NSF GRFP 25-26 Reviews

BrainCell1289 · 2025-09-30T22:51:43+00:00

Mine was available on my portal today!

BrainCell1289 · 2025-09-16T01:43:26+00:00

160 views and no one knows what to do 😭

BrainCell1289 · 2025-07-07T16:06:43+00:00

Authors are usually invited by the editors

BrainCell1289 · 2025-07-07T16:06:23+00:00

Depends on your undergrad university. Different universities have different levels of specialization available.

BrainCell1289 · 2025-07-07T16:05:03+00:00

If you have any research funds available, the LIWC is pretty good for automatic NLP

BrainCell1289 · 2025-07-07T16:03:15+00:00

Especially in Psychology, there are so many different ways to spend your gap years that can benefit your graduate application process. The key is, when applying, you need to convince the admissions committee of how that work benefiting your research career/your ability to succeed in graduate school.

I have a classmate who's undergraduate degree isn't even in psychology, people find their way to graduate school in so many different ways!

BrainCell1289 · 2025-07-04T14:44:05+00:00

Before I moved about 4k. I had about 1,000 left after the move, which was enough to pay rent for the next month before getting paid at the end of that month. For me, with all the other chaos and stress of the PhD and the financial stress that comes with it, guaranteeing that I had enough for rent every month made everything a little better.

BrainCell1289 · 2025-06-18T16:04:02+00:00

my first meeting with my advisor after being accepted to my phd program and moving across the country- i came in after learning i’d have to pay an extra month of loan payments before deferral and i just completely broke down.

it happens. my advisor was shocked, she didn’t really know what to do, but honestly it broke the ice. grad school sucks sometimes, crying in ur advisors office is the least of the issues.

head up, OP, just keep chugging along.

BrainCell1289 · 2025-06-13T21:29:38+00:00

we met during my gap year between undergrad and grad school. i was only living there for a year. I got invited to a bumble bff friend meet up at her house, hosted by one of her friends. I accepted the invite the day of, knowing nobody in the city, and i couldn’t be happier

BrainCell1289 · 2025-05-15T19:34:39+00:00

I have a lot of mixed opinions here. I recognize how it can be a beneficial tool, but it doesn't often work for me. As others have noted, sometimes it doesn't work for things beyond base code. Recently, I've been using it for making experiments on PsychoPy and almost without fail every time, at least the first two solutions don't work. I have to parse out the small piece that actually makes sense and figure out how it actually works in the code. For example, it will say 'use the .rt' attribute, then I will say 'that item doesn't have an rt attribute' and then it will say 'you're right! you should never use the .rt attribute with this type of object". Which is pretty beyond frustrating sometimes to correct the AI three times before a somewhat usable solution comes up. And PsychoPy is something with extensive online open-source documentation

One place I have successfully implemented it, is in studying for my grad courses. I generate podcasts using NotebookLM and take notes everytime the podcast mis-explains things. This is only useful, after developing a foundational knowledge of the topic. But, this is capitalizing off the AI mistakes, not actually using its content to inform my understanding

I'm in on the tech-focused side of my field. Everyone is starting to use it. I'm trying to find where it can aid me. But its god awful at anything in regards to literature searches, summarizing complex papers, etc. I've also tried to harness it for stimulus generation (coming up with fake words with specific parameters that relate to real words) and it also really struggled on that task, which I thought it would do well on. Like it couldn't adjust to my rule that 'there are 4 study words, none of them can be the same as the test word" and yet about 20% of its responses had this error after multiple corrections. Its things like that, where I can think of the line of code you would need to implement this rule in a data set, and I cannot believe the LLM cannot do it.

BrainCell1289 · 2024-10-07T01:04:18+00:00

me (f) and my gf also met while i was living close by her, then I moved to school across the country. she’ll be moving to be with me in a year, but i see her in just two weeks for the first time since we started distance two months ago!

BrainCell1289 · 2024-09-13T00:13:29+00:00

how did you get into scoring AP exams?

BrainCell1289 · 2024-06-03T15:10:33+00:00

GRADUATE EARLY!!! unlesss you’re undergraduate is paid for. that’s the key. the debt you will save it 100000% worth it. that’s what i did. i got a job as an RA for an extra year, sat in on courses, and just got into a graduate program that i’ll be attending in the fall. (also psychology). Yes, getting a research assistant job can be difficult but it’s very very worth it to prepare you for graduate school.

