NSF GRFP 2011-2012

[gcr26]

How do they decide how many awards to give in each research area? Is it something like, before people apply, they fix the number of awards in linguistics at, say, 10, and then hand them out to the best 10 applications in that field? Or is it more along the lines of, say one field has an especially large number of exceptional applications, and post-review they decide to give out more awards to that field?

[burntwaffle]

gcr26, that is something that I have been wondering as well. I also applied for a GRFP in linguistics. I noticed that for past years there are roughly the same number of linguistic awards each year. This could be coincidence however.

[maath805]

I remember seeing a powerpoint where it said the # of awards given out in each subject area was proportional to the # of applications they got. So if 20% of the total # of applications were in engineering, 20% of the total # of awards would be in engineering. I can't find the source, so take this with a grain of salt. It makes sense given the NSF's repuation for equality; this process ensures no subject area is under/overrepresented.

Edited March 27, 2012 by maath805

[vertices]

I haven't found hard documentation of this, but here's what I've gleaned over the past year from professors, GRFP presentations at my school, and these forums.

Various professors of mine have told me that the awards are divided up amongst the gross field of study (e.g. Math, CS, Social Sciences) by number of applicants. When encouraging people to apply they note that applying helps everyone in your field even if you don't win because the number of awards given to the field might increase.

Another thing that seems to come up during GRFP presentations from those 'in the know' and these boards is that the state from which you graduated high school can give you a slight edge. Basically the top tier of applications will get awards regardless of other factors. However, when they try to determine who in the second tier is getting an award and who is getting an HM, they look at the high school state. If that state has not received many awards, they could use it as a tiebreaker to make sure funds are distributed more evenly by state.

Things like sex and race are not taken into account, though I have seen people incorporate their minority status as part of their broader impacts plan in their essays. I don't know if it helped. There used to be a program for women in engineering where if you did not get a GRFP award they would forward your application to that program, but it has been discontinued.

Not sure about boxers or briefs. Does one show better commitment to lab safety than the other? If so, maybe it would contribute to intellectual merit.

[gb6]

Things like sex and race are not taken into account, though I have seen people incorporate their minority status as part of their broader impacts plan in their essays.

This is absolutely untrue.

[Jimbo2]

Just in case people don't know what the holy grail looks like (anything to keep this thread active)

National Science Foundation Division of Graduate Education 4201 Wilson Boulevard Arlington, Virginia 22230 DATE

APPLICANT NAME ADDRESS CITY, STATE ZIP COUNTRY

Application Number: APPLICANT ID Dear APPLICANT:

Congratulations! I am pleased to inform you that you have been selected to receive a 2011 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) Fellowship. Your selection was based on your outstanding abilities and accomplishments, as well as your potential to contribute to strengthening the vitality of the US science and engineering enterprise.

The stipend rate for 2011-12 is $30,000 per twelve-month fellowship year, given in increments of $2,500 per month. Fellowships are funded for a maximum of three years and may be used in any three, 12-month units, starting in Summer (June 1) or Fall (Sept 1) over a five-year period that begins in 2011 (your award year). Please see the next page for Fellowship terms and conditions, responsibilities, and instructions to formally accept your Fellowship and to view your rating sheets.

We encourage you to consider additional opportunities offered through the GRFP. Email notifications and “Dear Colleague Letters” are the typical vehicle for communications of this nature. We look forward to hearing about your achievements and contributions during your graduate study and beyond.

Again, congratulations on your selection as a Graduate Research Fellowship Program Fellow. We wish you success in your graduate studies and continued success in achieving your career aspirations.

Sincerely,

James Lightbourne, Ph.D. Division Director Division of Graduate EducationDear Fellow,

On behalf of the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), the Program Directors would like to also congratulate you and extend a warm welcome to the NSF community. Please read the information below and take action as appropriate.

Regards,

Gisele Muller-Parker, Ph.D. Carmen Sidbury, Ph.D. Sheryl Tucker, Ph.D. GRFP Program Directors

• Fellows must be enrolled in an accredited US university, college, or non-profit academic institution of higher education offering advanced degrees in science and engineering by Fall 2011. Confirmation of acceptance in an NSF-approved graduate degree program is required at the time of Fellowship acceptance, May 1, 2011.

• Acceptance of the Fellowship is an explicit agreement that the Fellow will be duly enrolled in an NSF-approved graduate degree program in the field of study indicated in their application by the Fall 2011.

