SSHRC 2011

[catwoman_80]

Well, fingers crossed that you are right! And yes, an answer to that would be handy. We will know soon enough...

Question for you, lemonpepper: Is the grant awarded in a lump sum, or in two payments? Starting at the beginning of the school year? (My degree is one year only.)

Well, this is what I was told in 2009 by our SSHRC facilitators. I think they are pretty credible--but then again, I was still nervous until I got the official word from my department. I guess the question to ask would be, does anyone know of any MA applicants who've been forwarded to Ottawa in past years who didn't end up getting it? I don't. I think your chances are extremely good.

[catwoman_80]

Official word came from your department or directly from SSHRC? I was told it would come from SSHRC, by mail.

Well, this is what I was told in 2009 by our SSHRC facilitators. I think they are pretty credible--but then again, I was still nervous until I got the official word from my department. I guess the question to ask would be, does anyone know of any MA applicants who've been forwarded to Ottawa in past years who didn't end up getting it? I don't. I think your chances are extremely good.

[lemonpepper]

Hi catwoman_80,

My SSHRC payments were monthly, though I don't know if it depends on the school or not. It's definitely something for you to check into, because once your program ends, so do SSHRC payments. So you don't want to complete too quickly! But it may be that different schools pay out in different ways. I don't know.

Yes, I found out through my department. I just checked my records: my grad advisor notified me by email on May 6th. I did eventually get the SSHRC letter, which was dated May 6th, but postmarked May 12th, so it was a while later.

Good luck!!

[linggirl]

My MA SSHRC payments were lump sums at the beginning of each semester (fall, winter, summer).

[transboundary]

I hate to rain on the parade folks, but for last year's PhD SSHRC competition some of us were told "mid-April", or "end of April" by SSHRC staff only to get letters in the mail by end of May. Let's hope things have changed this year but for my part I'm not holding my breath. If I'm pleasantly surprised, great, but I won't start pestering SSHRC or expecting results until at least the first week of May. Hopefully I'm wrong but I doubt much has changed. I lost a lot of confidence in the SSHRC bureaucracy when I somehow moved from 4 to 8 on the waitlist and nobody could explain why. A SSHRC staff member actually told me that for my sub-committee I had a pretty good chance in 4th place and should keep hoping, but when the magic transformation from 4 to 8 occurred sometime around October, all hopes were lost. My fingers are crossed that the extra year honing my application has paid off and I can avoid the waitlist trauma this year!!

[Lymrance]

I hate to rain on the parade folks, but for last year's PhD SSHRC competition some of us were told "mid-April", or "end of April" by SSHRC staff only to get letters in the mail by end of May. Let's hope things have changed this year but for my part I'm not holding my breath. If I'm pleasantly surprised, great, but I won't start pestering SSHRC or expecting results until at least the first week of May. Hopefully I'm wrong but I doubt much has changed. I lost a lot of confidence in the SSHRC bureaucracy when I somehow moved from 4 to 8 on the waitlist and nobody could explain why. A SSHRC staff member actually told me that for my sub-committee I had a pretty good chance in 4th place and should keep hoping, but when the magic transformation from 4 to 8 occurred sometime around October, all hopes were lost. My fingers are crossed that the extra year honing my application has paid off and I can avoid the waitlist trauma this year!!

Speaking of the waitlists, how exactly do those work? Can SSHRC put you on a waitlist after your school has forwarded you?

I know that your institution can waitlist you. But I thought once you'd been forwarded to SSHRC for consideration, you were either rejected or accepted. Yes...? No...?

[Ludwig von Dracula]

I understand that SSHRC has a waitlist too. Not everyone who is awarded ends up accepting, for various reasons (better funding offers from elsewhere, didn't get into any universities after all, etc).

I think it's also likely that some people who were given the larger award ($105,000) end up going to school internationally, qualifying them only for the lesser amount ($80,000), and perhaps if SSHRC is left with a surplus after several people do this, they will award a few more who didn't make the initial cut. They'd want to have a waitlist ready in this case. This is only speculation on my part though.

[ottawag]

I agree, plus my friend who was awarded the 20K sshrc in May last year got bumped to 35K by Dec because of extra surplus!

[Canuckonomist]

Speaking of the waitlists, how exactly do those work? Can SSHRC put you on a waitlist after your school has forwarded you?

I know that your institution can waitlist you. But I thought once you'd been forwarded to SSHRC for consideration, you were either rejected or accepted. Yes...? No...?

