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NSF disqualifications?


hoobers

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  • 2 weeks later...

I got a message saying I'd been disqualified but fortunately was able to refute it. The reason was that I'd accidentally marked myself as a 2nd year when I'm really a first year, so they thought I'd neglected to send in my grad school transcript. Also, I was unable to get a transcript from studying abroad. However, when I talked it over with someone at the NSF by telephone, they corrected the first error and decided neither it nor the lack of a transcript from an international institution should disqualify me. Whew, what a relief!

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ahhh, how do you refute it!? i just received a generic email saying that my application did not comply with their eligibility rules, but i have NO idea why. they say you have to submit any questions in writing, so I sent an email and still havent heard. i called today and the women said she was not allowed to tell me on the phone but had to wait to receive an email back. i dont understand!?

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Hi Anthro14,

I both emailed and called. I just checked what my original email had said, and technically I guess they had marked my application as "incomplete". It did take a few days for them to get it sorted out and put me in the system correctly, but it did eventually. I would say to just wait a few days to see what they say in response to your email and also keep checking the status of your application on fastlane. I'm guessing the most common reason students are disqualified is because it appears like they have more than 2 years of graduate education. Might this be the case for you?

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I just checked my application status after reading this and a weird thing happen. The date they "received" my grad transcript has mysteriously changed. When I submitted my app, it said they received them on oct 28. Now it says they received them on dec 14. Has this happened to anyone else? THink it will make me ineligible?

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So weird!

So they did disqualify me stating that I have too many years of grad experience, but I'm still fighting it. I just finished my Masters at UPenn last May and applied for the NSF in my 1st semester of my PhD. Now, my Masters took 2 years of part-time work, bc I was doing Teach for America at the same time. But the NSF solicitation states that you cannot have more than 12 months of FULL-TIME grad study or its equivalent (24 hours) by Aug 2010. By by then, I had graduated having taken only 10 credit hours in a program that only takes 1 year of full-time grad work to complete. I went from education to anthropology.

What is really frustration is that I called the NSF office before I applied, told them all this and asked if they thought I needed to submit one of those extenuating circumstances essays. The lady on the phone told me I did not have to bc I clearly did not have 12 months of full-time experience or 24 credit hours.

I called the office the other day and said all this to the lady. All she could tell me was to email all of that to the address that told me why I was disqualified in the first place. I did, and received an email back saying that it my email had been forwarded and my application will be re-reviewed, the decision to my appeal to be responded to in 2-weeks.

I'm not feeling very hopeful, however. The woman on the phone at their office said that they very rarely repeal these things.

Sigh* At least I tried!

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@Anthro14, I think you have a decent shot. The reason they say they so rarely reverse their decision is that most people are disqualified for a good reason. In your case, it really sounds like they messed up. Anyway, best of luck.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Little update. I got an email from them today saying that my app has been re-examined and moved forward to the merit review process, but that my eligibility still remains under consideration. The final eligibility decision is still pending and is expected to be available at the end of Feb. So.... I guess that's good news. It's been forwarded on to the next round... but not completely out of the woods. Better than nothing!

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  • 4 weeks later...

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