Placement Preferences

[Student]

When I applied for this scholarship last year I thought I remembered being able to modify my placement preferences until semifinalist selections were made. This lead me to believe that I had more time than I thought to decide. Well, today I spent many many many hours on the phone contacting potential facilities making darn sure that their research was in line with mine. What I found out:

A) you have to keep calling until you finally get somebody on the phone who knows what on earth you are talking about.

B) The field I am in at least is very interconnected, even between branches. So once you do contact somebody of importance working in your desired research division, and once that person figures out why you are calling; they can give you a lot of great contacts to other research facility leaders.

c) and most importantly (this was discussed briefly in another thread), just because a facility works in your field, even if they are a big name, even if they are on the list to pick from, does NOT mean that they will take SMART scholarship students. So I say that it is absolutely CRITICAL that you make phone calls and find out this information before submitting the application. After all, you only get 3 choices and you want to make those count as best you can. Aside from that, the facility directors can now be on the lookout for your application packet (assuming you make semifinalist). The downfall: if every applicant was calling facilities, that would be a real burden on the already ridiculously busy project directors.

This brings me to another thought. Information about the specific research should probably be more readily available. I understand that most of this stuff is classified but it could certainly be better than what currently exists. Or at least get the sponsoring facilities to get out some information about weather or not they are taking SMART scholars. I understand that organizing this thing is an absolute nightmare and the people who do it are doing a fantastic job. I just wanted to interject some thoughts of what to improve (the how is entirely beyond me).

Now I want to ask, why cant we pick more facilities? If there are 6 places doing my type of research, I would like to have all 6 of them to see my application. After all - this is a huge commitment and we are only limited to 3 options.

This unfortunately comes too late to help anybody with this application but hey; if you do not get it and you really want to work for DoD then you will apply next year. Just stay focused, improve your cv and do not give up. If you do not get in through SMART, you can always apply after school - heck it may be easier that way for some people.

Best of luck!

[Guest]

Don't forget picking a facility doesn't dictate who "sees" your application. All participating facilities have access to the whole semi-finalist pool. They simply have the ability to sort the list based on field and preferred facility (other things too I'd assume). Basically the only thing that the preferred choices do is make you "stand out" to a facility that you picked them. I got picked up by a completely different branch and region then I picked.

[Student]

Well that makes me feel better!

[Mikebirkhead]

The military, as I know from my time in Iraq is primarily interested in engineering fields. I just hope some facility will have a need for my major in biology. The HIV research center doesn't even participate in the scholarship and most places that participate in biological warfare are classified and/or don't participate.