There is an "alternates list" or "waitlist". You can get a "we cannot offer you funding at this time, but we'll let you know if funding becomes available". This happened to me last year, and I eventually won an award in October. Funding can become available for a number of reasons, including people turning down awards, and SSHRC getting more funding. I was first on the waitlist, so my chances weren't too bad. If you win a CGS and are going to school outside of canada, you need to turn it down, and then it's passed to someone else on the list. Also, they tend to hold an SDF in the wings for Vanier winners, should they turn the Vanier down for whatever reason. That's why there are usually 2 applicants in every category that pick up SDFs off the waitlist (this one was of the things that contributed to my award). If you get a flat-out rejection, it'll mean that you were too far down to be put on a waitlist.

Hope that helps!

Canuck

EDIT: I just noticed that Ludwig posted an answer. Let this just be a second reference.

Edited April 10, 2011 by Canuckonomist

[lewin]

Just fyi if you're waiting for an MA SSHRC: I got one a couple of years ago, and was told by my university that if you got forwarded to Ottawa, it's pretty much just a rubber stamp. This applies only to the MA SSHRCs, not the PhD. I was pretty nervous waiting, but was told to relax, because it was essentially a sure thing. The PhD process is different and they do re-examine all proposals at the national level. At least, so I've been told by our SSHRC facilitators.

One more thing--the year I got an MA SSHRC (2009), MAs were informed before PhDs. It was in May. For what it's worth.

For SSHRC PhD in 2009, the total success rate was 20% and among those passed on nationally it was 56%.

I don't know why, but they don't break down the master's results like that on their statistics website.

[catwoman_80]

Hoping it's because what LemonPepper says is right.

Unfortunately the MA stats are not so helpful, although both my application university and awarding university ranked high, which is good to know, but also as expected.

For SSHRC PhD in 2009, the total success rate was 20% and among those passed on nationally it was 56%.

I don't know why, but they don't break down the master's results like that on their statistics website.

[Lymrance]

For SSHRC PhD in 2009, the total success rate was 20% and among those passed on nationally it was 56%.

I don't know why, but they don't break down the master's results like that on their statistics website.

Honestly, my experience was the same as LemonPepper's. When I called my university's award office in March to check on my MA SSHRC application they told me "off the record" that I would certainly be getting one -- and I did. But I think that they must have been basing it off of past success and not necessarily due to any special information from SSHRC. I think they must have had such a strong success rate that they were taking it for granted that I would be approved based on their recommendation. Perhaps other universities don't have as high a success rate...?

I've seen a few posts on here from people claiming that if you get an MA SSHRC you are much more likely to get a doctoral SSHRC. Do you think that's true...? Anything to back up the idea...?

Obviously I have an invested interest in hoping so.

[catwoman_80]

Lymrance, what university was that? Please message me if you'd prefer to remain anonymous. Although I'm not sure how to retrieve them...

Honestly, my experience was the same as LemonPepper's. When I called my university's award office in March to check on my MA SSHRC application they told me "off the record" that I would certainly be getting one -- and I did. But I think that they must have been basing it off of past success and not necessarily due to any special information from SSHRC. I think they must have had such a strong success rate that they were taking it for granted that I would be approved based on their recommendation. Perhaps other universities don't have as high a success rate...?

I've seen a few posts on here from people claiming that if you get an MA SSHRC you are much more likely to get a doctoral SSHRC. Do you think that's true...? Anything to back up the idea...?

Obviously I have an invested interest in hoping so.

[Phalène]

I hate to rain on the parade folks, but for last year's PhD SSHRC competition some of us were told "mid-April", or "end of April" by SSHRC staff only to get letters in the mail by end of May. Let's hope things have changed this year but for my part I'm not holding my breath. If I'm pleasantly surprised, great, but I won't start pestering SSHRC or expecting results until at least the first week of May. Hopefully I'm wrong but I doubt much has changed. I lost a lot of confidence in the SSHRC bureaucracy when I somehow moved from 4 to 8 on the waitlist and nobody could explain why. A SSHRC staff member actually told me that for my sub-committee I had a pretty good chance in 4th place and should keep hoping, but when the magic transformation from 4 to 8 occurred sometime around October, all hopes were lost. My fingers are crossed that the extra year honing my application has paid off and I can avoid the waitlist trauma this year!!

