NDSEG or NSF GRFP (Must Decide by Monday)

[jeremyb]

Hi everyone,

I was fortunate enough to be awarded both awards. I'm not sure which to choose, however, as the two fellowships seem to be equal on several grounds. For example, each award has the same stipend amount over 3 years. I'll list some of the arguments I've heard for each one so far. Please let me know if you think of anything I have not considered or why you would recommend choosing one or the other! 

 

NSF

• More flexible in terms of what years the funding can be applied (i.e. the 3 years need not be back-to-back). NDSEG must be applied in the first 3 years. Not as significant as it seems, however, since apparently almost all students at my school use either fellowship in their first 3 years anyway.
• More "prestigious" in that it is more widely known - a professor pointed this out
• Has several nice ancillary programs (GRIP and GROW), but it doesn't seem like these programs are widely used after talking to current NSF fellows. 

 

NDSEG

• Pays for full tuition whereas GRFP pays $12k/yr. Significant since the school I will be attending is private and has high tuition, but really doesn't affect me (I've verified this with the grad coordinator for the school I'll be attending) since this would have been paid for in part by the school, department, and faculty adviser. So this would help out my department but not affect my stipend amount and not really affect me in terms of adviser selection. 
• More "prestigious" in that it's more selective (200 awardees in STEM vs 2000 for NSF). The picture is not that simple, however, since not everyone applies for the NDSEG and some fields are in my opinion more difficult to be supported by this award (e.g. I think biological research is more amenable to the goals of NSF than DoD).
• Program coordinator pointed out that because this award pays tuition unconditionally, I would run into no issues if I happened to go over the 10-unit / quarter limit by taking extra classes (apparently surpassing this limit raises your tuition). Not sure if this would come up though since I would be focusing on research and not taking a lot of classes anyhow. 

 

A final note is that several professors have pointed out that I can list receiving both rewards on my CV (I'll list one as having declined the offer). So this alleviates some of the worry over which is "more prestigious." 

 

Thank you for helping me! 

[HanBWW]

Hi! I think a lot of it depends on your field of interest. The NSF has more name recognition and I think that is an important factor since they both offer about equal funding.

 

A semi-related question. When does the NDSEG require that you get back to them by?

[jeremyb]

3 hours ago, HanBWW said:

Hi! I think a lot of it depends on your field of interest. The NSF has more name recognition and I think that is an important factor since they both offer about equal funding.

 

A semi-related question. When does the NDSEG require that you get back to them by?

Good point! My field is chemical engineering

And Monday at midnight! 

[jeremyb]

3 hours ago, jeremyb said:

Good point! My field is chemical engineering

And Monday at midnight! 

Actually, I have conflicting info now. The email says April 26th but their website says May 4th. Not sure now 

[farflung]

The 5 year flexibility of GRFP is incredibly valuable. You may not *think* you really want/need any more than the first 3 years to use the fellowship right now, but what if you win some other big grant to do your dissertation research in a few years? The ability to pause GRFP and take that other award will become very important. GRFP also has name recognition across fields, not just within your narrow discipline. I'm an anthropologist and winning GRFP is also widely respected. I think winning grants that have that sort of wide recognition in the academy will set you up well in future professional / academic endeavors. Remember that on your CV you can always (and SHOULD) list grants that you have won but declined. So you'll still get the recognition for having won both. For example : 2015-2018 NDSEG Award (declined in favor of GRFP). 

[TakeruK]

Definitely put both on your CV as others mentioned.

To me, it sounds like NDSEG is the better choice because it helps out your department more. This will effectively free up more funds for your advisor, which might result in more research money for you. My advisors have been willing to spend more money on things like computers, travel to international conferences etc. because I've brought in outside money! However, it does sound like your advisor and department may not care that it will cover more tuition. If you haven't talked to your advisor about this then you should do so!! (You only say you talked to your program coordinator).

Okay I just realised that you might not be a grad student until the Fall! So, if this is true and if you haven't picked an advisor yet, then I would say choosing NDSEG might be an even better choice. With the NDSEG, you would really cost the advisor $0, your tuition and stipend is all covered. This will give you a LOT more options on which advisors to work with because it's less likely that money will be an issue. Since you're going to a private school that sounds well funded, this might not be an issue anyways but having the flexibility is really powerful.

I think that in a field where the NDSEG is awarded, people will recognize the prestige of the NDSEG award. So, if you are planning to stay within one of the NDSEG fields, you don't have to worry about NDSEG vs NSF prestige (and again, you'll put both on the CV anyways).

