by littlehope » Wed May 10, 2017 11:47 am
Here is my hypothesis from this:
The people who originally got their Award Portal message changed to "Temporarily Closed" first (back on Friday, April 21st) were to receive the award whether or not the budget increase was to be approved. Thus they got everything in order and all those applicants already approved and organized. Then once the budget was increased they added in more people who they wanted to give the award to but originally would not have had enough money for (back on Thursday, May 4th). Since those people were added later to the system they have not completed all the steps in offering the awards to those people.
So as for releasing the awards, since the majority of awardees were already prepared they decided to send those out while wrapping up the remaining few. I do believe that there are still a lucky few who were just late to the party that no matter what they will still send out an award to (hence the wording "the DoD WILL be continuing..."). Because if it was only a waitlist they they cannot guarantee that anymore awards would be sent out cause it would be contingent on other people rejecting the award which might not happen (hence the wording for 2016 that "additional awards MAY be issued").
Knowing how vague SMART likes to be so that they don't make any empty promises I don't think that the difference in wording was unintentional. Also because they don't want those who they still plan on giving the award to move on to other opportunities they took out the "you have not been selected" sentence to still give hope. It's just unfortunate that they gave that hope to EVERYONE by combining the belated awardees, the "waitlist", and the rejection email all into one.
As for me, I plan to check back in in about 2 weeks since the second group of "temp closed" was roughly two weeks after the first. If I don't receive anything by then I would just assume that I was a rejectee that the email was directed at.
Here is my hypothesis from this:
The people who originally got their Award Portal message changed to "Temporarily Closed" first (back on Friday, April 21st) were to receive the award whether or not the budget increase was to be approved. Thus they got everything in order and all those applicants already approved and organized. Then once the budget was increased they added in more people who they wanted to give the award to but originally would not have had enough money for (back on Thursday, May 4th). Since those people were added later to the system they have not completed all the steps in offering the awards to those people.
So as for releasing the awards, since the majority of awardees were already prepared they decided to send those out while wrapping up the remaining few. I do believe that there are still a lucky few who were just late to the party that no matter what they will still send out an award to (hence the wording "the DoD WILL be continuing..."). Because if it was only a waitlist they they cannot guarantee that anymore awards would be sent out cause it would be contingent on other people rejecting the award which might not happen (hence the wording for 2016 that "additional awards MAY be issued").
Knowing how vague SMART likes to be so that they don't make any empty promises I don't think that the difference in wording was unintentional. Also because they don't want those who they still plan on giving the award to move on to other opportunities they took out the "you have not been selected" sentence to still give hope. It's just unfortunate that they gave that hope to EVERYONE by combining the belated awardees, the "waitlist", and the rejection email all into one.
As for me, I plan to check back in in about 2 weeks since the second group of "temp closed" was roughly two weeks after the first. If I don't receive anything by then I would just assume that I was a rejectee that the email was directed at.