The waitlist thing was really messed up last year. I went from being #1 on the SSHRC-to-CGS waitlist, to being #30 (and thus having no chance of getting a CGS), to being offered a CGS in December.

Apparently the reason people moved down on the waitlist was because they eventually combined all the lists (so, the lists from each evaluatory committee) into one big one.

[lewin]

I've seen a few posts on here from people claiming that if you get an MA SSHRC you are much more likely to get a doctoral SSHRC. Do you think that's true...? Anything to back up the idea...?

There's certainly a relationship between the two, but it might be a third-variable problem. That is, having an MA SSHRC doesn't causally increase one's chances of a doctoral SSHRC, but being a strong candidate gets you both of them.

In fact, I've heard that NSERC is much more predictable about funding people consistently and SSRHC is more unpredictable. Speculating, I think it's because NSERC committees are more homogeneous (i.e., natural scientists and engineers) while the evaluators on SSHRC committees can be more varied (e.g., english, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, history...).

[pomodoro]

A query for those who are more familiar with SSHRC apps than I - Is it normal for your electronic profile to be removed from the SSHRC database?

Out of curiosity, I logged online today to check my app's status (thinking that there would be some status notification posted online as in the case of OGS's website), and lo and behold, my profile is gone! Sure, my basic contact information is there, but that's it. I'm starting to get extremely nervous. fwiw, I did receive a letter stating that my app was forwarded to the national round, but maybe they caught a mistake and it was removed from the competition? Gah. This process is sheer torture!

[n31290]

A query for those who are more familiar with SSHRC apps than I - Is it normal for your electronic profile to be removed from the SSHRC database?

Out of curiosity, I logged online today to check my app's status (thinking that there would be some status notification posted online as in the case of OGS's website), and lo and behold, my profile is gone! Sure, my basic contact information is there, but that's it. I'm starting to get extremely nervous. fwiw, I did receive a letter stating that my app was forwarded to the national round, but maybe they caught a mistake and it was removed from the competition? Gah. This process is sheer torture!

Whoa. Mine says "Nothing to display," but the full profile was there about a week ago when I last checked. Would someone else also check to see if it's the same for you?

[yatto]

Whoa. Mine says "Nothing to display," but the full profile was there about a week ago when I last checked. Would someone else also check to see if it's the same for you?

Same for me! I think it's normal.

[jabrisson]

I'm in exactly the same boat. It really freaked me out when I first saw it a few days ago - but now I figure it must be normal...

Whoa. Mine says "Nothing to display," but the full profile was there about a week ago when I last checked. Would someone else also check to see if it's the same for you?

[Poppet]

Yup, same for me, and I know that last month my application was still there. I assume this just means that the decisions have been made, so the submitted application isn't of any use anymore. I would not immediately assume that it's been lost or that it's been declined. I think it means that the process is complete.

Letters coming soon?

[avsilver]

Whoa. Mine says "Nothing to display," but the full profile was there about a week ago when I last checked. Would someone else also check to see if it's the same for you?

Hey there! Don't worry, this is perfectly normal. When I saw that my application had mysteriously vanished about a month ago, I had a full-blown panic attack and called SSHRC. They said that once the competition is closed then the "application" is removed from the page.

[pomodoro]

Well that's a relief! Thanks avsilver for confirming that this is normal procedure.

[catwoman_80]

This is not what I was told this afternoon, which is that meetings are still taking place and letters are expected to go out at the end of the month. For MA anyway.

Other useful tidbit of information: Committees have already met and decisions have been made, and they are in the process of inputting those into the computer system. They said that as soon as all the information is entered, rejection and acceptance letters will be sent out.

[avsilver]

This is not what I was told this afternoon, which is that meetings are still taking place and letters are expected to go out at the end of the month. For MA anyway.

There is so much contradictory information involved with this process. I've heard that decisions are made over reading break, that decisions are made up to and including the middle of April, and that decisions are made from January to March. I realize that it is year-specific, but would it be so hard to provide a rough guideline under the FAQ page to prevent all of this needless anxiety?

I swear, someone somewhere must have gotten SSHRC grant to study human behavior under extreme duress and this was their proposed methodology.

[dear self]

I just talked to the secretary for the doctoral awards at SSHRC; she said they expect the results to be out mid-April. Seeing as that would be late this week or next... I doubt she'd be giving that answer if they were off target, as it would just invite more inquiries. Just my two cents!