Last-minute changes for NSF graduate fellowships spark chaos

Anjali Dhar decided against applying to the US National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) last year because she wanted to wait for her undergraduate research project on modeling intrinsically disordered proteins to be published. She knew she’d get only one shot to apply after starting her PhD program in chemistry at Tufts University, and having a publication on her curriculum vitae would make for a stronger application.But now, she won’t get any shot at all at the prestigious fellowship. On Sept. 26, the NSF posted the fellowship application guidelines with updated eligibility criteria that bar second-year graduate students—many of whom had been planning their applications for months already—from being considered for awards. In response to a query, Michael England, a spokesperson for the NSF, provided a statement saying that the updates “restore the program's original emphasis on supporting students at the start of their research careers.” He declined to answer further questions.“A lot of people have put a lot of work into this application and just won't be able to submit it,” Dhar says. “It still seems a little bit unreal to me.” Meanwhile, first-year students who had planned on applying next year are scrambling to pull together applications before the November deadlines. Between second-years whose applications are now dead in the water and first-years rushing to write last-minute research proposals, “we're talking about having disrupted . . . something like 10,000 student plans,” says Lauren Kuehne, an ecologist who mentors GRFP applicants in the life sciences.A