NSF GRFP 2016

[BrainsBrains]

Willing to bet I can take the cake for most frustrated person on here...

I'm a first-year Neuroscience grad student and I got E/E E/E E/E from my reviewers with basically no criticisms whatsoever.... And I got an Honorable Mention.  What?

Honestly it makes me not want to even try next year because I literally did as well as you could possibly do and STILL didn't get an award.  I'm trying to be happy about getting an honorable mention, and I was until I read my reviews which just left me super frustrated.  Anyone have an idea of what on earth happened with my application???

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

12 minutes ago, BrainsBrains said:

Willing to bet I can take the cake for most frustrated person on here...

I'm a first-year Neuroscience grad student and I got E/E E/E E/E from my reviewers with basically no criticisms whatsoever.... And I got an Honorable Mention.  What?

Honestly it makes me not want to even try next year because I literally did as well as you could possibly do and STILL didn't get an award.  I'm trying to be happy about getting an honorable mention, and I was until I read my reviews which just left me super frustrated.  Anyone have an idea of what on earth happened with my application???

The lack of caps lock in your post means that you are handling that much well than I would've. I would've been FUMING!

[BrainsBrains]

3 minutes ago, Pink Fuzzy Bunny said:

The lack of caps lock in your post means that you are handling that much well than I would've. I would've been FUMING!

Oh yesterday I spent a good amount of time screaming and that's why I didn't post anything at that point....  Today I am a bit more calm but still feel NO CLOSURE WHATSOEVER.  SO GREAT.

[Cantanker]

55 minutes ago, BrainsBrains said:

Willing to bet I can take the cake for most frustrated person on here...

I'm a first-year Neuroscience grad student and I got E/E E/E E/E from my reviewers with basically no criticisms whatsoever.... And I got an Honorable Mention.  What?

Honestly it makes me not want to even try next year because I literally did as well as you could possibly do and STILL didn't get an award.  I'm trying to be happy about getting an honorable mention, and I was until I read my reviews which just left me super frustrated.  Anyone have an idea of what on earth happened with my application???

Someone else already mentioned this, and I can't say we can be 100% sure, but it seems likely that each review is weighted by how far off the score is from the individual reviewer's standard deviation. This would render the scores themselves somewhat meaningless - at least in a vacuum (which, based on this forum, is a fair hypothesis anyway). So you may have gotten reviewers that were fairly generous reviewers overall. And those who got it with lesser scores (like myself: E/VG E/E VG/E) might have had reviewers who were generally harsher overall. This is basically the only thing that makes sense to me in parsing through the scores and results on this forum, but who knows!

That said, I can imagine they throw out anything less than "G" before the weighting occurs. I don't think I've seen anyone win with a F or P in their scores. I'm hedging actually, because I'm not sure I've seen a winner with a G either. 

Food for thought. 

[ender wiggin]

1 hour ago, Cantanker said:

Someone else already mentioned this, and I can't say we can be 100% sure, but it seems likely that each review is weighted by how far off the score is from the individual reviewer's standard deviation. This would render the scores themselves somewhat meaningless - at least in a vacuum (which, based on this forum, is a fair hypothesis anyway). So you may have gotten reviewers that were fairly generous reviewers overall. And those who got it with lesser scores (like myself: E/VG E/E VG/E) might have had reviewers who were generally harsher overall. This is basically the only thing that makes sense to me in parsing through the scores and results on this forum, but who knows!

That said, I can imagine they throw out anything less than "G" before the weighting occurs. I don't think I've seen anyone win with a F or P in their scores. I'm hedging actually, because I'm not sure I've seen a winner with a G either. 

Food for thought. 

Outside of the reviews you also have to consider the demographic you represent. That obviously is important in who receives the awards vs who gets an HM.

[BrainsBrains]

12 minutes ago, ender wiggin said:

Outside of the reviews you also have to consider the demographic you represent. That obviously is important in who receives the awards vs who gets an HM.

