[shivermetimbers]

Same ?

[Afro Aniyunwiya]

23 hours ago, DeNovo said:

Just two random thoughts/questions while we're here... 

1. Does anyone else think it was strange that they did not interview via zoom/skype, etc. in lieu of in-person interviews? It seems like if people were ever prepared to do interviews online it would be this year ? I feel like the interview is a great opportunity that some may have benefited from in a normal year. But who knows - one could easily tank in an interview as well lol.

2. If you are a Gates finalist, should you assume that you were ranked well by your department for the other funding opportunities? 

Yes and yes. Departments are supposed to submit their “best” candidates to Gates, so fingers crossed for the other funding opportunities you applied to!

Edited January 30, 2021 by Afro Aniyunwiya

[shivermetimbers]

Does anyone know how the cambridge trust / other funding opportunities actually work, or what their acceptance rate or anything like that is? Or if they're merit-based or need-based or anything like that? Or how much they cover? 

[scytoo]

4 hours ago, shivermetimbers said:

Does anyone know how the cambridge trust / other funding opportunities actually work, or what their acceptance rate or anything like that is? Or if they're merit-based or need-based or anything like that? Or how much they cover? 

You should assume that each of the scholarships listed on the Trust website are independent. The Trust collates them but may have no say in their selection, and that's especially true for awards that are explicitly non-centralised, e.g. anything from a college, department, or donation. Those all have their own selection process.

There aren't any solid numbers on how many conditional offer holders get awarded funding. We know how many attending students have funding, and it's not all that high (self-funding is much higher than you might expect), as per the Funding website (https://www.postgraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/funding) :

>In 2019, 81% of our new PhD students and 30% of our new Masters students were awarded funding (either full or partial)

And if you follow to the PDF, then 73% of PhD applicants (? the language switch between students and applicants is confusing, and those mean two very different things) and 17% of Masters applicants were fully funded. 

If they're correct in talking about applicants then that's good. But if they're only talking about people who eventually got an unconditional offer or who attended then it leaves out a huge proportion who get a conditional offer but no funding. These people aren't funded but they obviously aren't self-funded either, so it's a glaring gap in the infographic.

You should assume all funds are merit-based. There are a couple of need-based things if you're a refugee or come from a war zone, but assuming you're American, neither apply. All other need-based monetary awards are small, one-time bursaries (maybe £500) that individual colleges offer to students who are already on their course and face hardship, not applicants.

Edited January 30, 2021 by scytoo
Removing an errant emoij...

[DeNovo]

6 hours ago, scytoo said:

You should assume that each of the scholarships listed on the Trust website are independent. The Trust collates them but may have no say in their selection, and that's especially true for awards that are explicitly non-centralised, e.g. anything from a college, department, or donation. Those all have their own selection process.

There aren't any solid numbers on how many conditional offer holders get awarded funding. We know how many attending students have funding, and it's not all that high (self-funding is much higher than you might expect), as per the Funding website (https://www.postgraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/funding) :

>In 2019, 81% of our new PhD students and 30% of our new Masters students were awarded funding (either full or partial)

And if you follow to the PDF, then 73% of PhD applicants (? the language switch between students and applicants is confusing, and those mean two very different things) and 17% of Masters applicants were fully funded. 

If they're correct in talking about applicants then that's good. But if they're only talking about people who eventually got an unconditional offer or who attended then it leaves out a huge proportion who get a conditional offer but no funding. These people aren't funded but they obviously aren't self-funded either, so it's a glaring gap in the infographic.

You should assume all funds are merit-based. There are a couple of need-based things if you're a refugee or come from a war zone, but assuming you're American, neither apply. All other need-based monetary awards are small, one-time bursaries (maybe £500) that individual colleges offer to students who are already on their course and face hardship, not applicants.

I think the timeline of everything confuses me with so many different sources of funding at work at once. Suppose you are put forward for Trust funding but also the college to which you've received admission wants to offer a scholarship/studentship, etc. Do you (or anyone) know how that process works?  

[scytoo]

1 hour ago, DeNovo said:

I think the timeline of everything confuses me with so many different sources of funding at work at once. Suppose you are put forward for Trust funding but also the college to which you've received admission wants to offer a scholarship/studentship, etc. Do you (or anyone) know how that process works?  

You will get an email from the relevant body offering the scholarship, and then you should have a certain amount of time (it'll vary a lot) to respond to that offer. If you have one full scholarship then you cannot accept another without giving up the first. You can only receive enough money to cover your tuition and standard living costs, and anything above that amount will be distributed to other scholars. Once you are no longer eligible for more scholarships then you might be taken off the list or might not be. Again, these are all independent boards doing the assessment, and it can take some time to pass along the news that you're not a candidate unless someone passes it along directly.

If the college offers you something then you would accept. And then if the Trust offered you something full-cost your only options are to decline or to accept and give up the college scholarship. That kind of switching and juggling is why scholarship offers are given out in drips until quite late in the year.

[shivermetimbers]

Wow - thanks for all your responses @scytoo !! I didn't know any of that!

I guess another question I have about this is whether everyone is eligible for the scholarships (in particular the Cambridge Trust ones) -- I got the impression that everyone was eligible, but not like sure.

Thanks again for all of your help and insight into this!!

[Gradhop]

Is winning the Gates scholarship a good reason for choosing Cambridge over another top, non-Oxbridge university with a generous funding offer? For instance, would the benefits of the Gates outweigh the potential of working with a less enthusiastic supervisor at Cambridge compared to more keen supervisors at another uni?

PS: no, I am not in this predicament, just curious about how people choose given the short time winners have to accept/reject. 