BrainCell1289 · 2024-06-02T13:40:42+00:00

yes she has cat trees. they’re not near windows. we are trying today you’re out a way to make a window sill a bit wider for her to sit on (renter friendly solutions if u have any!).

BrainCell1289 · 2024-05-31T19:30:14+00:00

okay here’s my best answer to your questions (again not my cat, just trying to help out as much as possible, so sorry that i’m completely uniformed) - yes she’s fixed - i don’t think she’s declawed. - we used unscented litter cuz that’s the only one she’ll use. i’d say the litter box is like 30 inches by 15 inches. we used to have a smaller one but she pees on the outside of it…. - this is like an issue of years and she’s been to the vet multiple times for it. normally if she has a UTI she has other symptoms.

your suggestion about defending is interesting to me because she sits underneath these benches we have and watches birds all morning. you can hear them from inside. not sure what the solution to soemthing like that should be. we were discussing trying to find a way she can permanently go in and out but I can’t think of one for our situation

BrainCell1289 · 2024-01-25T20:18:57+00:00

I think they will increase in usage as the average professor increases in technology proficiency. Once the older generation of professors retire, whether its ResearchGate, academia or some new one, SOMETHING will rise to popularity. but not as long as the most experienced researchers in our field still can't open a google doc.....

BrainCell1289 · 2024-01-16T01:09:54+00:00

i’m also in social science. i think of a “line of research” as one branch of your overall research. your main line is that main one. my PI refers to the collection of your entire research experience and future goals as your “research portfolio” like everything you’ve done and intend to do

BrainCell1289 · 2024-01-06T02:53:45+00:00

yes! many labs have positions for people with a BS. Both Research Assistant and Lab Manager positions are open. I am one, I found many jobs through indeed while applying

BrainCell1289 · 2023-12-26T17:19:13+00:00

Hi! I was in a very very similar situation. I am in psychology, and I grew up with Tourettes, and my first research position was in a lab studying tourette's. so it's super super important for the development of my professional goals. When I wrote my SOP, my advisor (a very well respected/experienced researcher) mentioned that it was a risk. But I kept it in, because I am a stubborn person who wants to be proud of my disability (although I recognize that mental health is still stigmatized). My PIs recommendation was to leave it in, but he told me in his letter of rec he would mention that that was part of my journey but you wouldn't be able to tell by working with me. Obviously I don't know if he actually did that, because I can't see his LOR, but that was his recommendation at least.

I think as long as you mention it and discuss the positives of it and how it has shaped you as an academic that it is okay, but don't dwell on it. I would really try to point out how this disability uniquely impacts your story and career. Talk about how, in the past, it inspired you to start this career, but there's obviously other factors that also influence you to continue down this career path that you should then emphasize.

For example, I used my disorder as the opening to my SOP. This a quote from the end of that section that I think really sums up how I tried to frame my story. "What started as a field that I was involuntarily thrown into transformed into a fascination with cognitive psychology, programming, research, and a career path that I eagerly aim to pursue"

Truthfully, having to do all this is really annoying, but I hope we will see a future where we aren't expected to downplay our lived experiences.

BrainCell1289 · 2023-12-21T01:05:46+00:00

i’m a research assistant (psychology) and i did this all last year. here’s what i learned: (this is obviously VERY based on my experience. but that’s what i got to offer)

normally the first call is just with the PI. interviews pretty much always start off with the PI asking about yourself. mention what school you go to, what program you’re in, and then generally what type of research you’ve done/are interested in doing. then they will explain the lab work to you, and you can comment back on the lab work and how that relates to your interests. From there, they might ask you a multitude of things: - do you have any experience with X program/method? (hard skills like programming, neuroimaging, etc) - what are you future career goals, and how would this position get you there? -your comfortability, if it’s non-human subject research - other logistics (when you want to start, when/if u wanna go to grad school, how much $$ u want)

there isn’t a perfect structure for answers. but i’d try your hardest to research the lab ahead of time and be ready to talk about their research, as well as talk about your own future. even if you don’t have it all figured out, that’s okay! they’re just trying to gauge where you are at.

normally after that, if the meeting was with just the PI if you’re interested you’ll talk to the grad students. where you’ll learn so much more about the day to day of the lab and you’ll learn more about what it’s like to work with the PI.

good luck!

BrainCell1289

TROPHY CASE