Student Tutorials
Purpose: This version of the student tutorial in Microsoft
PowerPoint is recommended for dial-up Internet Connections. It
contains the same information as the two student tutorial videos in
OSSI
• Student Tutorial: Registration, Profile, and Application
• Student Tutorial: Searching For and Applying to Opportunities
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Tutorial 1
Registration, Profile,
and Application
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OSSI Homepage
This is the OSSI homepage for
users that have not yet registered.
This page contains information
about the OSSI system,
instructions for new students, and
important dates to remember.
If this is your first time using the
site, click on first time users
register button to register for an
account.
If you are a returning user, click on
the current student user login
button.
These links provide basic
eligibility for student
applications such as
internships, fellowships,
and scholarships.
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Registration
The registration page allows you to
enter in contact and account
information. You’ll notice that some of
the fields have a help icon beside them.
Clicking on the icon will give you more
information about that specific field.
To begin, enter your first and last name.
It should be noted that U.S. citizenship
is a requirement to apply for
opportunities in OSSI.
Continue by entering in your permanent
address. Then, enter a temporary
address, if applicable. Next, you will
enter in two phone numbers – one
home phone number and a secondary
number. Until all the required fields are
populated.
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Registration (continued)
Next you will enter in your email address, which needs to be a valid email address
(make sure you enter it correctly!). Your primary email address will be your
log-in ID for the OSSI system. Then, you will create a password.
Refer to the password requirements on the right for more information.
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Registration (continued)
Then you’ll enter in
information about your
college or university.
There are two ways to
select your college or
university.
You can start by entering
the college name, and as
you type, the college list
will populate beneath the
field. Or, you can use the
find institution button to
search for your institution.
You can search by name, city,
or state.
After you enter the search criteria, select the search institution button, and
select the institution from the list below. Then, choose a degree level at the time
the opportunity will begin, then an academic discipline or major, and finally the
planned graduation date of the current degree. Once you have completed all
the information on the registration page, select the register button.
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Student Home Page
Once you register, this
page will appear as your
homepage – it serves as a
dashboard so that you can
quickly see information
about opportunities you’re
interested in and
opportunities that you’ve
applied to.
If you need more help, select either the ‘Getting Started’ sub-tab for more information,
or submit a question by clicking on the ‘Need Help? Click here’ hyperlink at the very
top of the page. To update your registration information, click the
‘update registration information’ sub-tab.
Next, click the ‘My Interest Profile’ tab
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Interest Profile
This is the interest profile page.
The interest profile serves three purposes.
First, you can define default search criteria,
for when you’re ready to search for
opportunities. Second, you can configure a
schedule of notifications about new
opportunities to be sent to you via email. Third,
it allows you to enter more information that
will help mentors find you.
To start, select the highest
education level attained at the
time the opportunity would start.
(Freshman through senior refers
to college, and pre-college have high school
grade levels except freshman.)
Next, select the opportunity type you are
interested in applying for: this could be
internships or fellowships.
Next, select up to ten NASA centers or
facilities for your work location preference.
If you do not know which NASA facility you’d
like to work at, or if you don’t have
a preference, leave this field blank.
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Interest Profile (continued)
Select up to four sessions you are
interested in working. This could
be Spring, Summer, Fall, or yearlong. (Fellowships are considered
to be year-long opportunities.)
Now you can select up to ten
areas of interest. These disciplines
do not necessarily need to be
related to your academic major.
Next, supply a list of keywords for
the opportunities you are
interested in, if you’d like.
Finally, you can select the
schedule for emails to be sent to
you when new
opportunities are posted. This can
be daily, weekly, monthly, or none
at all.
When you have completed this page, select
‘save profile’ and click the ‘My Applications’
tab.
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Internship Application
The ‘My Applications’
page allows you to
complete internship,
fellowship, and
scholarship
applications. Much of
the information is
similar between the
applications, with
some additional data
required for
fellowships and
scholarships. In this
tutorial, we will take a
look at the internship
application.
The internship application has six parts. This page shows the status of each part.
All areas must be completed before you can apply to opportunities.
To begin, select the general information section.
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Internship Application – General Info
The general information page pulls information from your registration.
It also requests your permission for photographs to be taken while you’re
working on NASA opportunities.
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Internship Application – General Info
(Continued)
Certain NASA programs require that demographic information be provided to
determine eligibility. However, this information is optional, and you may select
‘Decline to answer’. When you’ve completed this page, you can either save
the page, or save and continue to the next section.
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Internship Application – Educational History
The educational history section allows you to enter in previous as well as current high
level education institutions. The first time you come to this page, it will pull your current
university in as a record. However, there will be fields that are incomplete. By default, the
information that is incomplete will be the attend from date, the education level, you will
need to enter in at least one course, and upload a transcript. To complete them, click the
edit icon.
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Internship Application – Educational History
Pre-College Students
If you are a pre-college
applicant your educational
history section allows you
to enter in the High School
Name, Address, City and
State of your institution.
The education level that
currently are ranked at the
opportunity dates you
have an interest to apply.
You will need to enter in at
least one course, and
upload a unofficial
transcript. Once uploaded
select the save and
continue button.
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Internship Application – Educational History
(continued)
You can enter the attend from date – this
should be when you started attending the
institution—and the educational level at
the time the internship begins.
Next, enter your GPA on a scale of 4.0.
Some universities do not have a 4 point
scale for a GPA. If you’re attending a
university where this is the case, select
other and you can supply more
information about how your university
handles the GPA.
Next, supply a list of courses you are
currently taking. If you need to add more
courses than the given fields, select add
more courses to provide more space.
When you’ve completed this page, select
‘Save Education’.
