From Evan Herbst, grad seminar coordinator:
The National Science Foundation fellowship is generally considered the most desirable fellowship for grad students in CS and related fields. All current seniors who are US citizens and permanent residents (and applying to grad school) are eligible to apply. The point of major fellowships is to pay for you to work on whatever you want in grad school rather than what your advisor, who can otherwise take away funding at will, tells you to. In this case, you get about $30k a year, but the important thing is you don’t have to stick to working on the project plan you present in your application–you can switch topics after you get to grad school.
Obama has kept up his campaign rhetoric about increasing research funding, and the little birdies say there should be two to three times as many NSF fellowships awarded this year as are usual. UWCS students (undergrad + grad) usually get about two a year. The more people who apply in the CS category, the more awards in the CS category there will be.
The CS dept. is holding an info/Q&A session on the NSF fellowship Friday 10/2 at 5 pm in cs303. You’ll hear from past NSF recipients and Prof. Ed Lazowska, who’s been on the NSF awarding committee. We’ll provide copies of past winning essays. And non-NSF-specific fellowship questions are welcome.
The application deadline is early Nov. Later in October we’ll provide essay-writing help. For now, come next week and open an application at nsfgrfp.org.
Thanks!