NSF GRFP Fellowship
I am fortunate enough to have received an NSF GRFP fellowship in 2021!
I applied before graduate school and did not win, but applied again in my first year of a PhD at Carnegie Mellon and won! (you can apply once in undergrad/before graduate school and once as a first or second year graduate student in a PhD program)
I found Mallory Ladd and Alex Lang had great advice and essay examples, but I also worried that they had some success/survivorship bias by primarily featuring essays from people who won the award. Below I’m going to list what changed between my essays from the year that I didn’t win and the year that I did.
Research Statement:
Talking to my advisors gave me a much better plan for what I actually wanted to research, so my research statement had a clearer vision. Before graduate school I had a vague sense of what I wanted to research, but hadn’t dived deep enough to write about the little details; my lack of a tangible plan probably came through in my statement the first year. If you’re not yet in graduate school, spend at least ten hours doing a literature review: really know your field and the gaps in research.
I opened with an overarching sentence on the whole topic, basically a short abstract. This told the reader right away the full concept. I then started with an anecdote, explaining why my topic has a broader impact.
I had a timeline. Although not mandatory, making a year by year timeline helped succinctly demonstrate my research plan. It also helped me figure out where the gaps in my plan were by actually writing down what I would be doing!
I had a graph of preliminary results. I hadn’t started researching the topic full-time, but I added a preliminary result from a few hours of work on the topic to anchor the research statement in an image and prove the viability of my proposal. The reviewers have to sift through so many essays, an image can really stand out for them!
I bolded my most important sentences to anchor the reviewers to their key take-aways.
I ended it with broader impact to tie it all together.
Personal Statement:
I wrote my research statement first, so I could be sure to connect my personal statement long-term goals back to the overall research goals of my project.
I bolded every sentence that was a key take-away from my personal statement (about 5 in total). This seems like overkill, but the reviewers don’t have a lot of time to read and re-read essays, so having key sentences for them to review can help!
I made it very clear that my past experiences set me up to complete the project and completing the project will help me towards my long-term goals.
Overall Application:
I chose the correct topic field in the application. This sounds trivial, but my topic is somewhat inter-disciplinary and depending on which field I chose as my primary really impacted the perspective it was read from. I made sure to choose the primary field that give reviewers most able understand my research statement.
I had strong recommendations. I told my recommenders early, reminded them often, and also provided them with my research statement to better speak to what I was writing about. This helped.
My work and research experiences were stronger than my undergraduate GPA. Neither of these changed between the year I applied before grad school and my first year in graduate school. Instead, my personal statement on what I learned from these experiences was better written.
I did not have any publications at the time I submitted, but I had made an effort to attend talks and conferences, work in the field, and volunteer in STEM education. There are ways to standout as a committed researcher besides having a long publication list. I was worried that my lack of publications as a first year graduate student would preclude me from serious consideration, but it didn’t seem to impact it.
The last thing to remember is that whether you win or lose, there’s always a bit of luck involved. Everyone gets different reviewers; you may get reviewers excited about your topic, or you may not. You should make your application as competitive as possible, but if you don’t get it do not take it as a reflection of your worth or capabilities. I got rejected from one fellowship the day before I won the NSF GRFP with a review score of 5 Excellents & 1 Very Good. So a rejection today, doesn’t mean you won’t succeed tomorrow (literally in my case!)
Winning vs. Losing Essays and reviews
Year I won: Personal Statement - Research Statement - Reviews
Year I lost: Personal Statement - Research Statement - (E/E, VG/VG, G/F)
E = Excellent, VG = Very Good, G = Good, F = Fair