 

[jeremyb]

4 hours ago, farflung said:

The 5 year flexibility of GRFP is incredibly valuable. You may not *think* you really want/need any more than the first 3 years to use the fellowship right now, but what if you win some other big grant to do your dissertation research in a few years? The ability to pause GRFP and take that other award will become very important. GRFP also has name recognition across fields, not just within your narrow discipline. I'm an anthropologist and winning GRFP is also widely respected. I think winning grants that have that sort of wide recognition in the academy will set you up well in future professional / academic endeavors. Remember that on your CV you can always (and SHOULD) list grants that you have won but declined. So you'll still get the recognition for having won both. For example : 2015-2018 NDSEG Award (declined in favor of GRFP). 

Thank you, this was really well put! Do you think I would lose any recognition of the NSF by it only being listed on my CV as opposed to accepting it as well? And do you think the flexibility outweighs the higher tuition savings of the NDSEG? (see the below comment)

[jeremyb]

2 hours ago, TakeruK said:

Definitely put both on your CV as others mentioned.

To me, it sounds like NDSEG is the better choice because it helps out your department more. This will effectively free up more funds for your advisor, which might result in more research money for you. My advisors have been willing to spend more money on things like computers, travel to international conferences etc. because I've brought in outside money! However, it does sound like your advisor and department may not care that it will cover more tuition. If you haven't talked to your advisor about this then you should do so!! (You only say you talked to your program coordinator).

Okay I just realised that you might not be a grad student until the Fall! So, if this is true and if you haven't picked an advisor yet, then I would say choosing NDSEG might be an even better choice. With the NDSEG, you would really cost the advisor $0, your tuition and stipend is all covered. This will give you a LOT more options on which advisors to work with because it's less likely that money will be an issue. Since you're going to a private school that sounds well funded, this might not be an issue anyways but having the flexibility is really powerful.

I think that in a field where the NDSEG is awarded, people will recognize the prestige of the NDSEG award. So, if you are planning to stay within one of the NDSEG fields, you don't have to worry about NDSEG vs NSF prestige (and again, you'll put both on the CV anyways).

 

Thank you, this was super helpful! So you would say nothing changes between it being listed on my resume but declining it vs. me accepting the award in terms of recognition? You are right about the greater savings. Like you said, i don't think it's a huge issue since apparently most of the faculty are well funded and they are just happy that I am coming with some sort of funding period! But do you think the extra savings outweighs the 5-year flexibility of the NSF? 

[TakeruK]

29 minutes ago, jeremyb said:

Thank you, this was super helpful! So you would say nothing changes between it being listed on my resume but declining it vs. me accepting the award in terms of recognition? You are right about the greater savings. Like you said, i don't think it's a huge issue since apparently most of the faculty are well funded and they are just happy that I am coming with some sort of funding period! But do you think the extra savings outweighs the 5-year flexibility of the NSF? 

Yes to both questions. For the recognition question, it's my opinion that the main benefit is that you showed you won a competitive national fellowship. I don't think winning both the NSF and NDSEG is better than winning just one. But I'd still put both on the CV since you don't know whether each particular reader will think one is better than the other.

For the savings vs NSF flexibility, here is how I see it: taking the NDSEG means you will for sure get the extra money benefit (indirectly). However, you only benefit from the NSF's flexibility if you end up needing to use it. As you said, most students are able to take the first 3 years of their fellowship consecutively. The NSF doesn't just let you take any 3 years out of 5---you can only suspend your award for certain reasons (see the guide). At the same time, NDSEG generally requires the award to be 36 consecutive months, but there are ways to get approval to suspend the award, such as summer internships if your field has that (see the fellows FAQ: https://ndseg.asee.org/ndseg_fellows/current_fellow_faq)

In my opinion, right now, if you don't foresee any reason that would prevent you from taking the award for 36 consecutive months, then you should take the NDSEG for sure. But if you are planning to do some things that will require you to ask for a leave of absence from school (e.g. starting a family, knowing that a family member will need you for care, working with a collaborator at a different school, participating in an exchange program etc.) then it seems like the NSF is more flexible and will allow for this. The NDSEG may allow it (they say these decisions are on a case-by-case basis) so unless you know for sure you need to suspend your award, I think the NDSEG is the better choice.

