NSF Fellowships

[Guest guestservices]

Does anybody feel like the NSF was disproportionately given to students of one or two programs? In political science, 5 out of 9 went to Berkeley students despite the fact that Berkeley is a dying program. There was also a bias toward Berkeley last year too. Do they give special priority to people at schools with less funding or something?

I read online that nearly 70% of the awards go to students from or going to the "elite" schools. Berkeley included. So if you come from or are going to a crap school.....good luck, no matter how brilliant you are.

[Guest guest]

In my field (psychology) there were certainly disproportionate numbers of awards going to several programs - but they essentially reflect the prominence of those departments within the field as well as the size of their departments. UCLA, Michigan, and Berkeley, for example, are all great programs and have very large graduate student populations, and Yale is, well, Yale. With the exception of a few random schools that I expect reflect either exceptional scholarship or some of that geographical diversity we spoke about earlier, and the exclusion of a couple of really top-notch programs, the schools represented in the NSF awards in psych seem about right in terms of prestige and size.

[Guest kat]

that's amazing about your department. can i ask where you go to school/which field your in?

Michigan psychology, cognition and perception area. All 7 first year students in my area applied; 5 won the award and 1 got an honorable mention. My roommate in the developmental area also won an award.

[Guest guest]

I'm not sure exactly how they do it, but I do have a few thoughts on the matter --

1) every year people say, "X school does well with NSFs and Y school does not", but their memory is just a few years old and the trends change all of the time. In my field it may appear that one school is sweeping the awards one year, but then they might get no awards for several years later. It's just random chance / differences in applicants from year to year. In my field there are one or two schools that do notoriously win a large number of awards, but at these schools there are programs set up to encourage every single student to apply, and the school helps them refine their applications. That's why they have better success.

2) in terms of the eliteness factor, I also don't think this is something to worry about too much, especially for your undergraduate institution (not as sure about the grad institution, because you do have to justify choosing it for your research so it has to be elite in your area...otherwise why are you going there instead of somewhere else?) In fact, if you come from somewhere non-elite, depending on your experiences this can help with the broader impacts stuff.

3) in terms of geographic diversity, I do understand they want to have some sort of geographic distribution, possibly by state. This would help people from more rural states/areas and hurt people from the east and west coasts. What does "from" mean, though? The only explanation I heard of that I believe is that they use where you went to high school to determine this. If some kid is originally from Kentucky but happens to go to Yale and then to Stanford, his geography should be counted as Kentucky because that's his roots. Likewise if some kid grew up in Connecticut but went to graduate school in North Carolina, she shouldn't have an advantage based on her new location; she's from CT and grew up in that school system.

4) as far as area of interest is concerned, I believe that this fluctuates from year to year, especially in sub-fields (that would mean anything that comes after the dash. So, geology is a subfield of geosciences.) There might be some amount of awards set aside by major field, but I know that beyond that they will just rank the students and see what comes out. When I applied last year, no one in my area won...it just worked out that way. My current sub-area (a different one) had 14 awards this year but 20 last year. It can vary quite a lot. They don't feel as though it's necessary to give at least one award in every single subfield.

[Guest JonInNYC]

I was warned by numerous faculty at my institution that applying to NSF was a lost cause, we're a top tier research institution, but because i'm in grad school at a "medical college" I won't be funded (we've had 2 funded ever, one this year and one a few years ago). There's so much politics in everything, and with the funding "pie" dwindling every year it's a little disheartening.

Congrats to everyone who did get awards or HM!

I am curious why they awarded less funding AND less HM's than last year (1,024, and 1,900+ for 2005). Makes me wish I'd done this back then too.

[Guest guest]

For those of you that got an honorable mention, are you putting it on your CV? How are you listing it?

Something like:

"NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program Honorable Mention, 2006"

looks right to me, but I'm wondering if there is some other convention for listing this sort of thing.

[Guest guest]

That looks okay - I've seen people leave off Program and put a comma in front of Honorable, which might look better.

[Guest guest]

What you've written looks good. I would NOT put a comma after Honorable because that's not grammatically correct. Definitely put it on your cv!

[Guest guest]

ummm - I said comma BEFORE honorable. I still think it looks better but I'm not sure it makes a big difference.

