<p>Does anyone know whether or not it is possible to be admitted to a PhD graduate program after being rejected if you receive an NSF fellowship? I am thinking specifically electrical engineering PhD programs.
I know that everyone says you can go to any school if you get the NSF, but how exactly does that work if you are already rejected?</p>
<p>Any help would be appreciated!
Thanks!</p>
<p>If there were specific profs you wanted to work with, email them just to let them know.</p>
<p>It has certainly happened in the past.</p>
<p>Can and does happen. After all, you’re free now! They don’t have to fund you, they just have to consider you a good enough student!</p>
<p>A friend tried that with Berkeley and got a response along the following lines: we cannot offer you admission at this point, but we would be happy to have you enroll next year if you don’t touch the NSF fellowship in the meantime.</p>
<p>Another data point.</p>
<p>It’s really great for getting off of waitlists, but yes, it can even reverse rejections. Someone on this board did that with Michigan EECS and that’s a top 10 program.</p>
<p>Thanks!
I’m dying to go to UCSF’s biomedical sciences program, but my boyfriend just got rejected from UC Berkeley EECS. He got into some great EECS PhD programs (Michigan, UPenn, Georgia Tech, waitlist at MIT), just not the one near the school that I want!
I guess now I just have to keep my fingers crossed that he gets the NSF!</p>
<p>Just FYI, he can cross MIT off the list - I don’t think they’ve actually admitted anyone off the wait list in years. Apparently, no one willing to turn down MIT ever applies. Still, he should be congratulated - even getting waitlisted there is a sign of real academic accomplishment.</p>
<p>MIT EECS’s yield is actually only 60% in good years, as plenty of people turn it down for Berkeley and Stanford in EE and CMU as well in CS. But still, they almost never need to pull more than 1-2 off the waitlist of 50. I’m on the MIT EECS waitlist too, and doubt the NSF will matter there. They’re basically done in the first round every year. I think the same is true of Berkeley EECS, which doesn’t even have a waitlist. NSF can’t save you everywhere, but it will work at most places most of the time.</p>
<p>I agree with someone earlier in the thread that said e-mail specific professors you’re interested in working with. They’ll have a lot more pull just just letting random admissions chair person know you won an NSF.</p>
<p>Also, I seem to remember Berkeley Materials Science not having a waitlist either, as they didn’t e-mail me my rejection until about a month and a half after I had accepted elsewhere.</p>
<p>He actually just got accepted off the waitlist! I guess someone declined right away.</p>