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Internship Application – Educational History
(continued)
Now that your information for the education record has been saved, you can
upload an unofficial transcript by clicking the upload link.
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Internship Application – Educational History
(continued)
To upload a transcript, you can browse for one on your computer. This should
be an unofficial transcript, and it is advisable that you remove or block out any
personally identifiable information.
Once you’ve selected the transcript, click upload transcript. Next, you can add
previously attended universities, or move on to the next section.
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Internship Application – Work/Volunteer History
This is the work/volunteer experience page. On this page, you can enter in previous
employment or volunteering by clicking Add Work/Volunteer History. You can leave
this section blank if you do not have previous work experience.
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Internship Application – Work/Volunteer History
(Continued)
On this page you can
enter employer name,
location, job title, your
dates of employment,
and any duties,
accomplishments, or
related skills.
It should be noted that
work/volunteer history
can either be a job,
volunteer opportunities,
or previous NASA
internships
Once you’ve completed
the form, select save
employment information.
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Internship Application – Letter of
Recommendation
The next section is the letter of
recommendation. This is where you can enter
the information for someone you would like to
write a letter of recommendation for you. One
letter of recommendation is required (although
you may have additional).
The reference can be a professor, an
employer, a co-worker, or even a teacher’s
assistant. Family members should not submit
letters of recommendation.
Enter a first name, last name, the relationship
with the reference, a telephone number, and
an email address.
When finished, click Save, or Save and
continue, and an email will automatically be
sent to the supplied email address for the
reference to fill out a letter of recommendation
for you.
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Internship Application – Additional Information
Next is the Additional
Information section.
Although many of these
fields are not required, it
is in your best interest to
fill out as many of the
fields as you can. This is
your chance to stand out,
and explain why NASA
should select you for the
opportunity.
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Internship Application – Additional
Information ( Continued)
If you have any NASA-affiliated educational experiences, enter them here. This
can be any work or activities you’ve done with NASA or related to the NASA
mission, such as an educational activity or an internship. To add more
information, click Add more NASA-affiliated educational activities. When you are
finished, click the Save additional information button.
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Internship Application – Terms of Acceptance
The final section is your
acknowledgement of the
terms of acceptance.
Once you have read this
section, if you agree, click
the Acknowledgement
checkbox and select the
Agree and submit
application button.
After you accept the terms
and have a letter of
recommendation
submitted on your behalf,
you can apply for up to 15
opportunities and NASA
mentors will be able to
review your application
from the applicant pool.
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Fellowship Application
The fellowship application is similar to the Internship application, but the
process has more steps.
The process for applying to a fellowship in OSSI is as follows:
1. Complete a fellowship application (in order to be considered complete you will
need to have at least 1 letter of recommendation (1 letter must come from a
faculty advisor for fellowships)) and agree to the ‘Terms of Acceptance’
2. Search for and select specific fellowship opportunities of interest
3. Submit a proposal idea to the mentor, including the research you will conduct for
their opportunity
4. Mentors have up to 10 business days to respond to your proposal idea – at that
time, they will either accept your proposal idea, decline it, or decline it and
request modifications
5. Once the proposal idea is accepted, you will work with the mentor and your
faculty advisor to create a proposal. The proposal, along with the university
signature form, must then be submitted and received by the last day of the
application period.
It is important that you plan enough time for the Fellowship Application process as all of
these steps need to be completed by the end of the application period.
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Tutorial 1 - Summary
We just registered for an account, completed an interest profile,
and filled out a student application.
In the next tutorial, we’ll see how to search for and apply to
opportunities. If you need further assistance, use the Need help
link at the top of the page. Thank you.
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Tutorial 2:
Searching For and
Applying to
Opportunities
Search Opportunities
The Search Opportunities
page will automatically pull in
your interest profile
information as default search
criteria. You can change this
criteria, as well as save the
criteria as your Interest
Profile.
To search for opportunities,
select your academic level at
the time the opportunity
would begin. Then select
the Opportunity type for
which you’d like to apply.
Next, select up to 10 NASA
Centers or Facilities as your
work location preference.
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Search Opportunities (Continued)
You can also select
sessions you’re
interested in applying for,
as well as available
disciplines and majors
that are related to the
opportunity. Next, you
can provide a date to
search for opportunities
posted after that date.
Finally, you can also enter
in keywords for
opportunities.
Once you have finished
the search criteria, click
the ‘Search’ button.
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Search Opportunities (Continued)
The search results page will display opportunities that match the search criteria that you
entered.
To find out more information about an opportunity or to apply, click the ‘View/Apply’ button.
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Search Opportunities (Continued)
The view opportunity page
will provide you with all of
the information about the
opportunity, such as the title,
description, expected outcome
and results, special comments,
session, academic disciplines it
relates to, NASA Center, as well
as other info about the work
environment.
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Search Opportunities (Continued)
If you are interested in applying to the opportunity, you must supply additional attributes
that would make you a good candidate for this opportunity. This tells the mentor why
you would like to apply.
To apply to an opportunity, select ‘Apply for Opportunity Consideration.’ You can apply
to up to 15 opportunities. Or, if you’re interested in the opportunity but not yet ready to
apply, you can save the opportunity to a temporary list where you can revisit it later and
apply by selecting ‘Add to Saved Opportunities List.’
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My Opportunities
Go to the ‘My Opportunities’ tab to review the status of the opportunities you have
either applied to or saved to your temporary list. If you receive any offers, you can
review and respond via the ‘My Offers’ sub-tab.
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Tutorial 2 - Summary
We just demonstrated how to search and apply for opportunities.
If you are selected for an opportunity, you will receive an offer via
email and you will have 5 business days to respond.
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