 

[scytoo]

11 hours ago, shivermetimbers said:

Wow - thanks for all your responses @scytoo !! I didn't know any of that!

I guess another question I have about this is whether everyone is eligible for the scholarships (in particular the Cambridge Trust ones) -- I got the impression that everyone was eligible, but not like sure.

Thanks again for all of your help and insight into this!!

It depends. The Trust is just a collection of scholarships, and like I said, nearly every single one is separately administered. Some require that you have submitted an external application to a certain non-Cambridge foundation, others will require you to answer their particular prompt in the Trust box in your application, and usually the college scholarships require you to put that college as your first choice to be considered. That's why college choice is important, as some colleges offer more scholarships than others. Just ticking the box for the Trust makes you eligible for some scholarships but it's far from a majority, or even a significant minority. They're all just so specific to nationalities, subjects, colleges etc. 

19 minutes ago, Gradhop said:

Is winning the Gates scholarship a good reason for choosing Cambridge over another top, non-Oxbridge university with a generous funding offer? For instance, would the benefits of the Gates outweigh the potential of working with a less enthusiastic supervisor at Cambridge compared to more keen supervisors at another uni?

PS: no, I am not in this predicament, just curious about how people choose given the short time winners have to accept/reject.

Gates is the Cambridge version of Rhodes. Is there any difference between the Rhodes scholarship and some regular TA funding at a US institution? Of course. Rhodes (and Gates) isn't about the money, it's about the purpose and the network. When you're a Gates scholar you get access to all of the Gates alumni and all of their collective contacts across many fields and throughout many governments. Also the name recognition will help. People know what Gates/Rhodes represents, but they will have never heard of your other funding offer at another university and it'll be very unimpressive to them.

 

That's why it's so rare to turn down the offer. Rhodes is announced far earlier so that's not a consideration, and what else is there that has that kind of name recognition or alumni network? If your only interest were the amount of money then you'd be applying to the wrong scholarship and unlikely to be awarded Gates (or Rhodes) for that reason: they try to weed those people out.

[Gradhop]

58 minutes ago, scytoo said:

It depends. The Trust is just a collection of scholarships, and like I said, nearly every single one is separately administered. Some require that you have submitted an external application to a certain non-Cambridge foundation, others will require you to answer their particular prompt in the Trust box in your application, and usually the college scholarships require you to put that college as your first choice to be considered. That's why college choice is important, as some colleges offer more scholarships than others. Just ticking the box for the Trust makes you eligible for some scholarships but it's far from a majority, or even a significant minority. They're all just so specific to nationalities, subjects, colleges etc. 

Gates is the Cambridge version of Rhodes. Is there any difference between the Rhodes scholarship and some regular TA funding at a US institution? Of course. Rhodes (and Gates) isn't about the money, it's about the purpose and the network. When you're a Gates scholar you get access to all of the Gates alumni and all of their collective contacts across many fields and throughout many governments. Also the name recognition will help. People know what Gates/Rhodes represents, but they will have never heard of your other funding offer at another university and it'll be very unimpressive to them.

 

That's why it's so rare to turn down the offer. Rhodes is announced far earlier so that's not a consideration, and what else is there that has that kind of name recognition or alumni network? If your only interest were the amount of money then you'd be applying to the wrong scholarship and unlikely to be awarded Gates (or Rhodes) for that reason: they try to weed those people out.

Thanks for the reply and context.

I have always been told that by far the most important thing when choosing a PhD programme is not the money, but the supervisor, as this can make or break your experience. 

But if I understand you correctly, the Gates community can make up for a less than stellar supervisor? By less than stellar,  I mean a supervisor that offers limited contact hours and exposure to career enhancing opportunities.

 

ETA: Going over my original post, I can see how it might have been implied that money, not supervision, was the contending factor and should have used the phrase "*equally* generous funding" instead.

Edited January 31, 2021 by Gradhop

[scytoo]

4 hours ago, Gradhop said:

Thanks for the reply and context.

I have always been told that by far the most important thing when choosing a PhD programme is not the money, but the supervisor, as this can make or break your experience. 

But if I understand you correctly, the Gates community can make up for a less than stellar supervisor? By less than stellar,  I mean a supervisor that offers limited contact hours and exposure to career enhancing opportunities.

 

ETA: Going over my original post, I can see how it might have been implied that money, not supervision, was the contending factor and should have used the phrase "*equally* generous funding" instead.

Sure, probably. It's actually pretty rare that a supervisor is going to hand you opportunities on a plate. If you want to e.g. go to a conference or set up a collaboration, that's definitively up to you. It's your PhD, it's your thesis, it's your career. The PI is just there to provide you with mentorship, but even then you should be working mostly independently towards the last year. So yes, Gates would more than make up for a supervisor who's busier and doesn't hold your hand because it's more opportunities to do that independent networking than any supervisor could ever offer. But the benefits obviously vary by field because of it. If your field doesn't value networking outside of your field then Gates isn't the scholarship for you, you'd want something purely academic instead.

[Gradhop]

9 hours ago, scytoo said:

Sure, probably. It's actually pretty rare that a supervisor is going to hand you opportunities on a plate. If you want to e.g. go to a conference or set up a collaboration, that's definitively up to you. It's your PhD, it's your thesis, it's your career. The PI is just there to provide you with mentorship, but even then you should be working mostly independently towards the last year. So yes, Gates would more than make up for a supervisor who's busier and doesn't hold your hand because it's more opportunities to do that independent networking than any supervisor could ever offer. But the benefits obviously vary by field because of it. If your field doesn't value networking outside of your field then Gates isn't the scholarship for you, you'd want something purely academic instead.

Thanks for the insight into the Gates community - very helpful.