It's Good to have Dreams

Well Howdy everyone and welcome back to the Resilience in STEM podcast. I hope you had a great July. I am filming this at the end of July; this episode should come out in early August. Hopefully, you had a good month. An update from me is in my internship I’m nearing the final weeks and it feels surreal how I’m already almost done. In the beginning, I thought the later events wouldn’t be for forever so I didn’t have to think about them. But now I am submitting things for these later events happening tomorrow or in a couple of days. It’s crazy thinking about it and how time passed so quickly. It is a bit sad at the same time because I’ve learned so much and gained a lot of friends, but I have the opportunity to bring this information back and start my senior year. It’s all happening. 

 

So a little graduate school update (like I usually do) is I am in the process of writing my base personal essays. So that includes my base personal statement and research statement. If you don’t know what that means you can check out that information during my last episode. I go into more in detail on how to start your graduate schools, what it means to write a personal statement vs a research statement, and give out some resources along the way. By writing my base essays this will help me figure out what I want to include and what story I want to tell. This also helps when applying for a bunch of programs I can make each essay more tailored. This prevents me from using the same essay for each of my applications. From what I’ve learned so far, a “one size fits all” model doesn’t work. 

 

In addition, I have also learned about the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP). This fellowship is a way to fund your graduate education instead of getting your stipend from your home institution. You get $37,000 for 3 years. The application asks for a couple of essays, your undergraduate transcript, and letters of recommendation. The review criteria are based on intellectual merit and broader impacts. The link will be included here. I am also started to look into this new information as this seems like a great opportunity that I want to learn more about. Depending on your field of study, the deadline is around mid-October so I recommend you (and myself) should probably get started on getting your application together. This is a great way to get funding throughout your graduate degree and is a more advantageous applicant to being admitted to graduate school. Some schools do offer a stipend higher than $37,000 a year. What they do is pay you the remainder amount to match the offered stipend. You can apply once during the year you apply to graduate school (so I am eligible) and once during your first or second-year graduate school. So while there are different areas of expertise, you will be compared to the applicants within your eligibility group. For example, if I apply for this fellowship I wouldn’t be compared to a second-year graduate student. Instead, I would be compared to another applicant applying to graduate school this cycle as well. I recommend you also read the information about this fellowship in the link above. I would especially look into the essays since they’re a little different than the essays in graduate school applications. From what I’ve read, you have to highlight the intellectual merit and broader impact criteria very clearly in the essays. Some advice I’ve gotten is to look at previous winners of this fellowship so you can see what a successful application looks like. You could do this by finding someone through Linkedin and messaging them or asking your academic advisor. This fellowship has been around for a while so maybe a junior faculty member or post-doctoral student you know may have gotten this during graduate school. 

 

I wanted to transition to talking about grants and awards. I felt talking about the NSF GRFP was very fitting for this episode called “It’s Good to Have Dreams”. When I say that, it seems a little abstract, but when I hear this it usually incentivizes me to dream big. It’s good to have those dreams because it motivates you to keep going to shoot for those big things and you may get them. What I am referring to more in this episode are national fellowships. These can be for any discipline (I recommend reading the description). Some of them are more international, research, or education based. It depends. Essentially, national fellowships are national awards that you apply to and they provide a distinction, an opportunity to travel to another country to get a Master’s degree, and obtain a scholarship. This varies per award. Some of the benefits include getting a large cash prize, advantages for future applications (such as graduate school or professional school because these are difficult to get and show you have the qualities the specific award highlights), and national recognition. 

 

Just a quick note on these fellowships you do have to be an undergraduate. I don’t think you can apply to any of these fellowships your first year, so you would apply during your second-fourth year of undergraduate. A big preface I have to give is to please read the description of these awards and ensure you are eligible for them. Some examples of national fellowships include the Rhoades Scholarship, Fulbright Scholarship, Goldwater Scholarship, and the Astronaut Scholarship. These might be names you are familiar with. 

 

Another big preface is you want to check with your undergraduate institution for resources. I will attach the link for Texas A&M’s resources for national fellowships. You also need to make sure your school is eligible to let you apply for this award. I applied to both the Goldwater and Astronaut scholarship (I will talk about that later), but I had to make sure that Texas A&M was hosting students to win this award. Essentially, your university needs to be a partner with the award. From there you can apply. If your university isn’t partnered with a specific national fellowship or this is not a requirement, you can ask your advisor or a national fellowship coordinator for more information. Usually, more well-known or larger universities, are partners so students are eligible to win this fellowship. 