Well I'm a female in a computational subfield so......  Not sure what that says.  The reviewers all commented on my strong quantitative abilities and how I would be very capable of the modeling work that I was proposing.  

[Eigen]

7 hours ago, DgDeBx said:

Not sure if this is the correct place to post this, but I received the NSF award yesterday and have a question for others that were awarded this year or in the past. Is it best to accept the stipend during the first three years? Considering the stipend at my school raises a bit each year, it would seem to be best financially to use the NSF stipend the first three years. Are there any reasons to defer the three years of financial support if you are currently enrolled in a graduate program? Thanks for any help!

I deferred one year, in retrospect I should have deferred two. There's no assurance that they will, but NSF has given cost-of-living raises each year (including retroactive raises). 30k to 32k to 34k.

Everyone is comparing letter rankings (because it's what you have), but that's not what's used to decide the awards. Think of letter rankings as an A B C system- the reviewers still give numerical scores for each application (Z-scores). You see your letter grade, but you also had a numerical score associated with your application. 

It also changes from reviewer to reviewer (scores are normalized to some degree to weed out too-easy and too-hard reviewers), as well as discipline to discipline. They try to keep the awards in each discipline proportional, so if you're in a very popular sub discipline with lots of applicants, you might need a more competitive score to get an award than someone in a smaller discipline. The school you're attending also matters to some degree (they try to use NSF awards to spread money to good applicants at institutions with lower numbers of other NSF grants), as well as your background and demographics. 

[HopefulGrad555]

I would agree that the scores are meaningless. For instance, I received the award with E/E VG/E VG/E and I know that's less than a number of people who didn't get it, AND my reviewers put in a lot of criticism about things that could be improved in my application. 

I've heard these things can be kind of a crapshoot, so try again next year if you can. 

A year can make a big difference. I applied to grad school last year and was rejected from all 12 PhD programs I applied to, this year I got accepted to 6/8 of the programs I applied to and I got the NSF. Rejection was hard last year, but I asked lots of people for feedback and just focused on doing things that would improve my weak areas; there's always something to work on. 

[Pitangus]

2 hours ago, Eigen said:

I deferred one year, in retrospect I should have deferred two. There's no assurance that they will, but NSF has given cost-of-living raises each year (including retroactive raises). 30k to 32k to 34k.

Everyone is comparing letter rankings (because it's what you have), but that's not what's used to decide the awards. Think of letter rankings as an A B C system- the reviewers still give numerical scores for each application (Z-scores). You see your letter grade, but you also had a numerical score associated with your application. 

It also changes from reviewer to reviewer (scores are normalized to some degree to weed out too-easy and too-hard reviewers), as well as discipline to discipline. They try to keep the awards in each discipline proportional, so if you're in a very popular sub discipline with lots of applicants, you might need a more competitive score to get an award than someone in a smaller discipline. The school you're attending also matters to some degree (they try to use NSF awards to spread money to good applicants at institutions with lower numbers of other NSF grants), as well as your background and demographics. 

A slight clarification to this:

In previous years (and probably now as well), each reviewer assigned an application a numerical score of 0 - 50 for IM and BI. I don't have the old reviewer's guide in front of me, but it went something like... 

40 - 50 = E

30 - 39 = VG

20 - 29 = G

10 - 19 = F

0 - 9 = P

So you can see how the letter scores can be misleading on their own: a numerical score of 39 would give one applicant a VG, while a 40 gives another an E, but the two scores are only one point apart.

 

The Z-scores are the standardization of the numerical scores. The formula is something like:

Z-score = (applicant's score - mean score from that reviewer) / std dev of reviewer's scores

 

If you imagine an applicant who scored all 40s from reviewers who gave high average scores, then it makes sense that there will be applicants who scored all Es but did not win an award/HM. 

 

Also, the diversity criteria only apply to applicants ranked in Quality Group 2 when it comes to deciding who gets an award vs an HM. Applicants in Quality Group 1 (the top group of applicants according to their ranked Z-scores) all get awards no matter what their background. 

