grady

Sorry to hear that. Hope it can motivate you to excel even more. Do you wish to share your publications/application summary ?

Sorry to hear that. You sound like a strong candidate. As you say, you still have a pre-approved IRDF however and hope you can make use of it. In which domain did you get your phd?

I am not sure but I think the only way you can know your exact ranking is to ask for details concerning your evaluation (in june) and you shall receive it in june or july (so after may anyway). I think "meritorious rejection" means that you almost got it but there might be between 5 or 50++ persons before you and only NSERC knows that (until june or july).

"the more scholarships a university is allocated, the more turnover as well and a better chance of applicants that didn't quite make it getting 'bumped up'" You are right in the case a university has several accepted candidates, and some of them refuses the award for any reason. In a related question, I am not sure there is a "minimum" quota allocated for each university that NSERC would try to fulfill. My understanding is that universities can present a "maximum" number of candidates (fixed by NSERC), but let's say only 30% of the candidates allocated are selected for a scholarship, then NSERC won't try to boost that to 60% for a specific university just because it has more money. I think it just selects the best candidates possible, without regard to the university allocations. Of course, we are all just speculating I guess, since it is not really clear on the web site.