Finally, two additional points that might interest you:

1. The NDSEG also has a $1000 allowance for health insurance, which might mean more actual money in your pocket. At my school, the student insurance plan costs $2700 per year and as part of our stipend package, the school subsidizes it and we only pay $500 per year. I have a NASA award that has an insurance allowance that covers this $500 for me, so while my stipend is the same as everyone else, those with this fellowship effectively get an extra $500 per year because we don't pay our insurance premium. It's not a huge amount, but $500 is $500. The NSF cost of education allowance can be used for the insurance, but it's at the discretion of the school if they want to allow you to do this or not. 

On the other hand, since getting a fellowship means you aren't going to be paid as "employees" of the school, this might make you ineligible for the student health plan. This depends on the school. Typically, well funded private schools do not limit health insurance access to students on assistantships only, but it might be useful to check. At my school, every grad student is eligible for the plan, whether or not we work as TAs or RAs.

2. Tuition is a weird and magic number at schools, especially at private schools. My school charges just over $40,000 for tuition "on paper". This is the undergraduate tuition rate and the graduate student tuition rate, on paper, is also the same amount. However, for the vast majority of students, no one actually pays this full amount (not the student, not the advisor, not the department). I don't know exactly how much the advisor/department have to actually pay for student tuition costs here, but based on some conversations with administrators**, I think it's about $20,000***. The reason I mention this is to compare that cost to the NSF's CoE allowance of $12k, that is, even if your tuition's sticker price is over $40k, this is why your program coordinator may not seem to care very much that the NDSEG brings in more tuition money. However, this is all guesswork and entirely out of your control so you shouldn't factor this into your decision! I'm just saying this because it makes sense why the (well funded) department is downplaying the extra tuition money from NDSEG.

(** I know it's not the same amount because the Graduate Dean here has told us that the school uses this as a way to incentive "good behaviour" by departments. Technically, tuition is still $40k, charged by the grad school to each department for each student. However, the grad school gives an (undisclosed) "discount" on tuition provided the department meets certain criteria. I don't know all of the criteria but one of them is that this discount is only given if the departments pays their student at least $X per year. I found out this information when I asked the Graduate Office how they enforce some of the published policies, since they don't have a ton of direct control over the departments at my school. I thought it was a pretty effective way to enforce policies!)

(*** I estimate it's $20,000 because our school is undergoing a fundraising campaign to offer fellowships to every single incoming graduate student and their budget/fundraising goal puts the cost of this as $1,000,000 endowed per student. Assuming growth of 10% and the typical strategy of spending half of the interest and reinvesting the other half, a $1 million endowment allows for the school to spend $50,000 each year. Our stipends are around $30k, so that's where $20k comes from. These are big assumptions on the percentages, but it's a starting guess.)

[jeremyb]

3 hours ago, TakeruK said:

Yes to both questions. For the recognition question, it's my opinion that the main benefit is that you showed you won a competitive national fellowship. I don't think winning both the NSF and NDSEG is better than winning just one. But I'd still put both on the CV since you don't know whether each particular reader will think one is better than the other.

For the savings vs NSF flexibility, here is how I see it: taking the NDSEG means you will for sure get the extra money benefit (indirectly). However, you only benefit from the NSF's flexibility if you end up needing to use it. As you said, most students are able to take the first 3 years of their fellowship consecutively. The NSF doesn't just let you take any 3 years out of 5---you can only suspend your award for certain reasons (see the guide). At the same time, NDSEG generally requires the award to be 36 consecutive months, but there are ways to get approval to suspend the award, such as summer internships if your field has that (see the fellows FAQ: https://ndseg.asee.org/ndseg_fellows/current_fellow_faq)

In my opinion, right now, if you don't foresee any reason that would prevent you from taking the award for 36 consecutive months, then you should take the NDSEG for sure. But if you are planning to do some things that will require you to ask for a leave of absence from school (e.g. starting a family, knowing that a family member will need you for care, working with a collaborator at a different school, participating in an exchange program etc.) then it seems like the NSF is more flexible and will allow for this. The NDSEG may allow it (they say these decisions are on a case-by-case basis) so unless you know for sure you need to suspend your award, I think the NDSEG is the better choice.

Finally, two additional points that might interest you:

1. The NDSEG also has a $1000 allowance for health insurance, which might mean more actual money in your pocket. At my school, the student insurance plan costs $2700 per year and as part of our stipend package, the school subsidizes it and we only pay $500 per year. I have a NASA award that has an insurance allowance that covers this $500 for me, so while my stipend is the same as everyone else, those with this fellowship effectively get an extra $500 per year because we don't pay our insurance premium. It's not a huge amount, but $500 is $500. The NSF cost of education allowance can be used for the insurance, but it's at the discretion of the school if they want to allow you to do this or not. 