Edited March 30, 2016 by Pitangus

[Eigen]

Quality Group 1 is still subject to division among field lines though, isn't it? My understanding was that the field-based numbers of awards were set prior to determining who gets an award.

[Pitangus]

3 minutes ago, Eigen said:

Quality Group 1 is still subject to division among field lines though, isn't it? My understanding was that the field-based numbers of awards were set prior to determining who gets an award.

Yeah, if I remember correctly, the ranking is done at the panel level, so your point about the relative sizes of the applicant pools for different fields makes sense. By "diversity criteria" I meant things like home state, undergrad institution, race/ethnicity, etc. 

[CMBgirl]

Could anyone explain the recent changes to the NSF's application policy? Am I right in understanding that if you're currently an undergraduate, you can only apply one more time now? I'm pretty sure I'll apply again next year if I can. Thank you.

[Neuro PolarBear]

3 minutes ago, CMBgirl said:

Could anyone explain the recent changes to the NSF's application policy? Am I right in understanding that if you're currently an undergraduate, you can only apply one more time now? I'm pretty sure I'll apply again next year if I can. Thank you.

Yeah, that's correct. You can now only apply again as a first or second-year grad student, but not both.

[StemQueries]

On 3/29/2016 at 3:06 PM, PatJS said:

Did you get it~?~?~

I got an honorable mention. Exciting, but obviously slightly disappointing. I'll definitely be applying next year though and my reviews were really helpful!

[ABC123PhD]

13 hours ago, Storksle said:

I have heard rumors about this but can't find if it is true at all - if people decline the fellowship, do the top HMs get later offers or do these awards just go away? Not holding out hope really, but I am kind of disappointed that people who were awarded seem to have lower reviews than mine.

This happened to me last year. It seems generally about 50-75 HMs get later offers based on looking at the number of people who received an award each year.

[kjc]

1 hour ago, ABC123PhD said:

This happened to me last year. It seems generally about 50-75 HMs get later offers based on looking at the number of people who received an award each year.

When did you hear?

[juilletmercredi]

Congratulations to all of the new NSF fellows and to those of you who got Honorable Mention!

I had an NSF myself in graduate school (2010-2013). This year, I had the pleasure of giving back to the program by serving as a reviewer It was certainly interesting viewing the process from the other side. There are many things about the reviewing process we're not supposed to talk about, but we can give high-level information and advice.

As for getting good comments but still not getting the award - I know, that sucks. The truth is two-fold: 1) Some reviewers simply write more detailed and helpful comments than others; we are encouraged to give information that will help the student improve their proposal for a second application. I tried my best to give the kind of feedback I would want as an applicant; I think my comments were a bit longer than average. and 2) I know it sounds cliche, but there really are simply many more really good quality applications than NSF can give funding to. Sometimes there's truly nothing wrong with your app; it's just that enough people had even better apps (even slightly better) that they got the award instead. There has to be a cutoff somewhere

Also, yes, we have a lot of applications to review and not a whole lot of time to do it. I'd say most people spent more than 5-7 minutes. I think I spent an average of 30 minutes per application. And...if you look at the timeline, this is happening during the winter holidays

I would hope one wouldn't need to spoon feed the points into the maws of reviewers, but I think it's probably apt to.

Yes, Maybe a bold heading with "Community Outreach" would be an excellent Idea if you have some.

Yes, please spoon feed! Bolding, underlining, highlighting out sections, it ALL HELPS. Make it really easy for reviewers to find relevant parts of your application. Think of them skimming through your app quickly in between bites of lunch before class or while jumping around between sections when referring back to itto improve their notes or while adjusting their ratings or whatever. People miss things.

 I was essentially told not to hold my breath because NSF is biased towards younger students and since I wasn't a kid fresh out of undergrad, my chances were low... 

