Rejected by fellowships, worrying about my future This is the first time I use Stack Exchange. Here are my backgrounds. I am a first-generation poor male immigrant from China to America. None of my members have education beyond middle school. So they cannot help me. Because I was 19 years old, I was too old to go to high school. I attended a community college, transfered to Berkeley to study nuclear physics. I am now a Physics PhD student at MIT. I am now a naturalized U.S. citizen. I applied for all fellowships that I am elligible such as NSF, DOE CSGF, DOE SSGF, Hertz, Soros, Ford, SMART, and NDSEG. I get rejected by Hertz for two cycles and NSF, Soros, DOE CSGF so far. I still have 5 fellowship application pending (DOE CSGF and DOE SSGF are not submitted yet).

I just wonder how to win (or even just get honorable mention or even just move to the interview) these fellowships. I have similar experience when I applied for REU. I applied to about 20 REUs and got an only one REU because the PI was Chinese. I suspect there are connections requirement for some fellowships, which I obviously do not have. Do you think you have any suggestion for my future career in academia if I end up with not getting any fellowships. I also attach the comments of my reviewers from NSF GRFP here. NSF GRFP Comments. Thank you for your inputs.
Most physics graduate students at MIT (and elsewhere) are not supported by fellowships.  Certainly, a fellowship would not hurt, but whether or not you get a fellowship will have very little impact on your future career.  What will matter in the long term will be the quality of your research.

As a graduate student, both your research output and faculty members' evaluations of your research skills will be important.  As you advance further, it will be your personal research quality that will most matter.  Other factors, like the quality of your teaching and presentation skills, will affect whether you get good jobs, but whether you had a prestigious fellowship in graduate school will be basically irrelevant.