On the other hand, since getting a fellowship means you aren't going to be paid as "employees" of the school, this might make you ineligible for the student health plan. This depends on the school. Typically, well funded private schools do not limit health insurance access to students on assistantships only, but it might be useful to check. At my school, every grad student is eligible for the plan, whether or not we work as TAs or RAs.

2. Tuition is a weird and magic number at schools, especially at private schools. My school charges just over $40,000 for tuition "on paper". This is the undergraduate tuition rate and the graduate student tuition rate, on paper, is also the same amount. However, for the vast majority of students, no one actually pays this full amount (not the student, not the advisor, not the department). I don't know exactly how much the advisor/department have to actually pay for student tuition costs here, but based on some conversations with administrators**, I think it's about $20,000***. The reason I mention this is to compare that cost to the NSF's CoE allowance of $12k, that is, even if your tuition's sticker price is over $40k, this is why your program coordinator may not seem to care very much that the NDSEG brings in more tuition money. However, this is all guesswork and entirely out of your control so you shouldn't factor this into your decision! I'm just saying this because it makes sense why the (well funded) department is downplaying the extra tuition money from NDSEG.

(** I know it's not the same amount because the Graduate Dean here has told us that the school uses this as a way to incentive "good behaviour" by departments. Technically, tuition is still $40k, charged by the grad school to each department for each student. However, the grad school gives an (undisclosed) "discount" on tuition provided the department meets certain criteria. I don't know all of the criteria but one of them is that this discount is only given if the departments pays their student at least $X per year. I found out this information when I asked the Graduate Office how they enforce some of the published policies, since they don't have a ton of direct control over the departments at my school. I thought it was a pretty effective way to enforce policies!)

(*** I estimate it's $20,000 because our school is undergoing a fundraising campaign to offer fellowships to every single incoming graduate student and their budget/fundraising goal puts the cost of this as $1,000,000 endowed per student. Assuming growth of 10% and the typical strategy of spending half of the interest and reinvesting the other half, a $1 million endowment allows for the school to spend $50,000 each year. Our stipends are around $30k, so that's where $20k comes from. These are big assumptions on the percentages, but it's a starting guess.)

This was so helpful, thanks a ton! I guess my main indecision came from the fact that I thought the fellowship you accept is closely attached to your name similar to how your school's name and adviser are (e.g. student X is one of professor Y's student at ____ university). It seems that this isn't the case from what you said so that is good to know. Maybe there is a way I can turn some of the tuition savings into an increase in my stipend so it's a win-win situation for me and the department 

 

Again thanks a lot! 

[HanBWW]

So which did you choose?

[jeremyb]

3 hours ago, HanBWW said:

So which did you choose?

 Turns out that I actually have until Friday  ( they messed up the deadline date )  so I'm still trying to decide haha

[HanBWW]

6 hours ago, jeremyb said:

 Turns out that I actually have until Friday  ( they messed up the deadline date )  so I'm still trying to decide haha

In that case - I had one more thing I thought of to add. While it looks equally good on your CV to have either grant - a thing to remember is that usually when you give talks etc. in school your PI will introduce you as a NSF or NDSEG fellow. The grant will also be on every poster you present and every talk you give. So if you think one is more prestigious/has more name recognition there is a realistic reason to choose that one. I vote NSF

[TakeruK]

On 4/24/2016 at 6:00 PM, jeremyb said:

This was so helpful, thanks a ton! I guess my main indecision came from the fact that I thought the fellowship you accept is closely attached to your name similar to how your school's name and adviser are (e.g. student X is one of professor Y's student at ____ university). It seems that this isn't the case from what you said so that is good to know. 

 

11 hours ago, HanBWW said:

In that case - I had one more thing I thought of to add. While it looks equally good on your CV to have either grant - a thing to remember is that usually when you give talks etc. in school your PI will introduce you as a NSF or NDSEG fellow. The grant will also be on every poster you present and every talk you give. So if you think one is more prestigious/has more name recognition there is a realistic reason to choose that one. I vote NSF

I think what @HanBWW is saying is true---the one you accept will be more connected with your name than the other one---people will only ever see the other one when they are reviewing your CV. However, the only time it matters which one(s) you got will be when people are reviewing your application for something, and for that, they will see your CV. And when they have the job of reviewing you for something, they are going to know what both NSF and NDSEG means.

