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Guest guest
Posted

we're all such dorks.

i mean that in the nicest possible way.

also, what time of day does NSF usually send out notification emails?

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Guest guest
Posted

grr... i could't wait any longer, so i decided to call first thing this morning. all i was told was that notifications should definitely be going out either today or tomorrow.

i don't know what's worse-- the wait or the inevitable prospect of knowing so soon!

YES!!!

call them back and tell them that we've decided on today, rather than tomorrow.

Guest this chick
Posted

I'm for Applied Math

Guest guest
Posted

Sorry to break it to you... but math SUCKS.

Guest randomname
Posted

great, we're all doing math... so how about we pool together any winnings amongst us? quick, someone compute an expected value or something...

Guest guest
Posted

I applied in the category of Physics & Astronomy (particularly astrophysics, in combination with some chemistry and nuclear physics), and in my search just now to find out what NSF actually might have been looking for, I came across the following article. I'd be interested in hearing your reactions. Of course, please keep in mind this was written by committee members in P&A, so some of the details might not apply to your disciplines. I'm planning to refer to this article many times next year when I likely have to reapply.

http://www.phy.davidson.edu/NSF_GRF/NSFGRFfinal.html

We should know the result in 32 hours at the lastest!

Guest guestservices
Posted
I applied in the category of Physics & Astronomy (particularly astrophysics, in combination with some chemistry and nuclear physics), and in my search just now to find out what NSF actually might have been looking for, I came across the following article. I'd be interested in hearing your reactions. Of course, please keep in mind this was written by committee members in P&A, so some of the details might not apply to your disciplines. I'm planning to refer to this article many times next year when I likely have to reapply.

http://www.phy.davidson.edu/NSF_GRF/NSFGRFfinal.html

We should know the result in 32 hours at the lastest!

I actually searched online before I applied and found this and several other interesting/helpful articles. I guess we'll see if it helps my application, though I doubt it.

Guest guest
Posted

i'm not in that field, but that was a nice explication. i'm glad to read that GRE scores aren't a "determining factor" as mine weren't outstanding.

Guest guest
Posted

How many of you are already in doctoral programs, and will not be able to apply again next year if you don't receive the NSF award this year?

Just curious...

Guest guestservices
Posted
i'm not in that field, but that was a nice explication. i'm glad to read that GRE scores aren't a "determining factor" as mine weren't outstanding.

While they say this....I also found a statistical report somewhere online. The average GRE scores for winners are around 1400. The report also said that having a higher percentage in verbal 90 and above was advantageous.

Posted

time of day = late. around 7.

and i can't reapply next year, as this is my first year in a doctoral program :(

Guest guest
Posted

my verbal was actually quite good. my quant wasn't. i mean, numerically, it was good like everybody else's. but my percentile wasn't super. i'm in sociology, though. and i'm not doing anything quantitative whatsoever, so maybe it won't make too much difference. i mean, you interview people and then write about what you learn from them. no math there!

Guest guest
Posted
time of day = late. around 7.

and i can't reapply next year, as this is my first year in a doctoral program :(

I am already in a program as well. This is my last (and first) shot.

Guest guest
Posted

I don't think we'll hear back today. What reason could they have for releasing the info today instead of tomorrow? Plus, they seem to like to make us wait.

In fact...I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't hear back until next week.

Guest abcde
Posted

Can whomever wrote that they found a stats report on NSF online, share the link?

I was looking for some sort of stats last night, and was unsuccesful.

I also wanted to see how Javits and NSF compared, but was unsuccesful with that as well.

Guest guestservices
Posted
Can whomever wrote that they found a stats report on NSF online, share the link?

I was looking for some sort of stats last night, and was unsuccesful.

I also wanted to see how Javits and NSF compared, but was unsuccesful with that as well.

I searched and I can't find it. I'll have to look on my laptop at home and see if I saved it.

Guest guest
Posted

Who here thinks we'll get word on this today? What about tomorrow? Next week? The week after that?

Maybe, if we all concentrate really hard...we can will it to happen today. Somewhat along the lines of the CareBear Stare.

Guest guest
Posted
Somewhat along the lines of the CareBear Stare.

I haven't heard that phrase in years! I'm with you 100%

Care bears.... STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARE!

Posted

My bet is that we hear sometime next week. There is a good chance we'll hear tomorrow. I would not be surprised if they waited until next Friday. It's possible I'm just bitter because last year we didn't hear until a week into April and it drove me crazy for three weeks prior. But yeah, if I had to guess between the remaining days in March, I'd guess tomorrow rather than today.

In case anyone is wondering, what they did last year was e-mail everyone at the same time (I think; though someone said that the winners were e-mailed hours earlier?) and then put the list up like a week or so later. I think the list went up after April 15th. As someone else mentioned, this could have been intentional so as not to have graduate schools recruiting winners off of the wait list solely because they won funding. Honestly, though, in my field at least, if you are good enough to win the award then you would have been accepted to every graduate school anyway, unless you messed up your application and/or were a really bad match for the school. I was accepted to everywhere I applied last year and (more than 10 schools) and even won some special recruitment fellowships given to the top applicant, but didn't even get an honorable mention for the NSF!

For those of us who don't win, remember that it is basically a lottery. While I haven't known anyone non-intelligent or incompetent who won the award, I've known several idiots with honorable mentions as well as a large number of completely brilliant, qualified, hard-working, outstanding students (with broader impacts!) who applied and got no award or honorable mention. I think they do a reasonable job with the process, but their task is so difficult that they're bound to make mistakes in either direction (especially in the first round...hence the idiots I know with honorable mentions.)

While I very much want to hear the result asap, part of me realizes that the likely answer is "no" (or possibly honorable mention, but the chances of "award" are SO slim) so I'm wondering why I'm so excited to hear the result under these circumstances. I guess, as someone else mentioned, just for closure.

Guest Guest
Posted

How does the selection process work? Are there several rounds in which applicants get filtered through?

Guest guest
Posted

I agree with the feelings of at least a few of the other post-ers here: as much as I'm dying to know the outcome and have this waiting process over already, I too feel a strong sense of doubt about the likelihood of a positive outcome here. So, now that it **finally** seems like we're going to hear, I have conflicting thoughts. On the one hand, I have never really allowed myself to believe I am going to win this thing, so it's not like it will be a huge surprise if I don't, but I will still be incredibly disappointed. However, I'd rather have the weekend to deal privately with the result before telling my recommenders I didn't win, rather than hearing during the week next week, so even though I'm worried I'll be sad, I hope it's today/ tomorrow!!

Guest tellmesoon
Posted

So what do we do if we do win? I'm not trying to curse my chances, but what about the possibility of reversing decisions? Although another person posted that if we won NSF, we darn well would have already been admitted to every school we wanted, this is definitely not true. I happen to know 2 people personally who reversed rejection decisions after winning an NSF. So if we want to try to reverse decisions, how do we go about doing that? I'm assuming we notify any schools we like but which rejected us as soon as possible. But who in those institutions can we notify? What's the procedure? How do we try to nose our way back in without some sort of awkwardness? The people I know who have done this simply told schools and those schools begged them to come. But if schools don't beg us upon being notified that they turned down the NSF, is there still hope of getting them to let you in?

I'd love any advice on this, especially if you have experience with this or know of someone who does!

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