I would say that's both true and untrue. It's untrue in the sense that there doesn't seem to be systematic bias against people who took time off, and in fact non-traditional routes can be highly valued. It's true in the sense that unfortunately non-traditional students may also be evaluated (consciously or unconsciously) differently - for example, on the basis of what they did in the interim time they took off. I think in that sense it's somewhat similar to other types of unconscious bias.

Publications and how they are weighted will vary by field - basically how common is it for people in your field to have publications at your stage of the game? Remember, too, that the NSF applicants are probably on average more accomplished/competitive than the average doctoral student. That said, you certainly don't have to have publications to win an NSF; I'd wager most of them don't. (I didn't have any when I won mine.)

The only real critique I received was that I didn't have any LORs from my current program. But, considering that I started grad school 3 weeks prior to the NSF deadline, it didn't seem reasonable for me to include any. They would have been much weaker than the ones from PIs I've known for years and have published with.

that's interesting...I wonder if that will affect me too if I don't have any recommenders from my institution (its yr phd student this upcoming fall)...but there really is no way around it right?? Anyone with this dilemma?

This is really going to be an individual decision, I think, and it depends on the quality and strength of your application in other ways. But IMO I would say it's a good idea to include a recommendation from your advisor in your current program, even if you don't know them very well. First of all, there are early impressions that your advisor can give of you that can be useful for reviewers trying to make decisions. Second, that recommendation can signal support from your program and advisor. Since the Intellectual Merit criteria includes you being reviewed on the potential to succeed in graduate study, and support from the department and your graduate advisor are crucial for that, it can be a good idea to display that. (However, if you've got three really strong references from undergrad and you don't want to displace one, I would say don't. It's really a variable thing, and it can work either way.)

[itsflea]

10 hours ago, juilletmercredi said:

Congratulations to all of the new NSF fellows and to those of you who got Honorable Mention!

[....]

This is very valuable information!

Do you mind if I use your feedback to assist future applicants?

The advice seems intuitive, but hearing it from a past reviewer solidifies it.

[uku]

Thank you for the information. With any luck I will be in a program and won't be eligible again next time around but there are a few things I am curious about, if you are free to comment on them. If not I totally understand. I was a "2 years interruption" applicant - One reviewer referred to me as level 4 applicant - is that the term? What are the guidelines for people in my category compared to grad students?

I am curiousI got a E/E and VG/VG from two reviewers who seemed to think I was well prepared and had demonstrated a dedication to outreach, but the third gave me a F/G and noted my undergrad research experience wasn't exceptional (despite mentioning grad outputs were good). Disparity left me rather confused and wondering what the reviewers were looking for.

Also, regarding BI - i laied out detailed ways my proposal would benefit society, mgmt of federally controlled parks, and I would provide research opportunities to undergrads, but two reviewers really seemed to like on to one sentence about K-12 education plans, it was the primary thing they mentioned in reviews. Any particular reason for the emphasis on that?

18 hours ago, juilletmercredi said:

Congratulations to all of the new NSF fellows and to those of you who got Honorable Mention!

I had an NSF myself in graduate school (2010-2013). This year, I had the pleasure of giving back to the program by serving as a reviewer It was certainly interesting viewing the process from the other side. There are many things about the reviewing process we're not supposed to talk about, but we can give high-level information and advice.

As for getting good comments but still not getting the award - I know, that sucks. The truth is two-fold: 1) Some reviewers simply write more detailed and helpful comments than others; we are encouraged to give information that will help the student improve their proposal for a second application. I tried my best to give the kind of feedback I would want as an applicant; I think my comments were a bit longer than average. and 2) I know it sounds cliche, but there really are simply many more really good quality applications than NSF can give funding to. Sometimes there's truly nothing wrong with your app; it's just that enough people had even better apps (even slightly better) that they got the award instead. There has to be a cutoff somewhere

Also, yes, we have a lot of applications to review and not a whole lot of time to do it. I'd say most people spent more than 5-7 minutes. I think I spent an average of 30 minutes per application. And...if you look at the timeline, this is happening during the winter holidays

 

 

 

 

Yes, please spoon feed! Bolding, underlining, highlighting out sections, it ALL HELPS. Make it really easy for reviewers to find relevant parts of your application. Think of them skimming through your app quickly in between bites of lunch before class or while jumping around between sections when referring back to itto improve their notes or while adjusting their ratings or whatever. People miss things.

