Monday, May 21, 2007

NSERC Work, Conference and Scholarship Upates

I am currently doing research for my NSERC award and working in the Data Mining Lab. I am also applying to attend the Grace Hopper Conference and to receive a John Gyles Scholarship.

10 comments:

D said...

Have you ever heard of someone actually RECEIVING a John Gyles award? It all seems strangely mysterious to me.

Kate said...

No, I've never heard of anyone winning - that's why I thought I had a chance! haha. I guess we'll just have to see what happens.

D said...

I emailed the administrator and asked him where on the net I could find the list of recipients. He said they don't publish it on the web, but he could mail it to me if I provided my address. That was a month ago.

In some ways, I think it would be a beautiful scam to set up a "benevolent endeavour" that was easy to apply to, and encourage people to pay $8 to get a response letter and some info about other funding sources. If you could get more than 400 applicants to send the 8 bucks you could give out one award and still make money.

That didn't deter me from applying, but I'm not going to pay the $8.

Who is John Gyles, anyways?

Kate said...

I applied, but I didn't pay the $8. I didn't even consider it as a scam since my school advertised it through their awards/scholarships listing! :s

They have a website, I noticed a lot of other schools advertise for them as well. Looked legit. Now they have all my personal info...hope they are honourable about it. :(

Kate said...

So you applied this year or previously?

D said...

I applied for this year.

I'm not saying it's a scam. It's probably legit. I just think it's strange that you can't find any information about this award except for the canned description that they provide. This same info is on every university financial aid page, but your blog is one of only places I could find a mention of the award beyond a cut-and-paste from the basic description.

My imagination started to run wild, and I thought about how easy it would be to create a similar "education award" and send a description out to a bunch of schools. They probably don't check them all very closely, so the info would propagate to all the various databases without anyone really suspecting anything.

It's probably legit. But if so, why do none of the links work on their site? Why don't they publish their recipient list? Why is no one on the web talking about receiving the award?

It seems odd, but not necessarily shady.

D said...

OK, I just got the letter from the administrator today, and it looks like they gave out about 100 awards in 2006. I am now satisfied that this is legit. Sorry to freak you out.

Kate said...

Oh hey, that's cool, I'm not that freaked out.

100 awards, eh? That's decent. I wonder who applied, and if all 100 were for the same amount ($3000).

D said...

He gave me a printed list with the name of each recipient and their university, but no info about the amount of the awards.

Good luck with your application.

Kate said...

I have not heard anything from John Gyles. You?