NSF Fellowships

[Guest Gale]

I expected NSF decisions at the end of March. However, I've heard that the first wave of rejections went out by phys mail.

This is according to a friend-of-a-friend, and he was rejected. Can anyone else confirm?

Good luck, everyone!

(Repeat after me: no news is good news...)

[Guest]

eh, i'm pretty sure it's all done electronically, and all done at the same time...

last year results weren't out until beginning of april (sorry).

[Guest]

I checked the website and in 2004 results were out by March 18. Who knows what that means for this year.

[Guest]

I checked the website and in 2004 results were out by March 18. Who knows what that means for this year.

Link??

[Guest]

Link??

http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/gradawards/gf04awd.txt

your welcome

[Guest]

I've heard that they are usually notified on a Friday afternoon to avoid the onslaught of pissed off people who didn't get the NSF Fellowship.

[Guest Gale]

http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/gradawards/gf04awd.txt

your welcome

Thanks! And thanks to everyone else -- I'm sure if the friend-of-a-friend story had been real, someone here would have had a similar story. I'm always skeptical of sagas that don't tie back to people I know. :-/

So of course I tried replacing "04" with "05" and then "06" in the URL above. 05 points to https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/grfp/ which does have the list of award offers from prior years, and 06 doesn't have a web page at all.

I'd rather email notification over physmail, but I'm concerned I'll get the message while I'm in class or something. At least physmail lets me grieve alone!

[Guest dave]

I'd rather email notification over physmail, but I'm concerned I'll get the message while I'm in class or something. At least physmail lets me grieve alone!

a rejection from this isn't gonna hurt so much because you were rejected, per se, but because of how much time you have to put into the damn thing to even have a chance... ugh.

good luck, though :0

[Guest]

So I found this link:

http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/06pch7.htm

And I'm confused... this is a proposed budget for FY2006 from the AAAS, and here is the relevant section.

"Graduate fellowships and stipends: Within EHR, the budget would fund approximately 4,600 graduate fellowships and traineeships NSF-wide. More specifically, within this amount 2,280 Graduate Research Fellowships (GRF), 935 Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 education (GK-12), and 1,385 Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeships (IGERT) are proposed for FY 2006. Stipends will be held level at $30,000."

So this proposed budget is claiming that there could be 2280 graduate fellowships, but the NSF announcement itself says there will only be 1000. Does this mean that the 2280 number refers to next year, or that this proposed budget didn't actually pass? 2280 instead of 1000 sure would be nice...

[Guest guest]

I think that the NSF offers about 1000 GRF fellowships each year, and since funding lasts for three years, you would expect that in any given year there would be around 3000 people being supported. Since some people might not accept the initial offer, and others might stop in the middle of their studies, you might end up having about 2280 per year. That's my guess.

[Guest guesty guest]

I've heard that they are usually notified on a Friday afternoon to avoid the onslaught of pissed off people who didn't get the NSF Fellowship.

ooooh...is anybody else thinking that maybe this friday will be the day?

[Guest gddd]

I hope so. I dont care what happens, just wanna know!

[Guest anon]

waiting sucks. i just want to know at this point [not that i'm expecting to get it, but you know...].... i realize last year people didn't hear back till early april, but i thought that was because they couldn't get the budget approved. this year the budget seems to be in order already, so i thought they would be able to notify earlier rather than later.

[Guest Guest]

It's not later yet. It's still the middle of March. The website says late March. The personnel say sometime in the next 1-2 weeks. They're still well within the timetable, and if they announced today, I would say they would be announcing earlier than expected. Don't be so impatient.

[Guest guest]

i was told to expect a decision this coming Friday

[Guest dave]

i was told to expect a decision this coming Friday

Yikes. What was your source, just out of curiosity

[Guest guest]

Wowsa! I hope we do hear soon, this is excruciating. Well, either way, it will be over in a couple of weeks, at least till next year . . . . Good luck to everyone who applied for the NSF!

[Guest guest]

What kind of stats do you need to get an NSF?

[Guest guest]

I may be wrong, but my understanding is that high GPA (like, 3.50 and up) and GREs (like, 1350 and up) are almost a prerequisite for being considered seriously, and better to be more like 3.75 and up and 1400 and up, but even that won't distinguish you among the highly-qualified applicants. However, technically the GRE is no longer required so if you flub it, it shouldn't hurt you (just don't report it). Anyone have better info?

[Guest chych]

Good grades are needed, however moreso, one needs a strong and evident interest, and a good proposal to support this. Many people have the grades, but few have the ability to become a very good academic and researcher.

[Guest dave]

I get the feeling that most of it lies in a strong proposal and statement. If you have something unique or very well thought out to say, you have the best chance. Granted, you need good grades and decent gres to support this, but it's primarly what you write that makes you stand out

The hard part isn't writing a good proposal, it's doing it in <= 2 pages! We'll see how well I did in a few days ;p

At least the odds are better than getting in to most grad programs

[Guest Guest]

How can you say that the odds are better? (unless that was sarcasm) Looking at previous years there are between 15 and 25 econ nsf fellowships a year. There are way more than 15-25 spots available for domestic applicants at the top few schools. Roughly 40% of the class is domestic at the top few schools and just approximating and saying they have 20 students in a class, that is 8 domestic students per school, so even if you're just looking at the top 5 schools, there are still about 40 spots (probably a little more) for domestic applicants, which is more than the number of NSF fellowships, even on a high year.

[Guest Guest]

ok, so maybe the odds are about the same as getting into the top PhD programs, but consider that for NSF fellowships, the international applicants aren't even eligible. So that eliminates a few of the other top people. And also, I know of a lot of people who didn't even bother to apply for the fellowship in my field at my school (a top 5 school) because the application was too much hassle and due too early....keep the faith, guys!!

[Guest Guest]

and another point--top 5 schools often choose the exact same applicants for admissions to their schools........I found in my own visits that I kept seeing the same people

[Guest chych]

It depends on your field, in my field (mechanical engineering) there are ~50 recipients a year, which is comparable to schools like Caltech (though Caltech is small, MIT accepts over 150 in this department (which I did get in!)).