<p>My NSF application is COMPLETED and SUBMITTED! What a splendid feeling. Those essays were quite brutal, I must say. Anyone else applying this year?</p>
<p>Not me! I applied last year, and didn’t feel like going through the whole gauntlet again this year.</p>
<p>I did edit a friend’s essays, though. 
Does that count? It took a long time.</p>
<p>Yeah, I definitely can’t blame you for not going through all that again. If I don’t win, I don’t know if I’ll have the same motivation next year I did this first time around. Does friend = fiance? </p>
<p>How well can one live in Cambridge with a $25,000-ish stipend?</p>
<p>No, friend is really friend. Fiance won’t be doing a PhD – just a masters – and, lord, he hasn’t even written his SOP yet.</p>
<p>The two of us are living on only my stipend this year, since he’s finishing up undergrad, and it’s been okay. Rent is definitely the biggest concern, although housing prices have been going down somewhat (and we live in super-cheap student housing anyway). I haven’t heard anybody in my program really complain about money – none of us are living the high life, but we have enough to live, and I think most people are able to put a little bit of money in savings each month, too.</p>
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<p>Yeah, contrast it with undergrad, or getting a professional degree like an MBA, where the vast majority of students are getting a “negative stipend” in the form of tuition they have to pay. A 25k stipend may not be much, but it’s worlds better than actually having to pay for your degree. If you wonder how somebody can survive living in Cambridge on a 25k stipend, just take a look at all of those MIT and Harvard undergrads are living on a “negative 30k” stipend.</p>
<p>Thanks. I wasn’t asking <em>how</em> one could live on that stipend, Sakky, I was just curious about the quality of life one would have without going into debt. Mollie, if you and your fiance are able to survive on your single stipend, I certainly have nothing to worry about. That’s good to know. I live in a pretty small town, so I’m not too familiar with living costs in major cities. My only experience was living in NYC over a summer, and everything was outrageously expensive…</p>
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<p>Well, you know that the reason why certain places are more expensive than others has to do with supply and demand. Essentially, NYC is expensive because a lot of people want to live there, because there are a lot of cool things to do there. That’s why beachfront property is expensive - because a lot of people want to live on the beach. So expensive places are expensive because they tend to provide a higher quality of life. {If they didn’t provide such a high quality of life, then nobody would want to live there, hence, driving the prices down.}</p>
<p>Certainly, you’re not going to be living a life of luxury as a doctoral student. But when you figure in all of the cheap/free/included stuff, like free use of the university gym, free access to university transportation systems, discounted student accesss to public transportation, included health insurance, free use of an office, free computer labs, access to cheap student housing, periodic free food (MIT and Harvard are loaded with events that come with free food), all kinds of university discounts, etc. I would say that the student lifestyle is not that bad. Boston/Cambridge is expensive, but it’s also a very vibrant town with a lot of interesting things to do, especially for young people.</p>
<p>NSF app completed and submitted as well. I guess we’ll be competing for the 1000 awards offered, addwit! Best of luck.</p>
<p>Are you applying to any other fellowships, such as the NDSEG?</p>
<p>Yes, yes, Sakky…I took economics 101. I understand the reason why many major cities are outrageously expensive, I just want to know how well I can live in one with a 25k salary. Mollie gave a good example of how it shouldn’t be a problem in Cambridge. </p>
<p>pippyvan, thanks, best of luck to you too. What is your field? I’m in materials science. I did two NSF REU programs…I wonder if these look particularly good for this fellowship… I’m also applying for the NDSEG. Since I finally finished the NSF proposal, I can now use that as a template to write the essay for the NDSEG. That application is far less painless. My intended research has many military applications, so hopefully they’ll look favorably upon my application. It’s a shame we have to wait so long to see the results for all this work!</p>
<p>I’m doing some final revisions of my essays and looking over my proposed research plan with my advisor. It does kind of suck that we have to wait so long to find out. I think they should just give it to all of us for having the work ethic to spend all this time.</p>
<p>addwit,