 

 

I would say that's both true and untrue. It's untrue in the sense that there doesn't seem to be systematic bias against people who took time off, and in fact non-traditional routes can be highly valued. It's true in the sense that unfortunately non-traditional students may also be evaluated (consciously or unconsciously) differently - for example, on the basis of what they did in the interim time they took off. I think in that sense it's somewhat similar to other types of unconscious bias.

Publications and how they are weighted will vary by field - basically how common is it for people in your field to have publications at your stage of the game? Remember, too, that the NSF applicants are probably on average more accomplished/competitive than the average doctoral student. That said, you certainly don't have to have publications to win an NSF; I'd wager most of them don't. (I didn't have any when I won mine.)

 

 

 

 

This is really going to be an individual decision, I think, and it depends on the quality and strength of your application in other ways. But IMO I would say it's a good idea to include a recommendation from your advisor in your current program, even if you don't know them very well. First of all, there are early impressions that your advisor can give of you that can be useful for reviewers trying to make decisions. Second, that recommendation can signal support from your program and advisor. Since the Intellectual Merit criteria includes you being reviewed on the potential to succeed in graduate study, and support from the department and your graduate advisor are crucial for that, it can be a good idea to display that. (However, if you've got three really strong references from undergrad and you don't want to displace one, I would say don't. It's really a variable thing, and it can work either way.)

 

[ABC123PhD]

19 hours ago, kjc said:

When did you hear?

Around late May/early June.

[juilletmercredi]

Glad to help! Yes, you can use my feedback to help future applicants. Keep in mind that my opinions are my own and don't necessarily reflect NSF's or all the reviewers' - they're simply my perspective having participated in the process.

[Pink Fuzzy Bunny]

5 hours ago, juilletmercredi said:

Glad to help! Yes, you can use my feedback to help future applicants. Keep in mind that my opinions are my own and don't necessarily reflect NSF's or all the reviewers' - they're simply my perspective having participated in the process.

 

I actually am designing a short little seminar for my school to tell people about REUs, fellowships, GREs (things people at my school don't know about), and I'll be including your post in a hand-out more than likely.... but I'll include the disclaimer and won't identify you at all (not that I could anyway). Thanks so much

[Butterfly_effect]

On 3/30/2016 at 1:39 PM, BrainsBrains said:

Willing to bet I can take the cake for most frustrated person on here...

I'm a first-year Neuroscience grad student and I got E/E E/E E/E from my reviewers with basically no criticisms whatsoever.... And I got an Honorable Mention.  What?

Honestly it makes me not want to even try next year because I literally did as well as you could possibly do and STILL didn't get an award.  I'm trying to be happy about getting an honorable mention, and I was until I read my reviews which just left me super frustrated.  Anyone have an idea of what on earth happened with my application???

I am exactly in your position! (first year neuroscience grad with E/E E/E E/E and hm). It's crazy to think that the highest score possible didn't get us the NSF

 

But now I'm curious about where the declined fellowships go as well. Can anyone else attest to getting hm but being offered a fellowship after some of the awardees declined?

[KentH]

Long time reader, first time poster (today posting for the first time).

I am happy to say that I received an NSF award with all E's.  I had a bunch of glowing reviews, paragraphs in each section.

I post the above just to help people as they are trying to figure out how and why and who got what...

[Neist]

So, I've been avoiding this thread because I was sad I did horribly on my application.  

Tonight, I'll break the uncomfortable silence by drinking a good beer. 

Congrats to everyone who got one, but also realize there's definitely someone who sympathizes to those who did not.