• By May 1, 2011, you will need to formally accept and agree to the terms and conditions of the Fellowship. The “Information for Graduate Fellows” link opens the NSF GRFP Administrative Guide for Fellows & Coordinating Officials. This is a crucial document that includes terms and conditions that apply to your Fellowship, in addition to the eligibility requirements (citizenship, degree and program of study requirements, and field of study) and Certifications that you have already attested to in the application. Visit the NSF GRFP FastLane website (https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/grfp/) to review the eligibility requirements, certifications, terms and conditions and to electronically accept this Fellowship, no later than May 1, 2011.

• You should familiarize yourself with the NSF GRFP FastLane website (https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/grfp/), as most GRFP actions and requests are handled through this site. The NSF GRFP Administrative Guide for Fellows & Coordinating Officials is found here, and you are strongly encouraged to take time to read it carefully.

• You should contact the GRFP Coordinating Official (CO) at your intended institution of graduate study to inform her or him that you have accepted an NSF GRFP Fellowship. The Coordinating Officials Directory may be found at the link above. The CO will assist you in effectively managing your Fellowship and should be your first point of contact in the event the “Information for Graduate Fellows” does not answer your questions.

• Following acceptance of the Fellowship you will need to declare your Tenure Status by May 1, 2011. Please note that you will need to declare your tenure intentions each year by May 1 of that year. Failure to declare tenure can result in delay of stipend payments or revocation of the Fellowship altogether.

• You are required to provide an Annual Activities Report that documents your activities, accomplishments, progress, and productivity upon completion of each Fellowship year, whether you were on Tenure, Reserve, or Forfeit status. The NSF GRFP Office uses Activities Reports extensively to demonstrate the productivity of Fellows for a variety of audiences, including media outlets, NSF administration, and Congress. You will not be allowed to submit a tenure declaration for a given year until your Activities Report for the preceding year is submitted.

• In response to the America Competes Act, all Fellows are required to receive appropriate training and oversight in the responsible and ethical conduct of research. Please check with the campus CO about the Responsible Conduct of Research training requirement at your (proposed) institution.

• You are responsible for obtaining appropriate permissions and complying with all institutional policies concerning human subjects, hazardous materials, vertebrate animals, or endangered species and copyright and intellectual property.

• All publications, presentations, and creative works based on activities conducted during the Fellowship must acknowledge NSF GRFP Support:

"This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. (NSF grant number)."

• NSF Fellows are also eligible to apply for supercomputing time. Cyberinfrastructure resources available to GRFP Fellows are described in the NSF GRFP Administrative Guide for Fellows & Coordinating Officials.

• Please ensure that the following email address is not subject to a spam filter: grfp@nsf.gov. The GRFP Office will send out notices and updates using this address. It is also important that you keep your contact information and email addresses current, as NSF will use your email address to communicate with you on a regular basis about related opportunities (e.g., Nordic Research Opportunity (http://www.nsf.gov/p...073.jsp?org=DUE) webpage and NSF GRFP Engineering Innovation Fellows Program pilot (http://nsfeifp.asee.org/) website).

Applications were reviewed according to the NSF Merit Review Criteria of Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts. To view the rating sheets, please ...(insert new instructions).

Edited March 28, 2012 by Jimbo2

[guttata]

Thanks Jimbo, that's cool to see. Hopefully a lot of us get to see our own soon...

[AlexM451]

By May 1, 2011, you will need to formally accept and agree to the terms and conditions of the Fellowship.

Other fellowships aren't releasing notifications until mid-May. If you get NSF, does this mean you have to accept/decline before you find out about other fellowships? Is it unacceptable/illegal to back out once you've accepted? Is there a way around this?

[rockhopper]

This may be a stupid question but do we receive an email if we are selected or do we have to find our name on the list once it's announced?

[schoolpsych_hopeful]

Any insight into what time of day the announcement will come? Early morning? Middle of the night?

[guttata]

Other fellowships aren't releasing notifications until mid-May. If you get NSF, does this mean you have to accept/decline before you find out about other fellowships? Is it unacceptable/illegal to back out once you've accepted? Is there a way around this?

There's a 5 year period for you to use 3 years of support. I've already accepted a fellowship from my school that's for 4 years of support. If I get the NSF, I'll use my school's fellowship for the first 2 years, then take the NSF for the last 3 of the 5 year period. I don't know of many fellowships that are better than the NSF - I can't imagine there'd be many situations where you would need or want to decline it altogether.

[uksawfly]

Any insight into what time of day the announcement will come? Early morning? Middle of the night?

It came in the middle of the night last year - around 2:00AM. Fastlane was all jammed up but you basically just plugged in your name in the search and waited, and it would eventually come up if you got either HM or an award. My email didn't come until about 3:00AM.

[navier]

FastLane will be unavailable Sunday, April 1, from 12:01 AM to 8:00 AM ET for scheduled maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience.

