<p>The language is vague by saying “most of our students are supported by assistantships and fellowships…” but realistically, well-structured or established graduate programs rarely accept students without fellowships/assistantships. That’s what makes them so competitive. I’m sure if you called UNC to ask and double check they’d clarify that all accepted students received funding.</p>
<p>That’s what I’ve been doing (again, for bio) and all program coordinators seem to say what I just pointed out above.</p>
<p>^^The language is vague by saying "most of our students are supported by assistantships and fellowships…
That means exactly as it says! Times have changed and many PUBLIC University systems are under extreme funding stress. It IS wise not to ACCEPT an offer into a PHD program WITHOUT funding, but that does NOT mean that offers of acceptance ALWAYS are fully funded.</p>
<p>I have known a few people who have been accepted to top programs without a funding offer - one took it (UT Austin?) with the expectation that they could work their way into a TA or RA within a couple of years (he did). The rest wisely turned them down.</p>
<p>Also, if you are accepted without funding you are also accepted without obligations. I have external funding (through my company), and as a result I have neither teaching nor research obligations. I take classes, and do my research - that’s it, no proofreading my advisor’s papers, no teaching his classes, no doing his research for him. The downside to this (for this interested in a career in academia) is that I will graduate with fewer publications than my peers, but that is fine with me.</p>
<p>I know if you wind up getting an outside fellowship (NSF/NDSEG/NIH/etc) after you were rejected from a school you can still get in, so it could be very likely these schools are just offering acceptance with the hope you’ll get one of these fellowships, and you’ll decide to take it to their school.</p>
<p>The NSF GRF DOES come to you personally. You get that $30,000 paid to you through the school by NSF. It doesn’t go to your research group or your advisor. They do get a “free RA” in the sense that they personally don’t have to pay for you, so they can hire another GRA or just keep that money. But the NSF GRF is a personal use stipend; it does NOT go to your research group or your advisor. The only money that you don’t see is the $10,500 honorarium that goes to the school to pay for part of your tuition and fees. The school usually covers the rest.</p>
<p>Also, you don’t find out about the NSF GRF until April. I have one, and it’s usually the first week in April. I also have a different experience from b@er!um; my committee’s comments were primarily about my research proposal, and they didn’t comment at all about my grades or recommendation letters. However, I also applied at a different stage in my career - I was a second-year graduate student when I got it, and I was in psychology.</p>
<p>I was a second year graduate student when I got it and my reviewers’ negative comments were directed at my “poor academic record”; I had a 3.5 (graduate GPA) when I applied, so no surprise there. I had multiple publications in my proposal field by the time I applied, though.</p>
<p>How does the research proposed in a NSF GRF application, if approved, fit with the research already underway in a lab where the grantee is accepted into a PhD program? Wouldn’t there be a conflict between time spent on the research in the NSF grant and the research of one’s PI, and how is this typically resolved?</p>
<p>You’re not required to do the research you propose in the GRFP application, so if you aren’t already in a lab at the time you win the award, you might simply do another project.</p>
<p>After reading juillet’s post, I feel compelled to elaborate on why I said that “research proposals don’t seem to matter” (in my discipline) and “it’s all about letters of recommendations” (in my discipline). I said those things for two reasons: First, that’s what I had heard prior to applying. But more importantly, I couldn’t have been awarded a fellowship based on anything other than my letters of recommendation. </p>
<p>All of my NSF reviews spoke at lengths about my research proposal, but in a very superficial way. (“beautifully presented”, did not elaborate on broader impact outside of the field, did not explain why my proposed graduate institution would be the best place to pursue this work…) To whatever extent the reviewers read it, they only seemed to be paying attention to format, not content. None of my reviewers noticed that the premise of my proposed work was blatantly self-contradictory!</p>
<p>I had no publications (noted in all three reviews), my transcript was strong yet not outstanding, and I BSed my research proposal the night before it was due. My letters of recommendation, on the other hand, were strong enough to get me from a good-but-not-amazing liberal arts college into the tippy top PhD programs in my discipline. My undergraduate background was an outlier among NSF recipients too. There were exactly four fellowships awarded in my specialty; the other three were undergraduates at Harvard, Princeton and the University of Chicago. All three were published and had won national or international awards prior to their NSF applications.</p>
<p>To be honest, I was not at all expecting to receive an NSF fellowship (or fancy grad school offers) and I got extremely lucky the way that things turned out.</p>