[Guest agreeing guest]

I agree leave off Program and put comma BEFORE Honorable.

[Guest guest]

out of curiosity, why would anyone put hm on their cv? i feel it would hurt more than help because you're admitting you applied and didn't get the award right?

[Guest guest]

getting an honorable mention is a great honor, as out of probably 20000 people who apply, only 3000 get any sort of NSF status. It's an honor, so it won't hurt you

[Guest guest]

On a slightly different note, what are the benefits of the winning the NSF, besides the money and having a great CV-builder (which are of course great in and of themselves). I mean, are there any tangible benefits down the road - does it make it easier to get research funding, or help in getting academic jobs? It seems like the merits of your research/publications should be the most important factors for these desirable things, but does the NSF help in some way? Pardon my ignorance . . . .

[Guest guest]

you can use the SUPERCOMPUTER!

[Guest guest]

getting an honorable mention is a great honor, as out of probably 20000 people who apply, only 3000 get any sort of NSF status. It's an honor, so it won't hurt you

i thought it was more like 10,000. but it's still pretty darn good.

[Guest guest]

you can use the SUPERCOMPUTER!

FUNNY!!! That's why I applied!

[Guest guest]

FUNNY!!! That's why I applied!

totally. i'm a sociologist, but since i got the honorable mention, i'm half-contemplating (not really) switching to a field where i could actually use the supercomputer. that, or just coming up with some mega-calculations to do for my own interest.

[Guest guest]

On a slightly different note, what are the benefits of the winning the NSF, besides the money and having a great CV-builder (which are of course great in and of themselves). I mean, are there any tangible benefits down the road - does it make it easier to get research funding, or help in getting academic jobs? It seems like the merits of your research/publications should be the most important factors for these desirable things, but does the NSF help in some way? Pardon my ignorance . . . .

like any other merit-based award, it looks good. and that always helps.

[Guest guest]

I checked my department's website, and none of my faculty members seemed to have won the NSF, though a few received honorable mention. Some didn't list honors, so it is possible that some did receive it but have so many other successes in their professional lives that it wasn't worth mentioning - you know, among all their grants and publications. Still, from this unrepresentative sample, it seems to be even somewhat rare among faculty members - does this mean it isn't particularly important in academia or just that it's somewhat rare in my particular field?

[Guest guest]

I checked my department's website, and none of my faculty members seemed to have won the NSF, though a few received honorable mention. Some didn't list honors, so it is possible that some did receive it but have so many other successes in their professional lives that it wasn't worth mentioning - you know, among all their grants and publications. Still, from this unrepresentative sample, it seems to be even somewhat rare among faculty members - does this mean it isn't particularly important in academia or just that it's somewhat rare in my particular field?

i think that, over time, these things become less important. as one establishes themselves as a professor and gets farther from grad school, they might not list things like this anymore. but fresh out of grad school, it probably matters more.

[Guest guest]

I checked my department's website, and none of my faculty members seemed to have won the NSF, though a few received honorable mention. Some didn't list honors, so it is possible that some did receive it but have so many other successes in their professional lives that it wasn't worth mentioning - you know, among all their grants and publications. Still, from this unrepresentative sample, it seems to be even somewhat rare among faculty members - does this mean it isn't particularly important in academia or just that it's somewhat rare in my particular field?

my guess it's probably not even that important when leaving grad school, since you are suppose to have established yourself with publications, etc. by that time (at least in my field). i think that's it's probably more important during the first few years of graduate school, when you need to apply for summer internships, etc. and people have less to judge you on.

[Guest guest]

If that's really, true, it's not worth much of anything then, because you have summer fundung with the NSF for all three years so you won't be applying for summer internships. Must be worth more than that! Of course you have to produce, too.

[Guest guest]

In CS at least, there are reasons to get internships besides the money, like the opportunity to work with other people and to see what industry is like. Also, I'm not sure about this, but it seems to me that the NSF will continue to fund you if you have a summer job, as long as it "contributes to your graduate education." so it seems like you might be able to get NSF funding while you have an internship. does anybody know anything about this?

[Guest guest]

anyone know how many folks applied for the NSF this year? I'm finding it hard to get the stats - anyone know and can post?

[Guest guest]

i'm very curious about that as well.