RaaR Posted February 25, 2010 Share Posted February 25, 2010 I just got a letter today saying that my application has been forwarded to the National Committees. This is my second year off between my MA and PhD so I'm an external. The letter says they received 825 applications and forwarded 230 (the maximum number that can be advanced). Do any of you know what percentage is usually successful after this first cut? OK, that's great! This means that first-round decisions (for external applicants) are out! Where are you located if I may ask? By the way, congrats on this; I believe that about 50-60% of the forwarded applications win an award, so now you stand a pretty good chance. Was there any score card provided? What were your scores? I'm just wondering what's the minimum required to be forwarded to the national competition. Oh well, I guess now I have to sit and wait for my results. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fritzlechat Posted February 26, 2010 Share Posted February 26, 2010 Hi, Thanks! I got a letter in the mail. My heart skipped a beat even though I know it's too early for the final result! I'm in Montreal and I did my MA at McGill (where I had an MA SSHRC). There's no score. It just says that there's an A-list that gets forwarded and a B-list that doesn't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RaaR Posted February 26, 2010 Share Posted February 26, 2010 OK I just heard that decision letters (that is, first round decisions for external applicants only) were all mailed out on Wednesday. All of us internationals should, therefore, be getting them sometime next week. Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mudlark Posted February 27, 2010 Share Posted February 27, 2010 haha, yes, that would be terrible wouldn't it? I applied to a business discipline - but through the regular process - and i think i have a strong application. What i'm worried about is that they will see business, and give me a must-stay-in-canada busines SSHRC rather than a regular SSHRC. Make sense? Or am I just misunderstanding the process. Ah, now I understand. Yeah, that sounds tough. Maybe seeing that you're at an American school will help? Sounds like there's nothing much to do but hope. Thinking good thoughts for you. And for the people wondering about success rates, you can look through way more information than is healthy here: http://www.sshrc.ca/site/winning-recherche_subventionnee/stats-statistiques/program-programme-eng.aspx SSHRC publishes excel sheets with the awards broken down by province, institution, field, gender, etc etc etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EmmaJoy Posted March 3, 2010 Share Posted March 3, 2010 It's true, the letters to external PhD applicants are out. My partner and I are in the UK, and he just received his letter. He made it on to the next round! I'm not a SSHRC applicant this year (got stupid lucky last year), but this forum was my lifeline during that terrible waiting process and somehow when spring starts to arrive, I crave two things: info on the SSHRC competition, and Roll Up The Rim To Win... Here's hoping this year's results come out on time! EJ. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hypatia Posted March 3, 2010 Author Share Posted March 3, 2010 ...My partner and I are in the UK, and he just received his letter.... Eeeeee I won't be home for a few hours so can't check my mail!! Can't...focus...knowing...it's...there........ He made it on to the next round! Congrats!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hypatia Posted March 3, 2010 Author Share Posted March 3, 2010 Wooo! Got home, got my mail, and was on the A-list and forwarded to the national competition. Yay! What is this not mentioning score though?! Useless... : ) Best of luck to all! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Firled Posted March 4, 2010 Share Posted March 4, 2010 I am a third year doctoral student in the U.S. who was B-listed last year and just received a letter informing me that my application has been forwarded to the National competition. No idea what my score was this year though. Good luck everyone! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RaaR Posted March 4, 2010 Share Posted March 4, 2010 I am an international PhD student, and was A-listed as well. It says 230 applications were forwarded. Looking at results from past years I do not recall seeing such a high number of applications submitted, not to mention applications forwarded. 230 is considerably higher than past years. I wonder if this means that the 50% success rate will still be maintained. Hopefully yes... but starting to think perhaps not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EmmaJoy Posted March 4, 2010 Share Posted March 4, 2010 Wooo! Got home, got my mail, and was on the A-list and forwarded to the national competition. Yay! What is this not mentioning score though?! Useless... : ) Best of luck to all! Congrats!! All best in the next stages It's sort of frustrating that there's no score this year... Last year those provided endless opportunities for frantic attempts at analysis and prediction. Thing is, the scores didn't really tell us much - they changed so much in the second round, and the scores weren't consistent across groups of applications (and I'm still not sure how those groupings worked...). Maybe this year's format is saving us stress (asked with great hopefulness)? EJ. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mudlark Posted March 5, 2010 Share Posted March 5, 2010 Maybe SSHRC was swamped with requests from last year's direct-to-Ottawa A-Listers complaining about a severe dip in the quality of their school work directly after receiving their scores. It's not so bad... in 6 weeks at the best and 10 at the worst we'll know the only score that matters. monkeefugg and tarski 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phalène Posted March 8, 2010 Share Posted March 8, 2010 I'm on the A list as well - waiting really is torture! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phalène Posted March 15, 2010 Share Posted March 15, 2010 About 7 more weeks of waiting to go... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saharel Posted March 15, 2010 Share Posted March 15, 2010 I just got a letter today saying that my application has been forwarded to the National Committees. This is my second year off between my MA and PhD so I'm an external. The letter says they received 825 applications and forwarded 230 (the maximum number that can be advanced). Do any of you know what percentage is usually successful after this first cut? Actually after the 230 cut, they give the award to 166 or 167 candidates depending on funding. So it is more like a 73% success rate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RaaR Posted March 16, 2010 Share Posted March 16, 2010 Actually after the 230 cut, they give the award to 166 or 167 candidates depending on funding. So it is more like a 73% success rate. How do you know they intend to give 166/7 awards to external applicants? This is much higher than previous years. I would actually persume that because such a high number of applications were forwarded there will be a lower success rate this year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NorthernStar Posted March 17, 2010 Share Posted March 17, 2010 man, every time I notice there's a new post on this thread, my heart skips a beat! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EmmaJoy Posted March 18, 2010 Share Posted March 18, 2010 How do you know they intend to give 166/7 awards to external applicants? This is much higher than previous years. I would actually persume that because such a high number of applications were forwarded there will be a lower success rate this year. Yeah, last year there were 256 forwarded (thanks for that helpful link earlier on this page!) in the external doctoral category, and 148 awarded, so an A-list success rate of 58%. A jump of twenty awards this year would be fantastic, but doesn't feel likely... Any more details on where the projections for numbers of awards is from? Still counting down... EJ. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RaaR Posted March 19, 2010 Share Posted March 19, 2010 Yeah, last year there were 256 forwarded (thanks for that helpful link earlier on this page!) in the external doctoral category, and 148 awarded, so an A-list success rate of 58%. A jump of twenty awards this year would be fantastic, but doesn't feel likely... Any more details on where the projections for numbers of awards is from? Still counting down... EJ. Well, to be precise last year only 126 were forwarded (out of only 386 applications), out of which only 82 won an award (this was 65% success rate for forwarded applications last year, but if the same number of awards stays this year [82 awards] we'd have only 35% success rate). The numbers presented in the former message were taken from tab #2 (institution to award the PhD) whereas we (external applicants) should look at tab #1 (institution of affiliation at time of application). Under tab #2 (in the foregin column) are also applicants who initially applied through a Canadian University (but have mentioned they want to take the award at a foregin university). We can see from the above that this year the number of applications (for external applicants) doubled, and the number of applications forwarded was doubled as well. Let's just hope that the number of awards will double also (to around 160s) so the success rate will be maintained; otherwise we'd land somewhere around the 35ish% success rate, which is the lowest ever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mudlark Posted March 20, 2010 Share Posted March 20, 2010 (edited) We can see from the above that this year the number of applications (for external applicants) doubled, and the number of applications forwarded was doubled as well. Let's just hope that the number of awards will double also (to around 160s) so the success rate will be maintained; otherwise we'd land somewhere around the 35ish% success rate, which is the lowest ever. I highly doubt that this will happen. The number of awards has been going down in the past few years, not up. The "business related" funding is a separate pile of money from the general awards budget, and will go *poof* when the rest of the economic stimulus plan is finished. Where would the money come from to give 80 more people $80,000 - $105,000? (Assuming all external applicants are applying before their first year, and will win full awards.) That's potentially eight MILLION dollars. If the SSHRC grad awards budget went up that much, we would have heard about it. Edited March 20, 2010 by mudlark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eagle-bear Posted March 21, 2010 Share Posted March 21, 2010 I'm in the first year of my Masters at U of T, looking to get SSHRC funding for my second year. I got forwarded along to Ottawa, but have heard a lot of different things about the success rate at this stage for the Masters competition. Pete Grav, the SSHRC-writing guru over here, said that generally the success rate is "extremely high," which is corroborated by a few other people on this forum and one person I know who claimed the success rate was over 90% (!). Some other people cautioned that this was far less certain, but I wonder whether they're confusing this scholarship with either the PhD-level competition or the NSERC Masters competition. I've been in this nebulous indecision-zone between wanting to buy a new computer and fearing I'll have to pawn it to pay for my research or something. Anyone have any more definitive answers to this one? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tarski Posted March 21, 2010 Share Posted March 21, 2010 Eagle-bear: this is what my university's external scholarship guy told me when I asked about a master's application getting forwarded: "You are virtually guaranteed a CGS. Of the several hundred we have nominated since the competition began, none has been rejected by SSHRC." In the coming weeks I'll find out if he was too optimistic . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mudlark Posted March 22, 2010 Share Posted March 22, 2010 Eagle-bear: this is what my university's external scholarship guy told me when I asked about a master's application getting forwarded: "You are virtually guaranteed a CGS. Of the several hundred we have nominated since the competition began, none has been rejected by SSHRC." In the coming weeks I'll find out if he was too optimistic . I agree. My old grad chair described the MA SSHRC vetting process in Ottawa as "Going down a list and making sure that you're actually Canadian and a graduate student." Of course, the year I won mine, I wouldn't believe it until the letter actually arrived. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tarski Posted March 22, 2010 Share Posted March 22, 2010 Thanks for the confirmation, mudlark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
euges116 Posted March 24, 2010 Share Posted March 24, 2010 Okay, so is the SSHRC sending out results already? I'm slightly confused. It seems that the NSERC people are receiving (some) notifications/results, and to the best of my knowledge, the NSERC and SSHRC are basically the same thing, except one is for the natural sciences but the other is for the social sciences. I'm currently in a PhD program btw, and thus am a "current grad student" application for SSHRC's doctoral awards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thepoorstockinger Posted March 24, 2010 Share Posted March 24, 2010 Okay, so is the SSHRC sending out results already? I'm slightly confused. It seems that the NSERC people are receiving (some) notifications/results, and to the best of my knowledge, the NSERC and SSHRC are basically the same thing, except one is for the natural sciences but the other is for the social sciences. I'm currently in a PhD program btw, and thus am a "current grad student" application for SSHRC's doctoral awards. NSERC and SSHRC are two totally separate funding bodies and their decisions are not at all connected. So I wouldn't base SSHRC timelines on what NSERC is doing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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