by Guest again » Thu Jan 29, 2015 7:32 pm
Sorry for the late response, but being that you won't even be notified of your scholarship offer if you win for say 3-4 months, I do hope this will find you in time.
This scholarship for me has literally been my saving grace, everything I actually wanted and it fell into my lap. I got a great SF at the perfect location and I can't wait to start working there. Yes, there have been a few hurdles, it's a new ish program. They have made considerable effort lately when they screwed up. I remember when they tried to pull a doosie on us and not provide us with the internship payments we had literally signed a contract for. Luckily they rescinded that and everyone is grandfathered in to what you were offered your cohort year, so that ended up working out. They have missed our payments in the past, though usually it is because of some random accounting or computer glitch. I think we waited a week or two once to get paid. But since we should be making quarterly payments for taxes, I save enough for those big payments that I can survive that week or two on what I've set aside. When they switch Admins on us, I got burned too because one used to email deadline reminders, and my next one didn't, and I got this threatening email because I forgot to submit something (now it's easy, we used to have something like ten deadlines a year. Now it's just the yearly report and transcripts). But they let me submit it ASAP and I never ended up facing a penalty. My point is yes there's a lot of stuff that happened but for me it has all worked out just fine. A good bit of worrying yes, but really it's all turned out the best way it could have.
I think that stuff is really the small stuff. What makes this for me is that I have a great SF. I very very very strongly suggest if you or anyone is successful in this scholarship that you have them make it perfectly clear to you what you are expected to do. I *think* that after you accept the offer there is still like one more official deadline before they actually start paying you in August where you could turn away (find this out though) I would suggest in that time that you convince your SF to let you work there for a month, three months, whatever you can to see what your phase 2 commitment will be like before you are officially a SMART scholar.
For me, this scholarship has allowed me to do all the things I have wanted both from a career standpoint but also financially getting me through school and at least put some kind of dent in student loans. I was even awarded NSF, and turned it down. This position I will have is the position I wanted. I didn't need NSF when this came with a job after graduation. I know lots of kids struggling to find jobs after graduation right now. I don't even have to worry about an interview.
Sorry for the late response, but being that you won't even be notified of your scholarship offer if you win for say 3-4 months, I do hope this will find you in time.
This scholarship for me has literally been my saving grace, everything I actually wanted and it fell into my lap. I got a great SF at the perfect location and I can't wait to start working there. Yes, there have been a few hurdles, it's a new ish program. They have made considerable effort lately when they screwed up. I remember when they tried to pull a doosie on us and not provide us with the internship payments we had literally signed a contract for. Luckily they rescinded that and everyone is grandfathered in to what you were offered your cohort year, so that ended up working out. They have missed our payments in the past, though usually it is because of some random accounting or computer glitch. I think we waited a week or two once to get paid. But since we should be making quarterly payments for taxes, I save enough for those big payments that I can survive that week or two on what I've set aside. When they switch Admins on us, I got burned too because one used to email deadline reminders, and my next one didn't, and I got this threatening email because I forgot to submit something (now it's easy, we used to have something like ten deadlines a year. Now it's just the yearly report and transcripts). But they let me submit it ASAP and I never ended up facing a penalty. My point is yes there's a lot of stuff that happened but for me it has all worked out just fine. A good bit of worrying yes, but really it's all turned out the best way it could have.
I think that stuff is really the small stuff. What makes this for me is that I have a great SF. I very very very strongly suggest if you or anyone is successful in this scholarship that you have them make it perfectly clear to you what you are expected to do. I *think* that after you accept the offer there is still like one more official deadline before they actually start paying you in August where you could turn away (find this out though) I would suggest in that time that you convince your SF to let you work there for a month, three months, whatever you can to see what your phase 2 commitment will be like before you are officially a SMART scholar.
For me, this scholarship has allowed me to do all the things I have wanted both from a career standpoint but also financially getting me through school and at least put some kind of dent in student loans. I was even awarded NSF, and turned it down. This position I will have is the position I wanted. I didn't need NSF when this came with a job after graduation. I know lots of kids struggling to find jobs after graduation right now. I don't even have to worry about an interview.