Has Covid-19 impacted PI/Gov hiring or am I just a loser?

[Hey_Everybody]

Would it be wrong to tell an organization that I'm no longer interested in their fellowship after having already scheduled an interview for it? This place to which I've applied is on the very opposite end of the country, and with my wife and I having a baby on the way and my mother-in-law being deeply ill, I'm realizing that we just couldn't realistically accept it if I were offered the position. I'm only nervous because the fellowship is ran somewhat jointly with my law school, and I'm worried that if they find out that I turned down the interview I'll be disqualified from Columbia's Public Interest & Government Fellowship since they'll think that I haven't been seriously searching for paid opportunities. And honestly, at this point since I have an offer from my top-choice organization to be hosted for a year, I really just want to go down the Columbia fellowship route. I'd applied to this other fellowship over a month ago in a time of desperation.

My only other option would be to bomb the interview intentionally, which I don't think is very ethical.

Just ask someone at your law school if it'll affect your eligibility for the fellowship to turn down the interview. As long as it doesn't I think you can and should decline the interview if you're not interested

[BlendedUnicorn]

Put yourself in the shoes of the interviewer and this will be an easy question to answer. If you were a busy lawyer, would you rather spend 30 minutes talking to someone with no interest in coming to your organization and then writing up an evaluation or would you rather delete a block of time from your calendar?

True, but I fear that if my law school finds out that I did this, I'd be barred from their sponsored fellowship, which I need to get to fund the opportunity I've been offered under my top-choice org. We've been told that if we're turning down paid opportunities, we won't be eligible for their fellowship.

that's not a reasonable concern. if you're going to end up on a black list (and you're not, because your school really needs you to have a job) it would be because you deliberately bombed an interview, which is as disrespectful as fuck. your law school's policy almost certainly applies to turning down paid job offers.

[Saami]

Excelsior just opened up. Fight u for it, bro.

I think Columbia's already chosen who it wants to nominate, or at least has a short list. At the very least, SJI approached my friend about the opportunity but not me, so I don't think I'm in the running lol.

[BlendedUnicorn]

Would it be wrong to tell an organization that I'm no longer interested in their fellowship after having already scheduled an interview for it? This place to which I've applied is on the very opposite end of the country, and with my wife and I having a baby on the way and my mother-in-law being deeply ill, I'm realizing that we just couldn't realistically accept it if I were offered the position. I'm only nervous because the fellowship is ran somewhat jointly with my law school, and I'm worried that if they find out that I turned down the interview I'll be disqualified from Columbia's Public Interest & Government Fellowship since they'll think that I haven't been seriously searching for paid opportunities. And honestly, at this point since I have an offer from my top-choice organization to be hosted for a year, I really just want to go down the Columbia fellowship route. I'd applied to this other fellowship over a month ago in a time of desperation.

My only other option would be to bomb the interview intentionally, which I don't think is very ethical.

Just ask someone at your law school if it'll affect your eligibility for the fellowship to turn down the interview. As long as it doesn't I think you can and should decline the interview if you're not interested

this is probably the right thing to do if you're actually worried.

[Hey_Everybody]

Btw my school has the same rule that you can't turn down a paid offer if you want to be eligible for the 1 year fellowship. But that means an actual offer, not an interview

[Saami]

Just ask someone at your law school if it'll affect your eligibility for the fellowship to turn down the interview. As long as it doesn't I think you can and should decline the interview if you're not interested

I suppose I could do this. It's just that the way career counselors have been talking to me about all this, there seems to be a huge incentive in keeping one's mouth shut about anything they're interviewing for, lest those reading the Columbia PI/G Fellowship applications find out about it.

[Hey_Everybody]

Just ask someone at your law school if it'll affect your eligibility for the fellowship to turn down the interview. As long as it doesn't I think you can and should decline the interview if you're not interested

I suppose I could do this. It's just that the way career counselors have been talking to me about all this, there seems to be a huge incentive in keeping one's mouth shut about anything they're interviewing for, lest those reading the Columbia PI/G Fellowship applications find out about it.

See my post above yours. Also you can ask a prof you've got a good relationship with rather than the career counselors if that's an option. One of my profs gave me a lot of inside dope on how to game the fellowship system at my school if I needed to pursue that option