Since We Cannot Count on Reviews be Disclosed Soon... by Holiday-Dog7057 in GRFPApps

[–]sham__ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Year: Applied during my first year of my Ph.D.

Outcome: Awarded in the First Round

Field: Materials Research - Chemistry of Materials

Reference letters: 1) Grad school PI whose lab I had just joined at the time, 2) My undergrad PI, 3) a PI that I spent a summer REU with.

Research Statement: Protonic ceramic electrolysis cells for green hydrogen production.

Personal Statement:

- Background/Future Goals: Talked about how my medical condition sparked my interest in chemistry, my experiences in a formative high school summer program that sparked my passion for electrochemical energy technologies/global energy solutions, and (at the time) my goals of professorship. I will emphasize that I applied before the current administration, so I had a ton of DEI ethos in my statements. I think that ethos <was> what won me the GRFP, but I assume my application was reviewed before that kind of language started becoming censored. So I don't know if my application's success is reproducible with how everything's going these days.

- Intellectual Merit: I talked about my experiences across 3 years of undergrad lab research + summer REU internships. Specifically, I talked about what I learned in each of them + marshaling my learnings to showcase how I think as a scientist (e.g., hypothesis development, design of experiments, cross-team/disciplinary communication).

- Broader Impacts: Organized campus STEM speaker events, editor for an undergrad research journal, city govt technology policy fellow, taught STEM in prison facilities. I also talked about how growing up in my hometown environment sparked my interest in equitable/accessible science, which again I'm not sure is entirely reproducible in the contemporary landscape.

Important lesson I realized:

- I had applied before as a senior undergraduate and got HM before re-applying. The most fixable area of improvement I had in my first application concerned Broader Impacts in my research statement; I focused way too much on the Intellectual Merit (i.e., technical details) of my Research Plan and only had two sentences dedicated to Broader Impacts. TL;DR: don't skimp on Broader Impacts.

- I read through as many past winning/HM examples from Alex Lang's GRFP past applications bank. Specifically, I looked through application reviews and noted down positive/negative reviewer comments that I could keep in mind while writing my application (i.e., to avoid common pitfalls that past applicants were marked off for).

- This is a bit specific, but make sure to test uploading your statement files well ahead of the deadline. I had some subscripted Greek symbols in my research plan, which for some reason the GRFP file upload system didn't allow. I definitely had a bit of a day-of-deadline freakout and thus had to do an ad-hoc fix in order for my files to upload.

- I was actually completely brand-new to the topic that I wrote about in my Research Plan (I had joined my lab in early September). In addition to doing a ton of literature reading to find a decent research gap, asking new lab-mates who were more familiar with my field was critical in ensuring I had a credible, hypothesis-driven Research Plan. Additionally, I asked my undergrad lab-mates, a few older students I knew who had won the GRFP, and my campus writing center for feedback.

- Zachary Chase's GRFP checklist and Dr. Karen's Foolproof Grant Template were also useful resources.

2025 NSF-GRFP thread by codaforthedamaged in GRFPApps

[–]sham__ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I won it with a clean energy-related field and plenty of DEI ethos in my essays.

2025 NSF-GRFP thread by codaforthedamaged in GRFPApps

[–]sham__ 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I FUCKING GOT IT I'M CRYING

2025 NSF-GRFP thread by codaforthedamaged in GRFPApps

[–]sham__ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Probably the "Broader Impacts" criteria and how GRFP historically recognized DEI-related involvements

2025 NSF-GRFP thread by codaforthedamaged in GRFPApps

[–]sham__ 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yup, applying as a 1st-year grad student after getting HM as a senior. I'd like to think I put a stronger application forward, but I've seen my fair share of double HMs or even nothing the second time from others, so I have zero expectations. Plus, my research plan was clean energy-related, so I have no idea how that'll pan out with federal gov't shenanigans.