I mean yes, when you give a talk, your title slide will say NSF or NDSEG on it, but to be honest, it doesn't really matter. I really don't mean to diminish the honour and work and achievement of these awards, but as you say, there are 200 NDSEG fellows and 2000 NSF fellows (not to mention there are other national fellowships too). I don't think people are really going to remember the name of the fellowship you received. At best, you would want them to remember/recognize that you have some kind of national graduate fellowship, and they will likely remember that.

The reason why I say the specific award doesn't matter is because these graduate fellowships are typically awarded based on your performance and achievements at the undergrad and first year graduate student level. i.e. having one of these awards signal that you were successful at this stage of your career. If you have one of these, then it's likely that the next time you have big important things to apply to would be when you are a senior graduate student (since you won't be applying to other fellowships for awhile). When you get to this point, your achievements from undergrad/1st year grad school are no longer as important. People are going to be more interested in what you have achieved as a graduate student, not when you were just starting out. Of course, having a fellowship still counts very positively, but they are going to be far more interested in what your LORs say, what publications you've completed, what your current body of work is like. At this stage, it just matters that you got an award of this calibre, not whether you got it from NSF or NDSEG.

Therefore, I would choose the award that has the most benefits to you (directly or indirectly), instead of the "name".

On 4/24/2016 at 6:00 PM, jeremyb said:

Maybe there is a way I can turn some of the tuition savings into an increase in my stipend so it's a win-win situation for me and the department 

Good luck with that! It's worth trying, but as I wrote above about the weirdness of tuition, this might not be possible. In addition, I find that many well-funded private schools purposely set a fixed stipend level for everyone, to avoid competition, so that they won't raise your stipend (however, you might be able to get your advisor to commit $X towards a research fund for you etc.). In my program, the only way you will get paid above the fixed stipend rate is if you win a fellowship that pays all of your tuition and that fellowship also pays you a stipend level higher than the current standard stipend rate. Then, the school won't "take away" money from your stipend and you get to keep the extra. 

[jeremyb]

On 4/26/2016 at 10:43 AM, TakeruK said:

 

I think what @HanBWW is saying is true---the one you accept will be more connected with your name than the other one---people will only ever see the other one when they are reviewing your CV. However, the only time it matters which one(s) you got will be when people are reviewing your application for something, and for that, they will see your CV. And when they have the job of reviewing you for something, they are going to know what both NSF and NDSEG means.

I mean yes, when you give a talk, your title slide will say NSF or NDSEG on it, but to be honest, it doesn't really matter. I really don't mean to diminish the honour and work and achievement of these awards, but as you say, there are 200 NDSEG fellows and 2000 NSF fellows (not to mention there are other national fellowships too). I don't think people are really going to remember the name of the fellowship you received. At best, you would want them to remember/recognize that you have some kind of national graduate fellowship, and they will likely remember that.

The reason why I say the specific award doesn't matter is because these graduate fellowships are typically awarded based on your performance and achievements at the undergrad and first year graduate student level. i.e. having one of these awards signal that you were successful at this stage of your career. If you have one of these, then it's likely that the next time you have big important things to apply to would be when you are a senior graduate student (since you won't be applying to other fellowships for awhile). When you get to this point, your achievements from undergrad/1st year grad school are no longer as important. People are going to be more interested in what you have achieved as a graduate student, not when you were just starting out. Of course, having a fellowship still counts very positively, but they are going to be far more interested in what your LORs say, what publications you've completed, what your current body of work is like. At this stage, it just matters that you got an award of this calibre, not whether you got it from NSF or NDSEG.

Therefore, I would choose the award that has the most benefits to you (directly or indirectly), instead of the "name".

Good luck with that! It's worth trying, but as I wrote above about the weirdness of tuition, this might not be possible. In addition, I find that many well-funded private schools purposely set a fixed stipend level for everyone, to avoid competition, so that they won't raise your stipend (however, you might be able to get your advisor to commit $X towards a research fund for you etc.). In my program, the only way you will get paid above the fixed stipend rate is if you win a fellowship that pays all of your tuition and that fellowship also pays you a stipend level higher than the current standard stipend rate. Then, the school won't "take away" money from your stipend and you get to keep the extra. 

 

On 4/26/2016 at 10:48 PM, HanBWW said:

In that case - I had one more thing I thought of to add. While it looks equally good on your CV to have either grant - a thing to remember is that usually when you give talks etc. in school your PI will introduce you as a NSF or NDSEG fellow. The grant will also be on every poster you present and every talk you give. So if you think one is more prestigious/has more name recognition there is a realistic reason to choose that one. I vote NSF

 

Really great responses! I think the helped put everything in perspective for me. Thanks again for so much help!