 

So I'm going to go over the application process and what it means to have a fellowship. Usually when you apply you have to give background information (what school you go to to ensure that school is affiliated with the award - like I talked about earlier), essays (depends on the award -one award may ask for a bunch to know a bunch of aspects in your life and another may ask for one essay), and letters of recommendation (usually 2-3). I am being broad with these requirements because there isn’t a set requirement for all national fellowships and not everyone is eligible for all national fellowships. So the first stage of the application process is within your university. This means you are competing with everyone in your university to get a nomination. The number of nominations given is dependent on what university and the number of awards given to each university on the national level. If you apply and get the nomination from your university (usually it’s a very small number), then you’re put into a national pool of applicants with all of the nominees from all of the partnered institutions from the award. From there, the national committee for the award will go over all the applications and decide who gets it. Based on my experience, I’ve learned it’s harder to get the campus nomination because you’re going against the best and more qualified individuals at your institution to get the nomination. Once you get the nomination you have a 50%-75% chance of getting the national fellowship. This is very dependent on each institution.  

 

With all of that, I wanted to talk a little bit about my experience and the types of awards I applied for (will attach the links below so you all can read on your own). 

 

The first national fellowship I applied for was the Goldwater Scholarship. This is eligible during your second and third years. The Goldwater is a STEM research-based fellowship and is looking to find innovative researchers that will change the world. Overall, this is a very prestigious fellowship to receive. This award requires you to write multiple essays and short answer questions. I remember when I applied I had a 7-page document of all the essays I had to write. In these essays, I had to explain my experience and how it makes me an innovative researcher in the future. This award also requires 3 letters of recommendation. It’s really good to receive this if you are considering applying for a Ph.D. in a STEM field or an MD/Ph.D. because there is more flexibility on what schools you get accepted. But if you don’t have the opportunity to apply for this or don’t get the award please don’t feel into any Ph.D. programs. I know people who get accepted into the best Ph.D. programs for their field and they did not receive this award. Not getting this fellowship will not stop you from any future opportunities. The award consisted of a large cash prize and national recognition. What makes getting this award so difficult is learning how to communicate your research experience to a general STEM audience and show what you are doing is very innovative.

 

So the Astronaut Scholarship is another national fellowship I applied to. It’s pretty similar to the Goldwater in that it’s a STEM research-based award and the application process is very similar. What makes the Astronaut Scholarship different is the mission is not only looking for researchers and innovators, they are also looking for leaders in the community and people who emulate who the astronauts were when the first space missions were happening. The astronauts were regarded as heroes who were very smart, brave, strong communicators, and active in their community. That was something I felt I could apply for since not only I had strong research experience but I also work on diversity and inclusion topics through the Student Senate. The application components for the Astronaut are quite different from the Goldwater. You are required to submit a one-page essay, a one-page resume, and 2 letters of recommendation. In the essay, it had to be more research-based, but also include information about how you are also a leader. When starting the application I thought it was going to be easier since there was less writing, but it was harder because I had to condense my entire story into a page. Also, the Astronaut is the same as the Goldwater with their eligibility being for second and third-year students. With the national fellowship, you also got a cash prize and national recognition. 

 

You might be noticing as I’m talking about this how I never mention how I got the nomination or the award because I did not. I applied my sophomore and junior year for both of them, but I didn’t get a nomination. I got a lot of feedback and it helped me grow. However, it was a little hard that I didn’t get these awards because it was my official rejection and I didn’t like it (who likes rejection anyways?). Overall it taught me how to become a better writer and storyteller. Even though I didn’t get these awards, I learned how to explain my research to people and I ended up benefiting from these experiences. I learned how to become a better presenter, get experience telling my story speaking as a panelist, and even feel more prepared for graduate applications. Now I can refer back to these essays that I spent a lot of time and I can use these essays as a strong foundation to build off of. Even though it is a challenging process, I do recommend checking out your institution's website to learn more about these fellowships. Going back to the “dreams” aspect I talked about earlier, it’s good to have dreams and go for them. For me, this was kind of a dream, but it taught me that if I wanted any opportunity I had to put myself out there and apply for these types of fellowships. Maybe these two national fellowships I talked about more in detail aren’t offered at your university, but there is another that has a similar mission statement. I recommend putting in the effort and work to apply for these awards. Even though it may be challenging there is a benefit to it, which is learning how to write. I feel in STEM feel writing is often neglected. However, if scientists cannot write or communicate well, then how are people supposed to learn about our future?

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