There it is folks

[deepbreath]

There was an identical announcement two weeks ago...

There is an advisory that was posted today that says "FastLane will be unavailable Sunday, March 18, from 12:01 AM to 8:00 AM ET for scheduled maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience."

If I remember correctly, last year's announcement specifically said "FastLane/GRFP" - But I probably won't let that stop me from obsessing about it this weekend.

[navier]

There was an identical announcement two weeks ago...

If I remember correctly, last year's announcement specifically said "FastLane/GRFP" - But I probably won't let that stop me from obsessing about it this weekend.

Oooh I see. Well, I have faith that the results will be out Sunday morning! Haha. Probably wishful thinking considering this, though.

[guttata]

FastLane will be unavailable Sunday, April 1, from 12:01 AM to 8:00 AM ET for scheduled maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience.

There it is folks

Aw crap.

[Jimbo2]

glad it will be saturday night. no staying up late on a weekday

[laurend]

I wouldn't count on actually hearing sunday. They haven't put out a result on a weekend in a long time.

I think we will likely see another message regarding the grfp specifically early next week or maybe this weekend. I am sure I will be checking it sunday just in case, but it seems extremely unlikely.

[saeven]

FastLane will be unavailable Sunday, April 1, from 12:01 AM to 8:00 AM ET for scheduled maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience.

There it is folksh

^^guttata, where did you find that at?

[Agradatudent]

awww yeah

[gellert]

I dreamt about this last night.

I hope I get an HM. Not a win, an HM. Since I decided to work next year instead of grad school, I wouldn't be able to accept a Fellowship, and that'd suck. (And I'm a bit dedicated to the idea of taking two years off, now; I wouldn't want to back out of the job in favor of going to one of the schools that accepted or waitlisted me, or calling up one of the ones that didn't.) But I don't want to lose, either.

[vertices]

There was an identical announcement two weeks ago...

If I remember correctly, last year's announcement specifically said "FastLane/GRFP" - But I probably won't let that stop me from obsessing about it this weekend.

Yeah. I almost wonder if this outage has to do with the National Medal of Science nomination deadline being 3/31 but I'm sure that doesn't as heavily impact the system as GRFP week in November.

...maybe they're just playing an April Fool's Day joke on us.

saeven - it's on the main fastlane page, not the grfp one: https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/index.jsp

Edited March 28, 2012 by vertices

[withoutwords]

Sorry if this has been discussed on the previous threads but I was curious about:

1. How much do you guys think not having publications (in Environmental Engineering) hurts an nsfgrfp app?

2. How much does "publishing" in conference proceedings make up for it?

[syn2012]

I spoke with one of the reviewers today, and he shared some interesting information about the review process. Apparently they changed the way that applications were scored. Instead of being based purely on raw score, the scores were each of the three reviewers who looked at each application had their scores scaled based on all of the other scores they gave. In other words, the average was determined, and z scores were assigned so that there was a "scale" to each grade. Many of the reviewers complained that this method was unfair to the applicants since a "moderate" score from a reviewer who assigned mostly low scores overall could count more than a high score coming from a reviewer who had a high average score. This wouldn't be too much of a problem if every reviewer scored every application in the pool, but since they only scored a small pool (for chemistry this was about 30/500), each applicant pools were judged by different standards.

He suggested that since so many reviewers expressed concern about this system that the final review board could possibly (and this is pure speculation) go back and re-evaluate the applications using the old, more fair, raw scores. This would likely mean a delay in the release of results, beyond what we're currently expecting.

Again, though, this is just a little information he passed on to me. He's not on the final review committee, so who knows what they'll end up doing?

[vertices]

That's interesting syn2012. In past threads people have discussed the z-scores, so I don't think they're new this year. Also, a friend of mine who applied in a previous year got no excellents and only one very good, but got an HM. I assumed it was because he had tough reviewers and thus the z-score made up for it.

I see the problem from both directions. Like you mentioned, if reviewer A gives mostly low scores, the people who get moderate scores from reviewer A may have a higher overall score than someone who got an excellent from reviewer B. However, if reviewer B gives out lots of excellents, not using z-scores might be unfair to everyone who did not get reviewer B. I would guess this problem has been researched much in survey design (e.g. "Rate how you agree with this statement: strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree"). Is there anybody with experience in that area who can explain more and suggest another way to do it?

In the end, who you get as a reviewer is somewhat luck-of-the-draw and probably has one of the biggest impacts on your overall score, raw or not. It's just like how people will often get conflicting reviews back. One reviewer will love someone's broader impacts while the other will think the same person barely had any!