my field is BME. I read somewhere that the awardee % is 5% or so. It’s a lot more competitive than I initially thought. Do you mean the NDSEG app is far less painful? The big essay is only 3000 characters, which can either be a good or bad thing. It does suck to wait so long to wait for the results, but they probably get a lot of applications.</p>
<p>Yeah, from 2003-2006, only 6% of NDSEG applicants won the award. <a href=“Page not found”>Page not found;
<p>The NDSEG is far less painful than the NSF because the NDSEG has only one short essay, instead of the three somewhat long essays for the NSF. The NDSEG essay will also be very simple to write (relatively) after writing the research proposal for the NSF. </p>
<p>NDSEG gets about 2500 applicants each year, so yeah, I understand why it takes so long. That doesn’t remove the anxiety though! </p>
<p>I wonder how much the NSF and NDSEG people talk to each other… They’re basically nextdoor neighbors. Given the fact they are two of the most popular fellowships with decisions given out at the same time, I assume there is some dialogue between them. They probably don’t want to overlap TOO many awards.</p>
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<p>Rent is by far your biggest expense, but you can have your own room in a shared apartment for $600-$800 per month even in pretty expensive cities like Cambridge. A big advantage of living in a city is that you don’t need to pay for a car (insurance, gas, maintenance all add up fast). Assuming you get a monthly stipend of $1500 (after taxes), that’s $700-$900 leftover for food, entertainment, gummi bears, and everything else per month. That’s enough to live quite well, as long as you don’t have to pay for kids or buy household furniture/expensive electronic appliances.</p>
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<p>I was always under the impression that they operated pretty independently (even though, you are right, they seem to be closely-affiliated), because it is definitely possible to win and accept both fellowships. Most people I know who have won the NDSEG have also won the NSF (because the NDSEG is more selective). I downloaded the list of winners from 2006 and wrote a script to find the overlaps in NSF/NDSEG winners …</p>
<p>Num. NDSEG winners: 190
Num. NSF winners: 907
Number of joint NDSEG/NSF winners: 47</p>
<p>This means that approximately 25% of NDSEG winners also won the NSF in 2006. That percent is a bit lower than I expected … interesting.</p>
<p>Here are the results for 2005:</p>
<p>Num. NDSEG winners: 180
Num. NSF winners: 1024
Number of joint NDSEG/NSF winners: 49</p>
<p>~27% of NDSEG winners also won the NSF in 2005.</p>
<p>(Ok, I really need to stop procrastinating now…)</p>
<p>Thanks for the good data, pg. I guess we can’t really say whether they limit the NDSEG winners to ~1/4 winning the NSF as well, or if that just arises naturally. NSF stresses broader impacts much more heavily than the NDSEG, so it’s possible the unexpectedly low dual-winners percentage is partly due to that. The NDSEG may also pass on academically superior candidates for those with more appealing military research, which would be the reason fields like naval architecture, for example, have extremely high winning rates. Taking that into account, ~25% sounds about right, but I just refuse to believe the two organizations don’t talk to each other…</p>
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Does Angry count as a kid? Or just as an expensive appliance?</p>
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Pgbovine, can you explain a little bit about the logistics? I think the NSF website states it cannot be used with other fellowships; it’s pretty vague, though. Can NSF and NDSEG stack or be used in succession? Does an award in either or both reduce or entirely supplant normal dept. funding? TIA</p>
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<p>According to the current rules, you can defer the NSF fellowship for up to 3 years. You cannot defer the NDSEG. If you do receive both, the best deal is to use the NDSEG for your first 3 years and then switch over to NSF for your 4th and 5th years, giving you 5 years of fellowship funding. (That’s full tuition + stipend!) The reason why you can’t use NSF for your 6th year is that all of your NSF funds must be used up within 5 years of your award date (but you can defer for up to 3 years).</p>
<p>From what I’ve heard, you couldn’t do this until recently; in the mid-90’s at least, you had to turn down one fellowship and just take the other one.</p>
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<p>The fellowship is a substitute for your normal department funding, because it pays for your full tuition and provides you with a stipend that is probably higher than what your school would pay you.</p>
<p>i was under the impression that if you win both, you must pick one. There’s a cap on how much you can make as a grad student, and i think winning both and accepting both puts you over this cap. The NSF and NDSEG fellowships are only for 3 years of the beginning of your predoctoral studies. Not for years 5+.</p>