Not meant to be contract to hire, but rather a temporary learning experience only.
First location choices are usually the only applicants looked at, if you include a second location, that "node" may not even look at your application.
It's not that hard to get in, but if you apply for a small location, or a more well-known NASA location, you had better have GIS, programming, environmental, and/or research and technical writing/presentation skills somewhere on your resume and application (p.s. don't write short answers for the application).
Not everyone in leadership (aka: Center Leads) are all knowledgeable and the level of professionalism and room for growth and working with scientists varies greatly by node/location (a NASA or the NOAA NCEI nodes expect much more and provide opportunities to meet and work with scientists face to face).
Projects are very much about the partner...but to an extent as it is only a 10 week term and not all on the team are experts concerning the project and much of the time is downloading and processing data and completing weekly deliverables. Hopefully in the future the projects will provide more useful data, analysis, software, etc. for the project partners.