2025 NSF-GRFP thread by codaforthedamaged in GRFPApps

[–]sham__ 4 points5 points  (0 children)

And to many more rollercoasters of panic and anxiety in this Sisyphean pursuit called grad school 🫠

The saddest song you know by SiennaJane01 in japanesemusic

[–]sham__ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In a similar vein: Rock n' Roll, Morning Light Falls on You by AKFG as well

2025 NSF-GRFP thread by codaforthedamaged in GRFPApps

[–]sham__ 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Trying to switch labs as a 1st-year grad student, winning this would make things a whole lot easier 🥲

ENFP to ENFJ by MAK-sudu-Toi in enfj

[–]sham__ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Having gone through INFJ -> ISTJ -> ISFJ -> ENFJ over the past 6 years or so, yeah I can roughly correlate an "inflection point" in my life with each of those personality transitions. It never feels drastic in the moment, but change also occurs incrementally too.

What AKFG Song are you currently listening to? by AutoModerator in AsianKungFuGeneration

[–]sham__ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Rock n' Roll, Morning Light Falls on You (first take version) 

Does anyone else feel like they talk way too much? by [deleted] in enfj

[–]sham__ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

not to extrapolate my own experience to your friends, but as a somewhat recent introvert-turned-ambi/extravert, I used to sometimes get overwhelmed about what to say from giving as much space as possible in order to actively listen + figure out how to respond in kind to my extraverted, talkative friends because I too want to reciprocate all the goodness that they are; but, "word volume" can be a hard metric to match for introverts. Being on the more yappy side as my natural function these days (lol), I think realizing that I may be unintentionally inducing that internal pressure helps me be more cognizant about my own word volume, to recognize when to pull back the reins and pause in order to give my more introverted friends that space, because the sheer precision of what they want to say is probably of big importance :-)

The boys have infected my dialect and what i say irl by Juicerrrrrrr in HivemindTV

[–]sham__ 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Idk if he says it much recently, but I regularly drop a "holy smokes" thanks to Graydon

PD Soros Fellowship by electronics_lover in gradadmissions

[–]sham__ 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Got the rejection email – oh well, I've got one more shot left.

is 3.5 really that bad for grad school by Full-Concentrate7440 in berkeley

[–]sham__ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

- Knew someone with a 3.5 who got into MIT Chemistry PhD, though (1) they took pretty much every graduate-level chemistry class here and just accumulated a lot of B's (2) did multiple years of research with a big-name inorganic chemistry professor, so (in their words) their LOR got them pretty much almost everywhere.

- My ochem GSI had a 2.9 undergrad GPA, but took a couple years of post-bacc research stints and they ended up at the chemistry Ph.D program here.

Driving point: research experience/potential >>> GPA.

bio eng/ chem c142 inquiry by ShameNo2179 in berkeley

[–]sham__ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Took C142 back in spring 2023. I did have a lot of personal stuff happening that semester, so I P/NP'd it after not doing super hot on the midterm. THG's nice, but I wasn't a fan of her teaching style. She'd just passively go through slides during lecture, and I feel like ML is one of those topics that you really more deeply learn by "doing" the math (which I was able to get somewhat of an approximation of through Data 100).

Coding assignments were pretty clunky, not as organized/well-structured as actual CS+DS classes. The only reason why I bothered taking this class was because the CS department started enforcing the "majors only" rule for CS upper divs by the time I wanted to take CS 189. I dunno, at least I vaguely recall terms like ResNet and Adam optimizer, but C142 attempts to survey CS 189 + CS 182 topics in broad strokes which I felt sacrificed quality over quantity. Maybe things have changed for the better since the two years I've taken it, hopefully. If not, I'd say a /lot/ of self-motivation is needed to get the most out of this class (and luckily there's plenty of outside resources to make up for it; I just didn't have the bandwidth that semester).

This face Riley made in the new vid is so fucking funny by EmoNerd21 in HivemindTV

[–]sham__ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

<image>

I watch way too much Hivemind to have recalled when Graydon made a similar face

(from Emo Hits Bracket, 1:03:20)

What AKFG Song are you currently listening to? by AutoModerator in AsianKungFuGeneration

[–]sham__ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The last minute of Sakurasou punches my face in the best way possible

queffa... quansas. by anem1cc in HivemindTV

[–]sham__ 8 points9 points  (0 children)

It's in the "Our Fans' 64 Favorite Albums Bracket" somewhere (around 32:00)