Gues83 wrote:What does it mean to be a semifinalist? Meaning how selective is it to get past this step, and now that I'm here, what chance do I have of getting an award offer?
Addressing people who people previously mentioned they did not get an email with good or bad news. After reading many of the previous forums I would say that it was actually fairly common for the SMART program to accidentally miss a few people. I would go ahead and contact them by now if you haven't received anything.
As for what being a semifinalist means - it is that you have made it into the top 50% of candidate. Only the top 50% get their application forwarded to the sponsoring facilities. From there the sponsoring facilities will go through the applications--most likely an SF will only look at the applicants which listed their SF as their placement preference, but there is still a chance that they go through the larger pool of ~1500 applications or so they received. If an SF likes your application they may call for an interview or they may not and just forward their choice to the SMART program. Roughly 2/3 of the people the SFs pick get the award.
In previous years the average of people who got the award was ~10% so by being a semifinalist your odds have now increased to 20% since there is less competition after the cut.
[quote="Gues83"]What does it mean to be a semifinalist? Meaning how selective is it to get past this step, and now that I'm here, what chance do I have of getting an award offer?[/quote]
Addressing people who people previously mentioned they did not get an email with good or bad news. After reading many of the previous forums I would say that it was actually fairly common for the SMART program to accidentally miss a few people. I would go ahead and contact them by now if you haven't received anything.
As for what being a semifinalist means - it is that you have made it into the top 50% of candidate. Only the top 50% get their application forwarded to the sponsoring facilities. From there the sponsoring facilities will go through the applications--most likely an SF will only look at the applicants which listed their SF as their placement preference, but there is still a chance that they go through the larger pool of ~1500 applications or so they received. If an SF likes your application they may call for an interview or they may not and just forward their choice to the SMART program. Roughly 2/3 of the people the SFs pick get the award.
In previous years the average of people who got the award was ~10% so by being a semifinalist your odds have now increased to 20% since there is less competition after the cut.