Eric JordahlSenior CellDev major and pre-PhD student For many people, paying for your undergraduate or post-graduate education is one of the most stressful parts of furthering your education. Along with this, comes the stress of loans, and applying for other funding like scholarships, grants, and fellowships. As an undergraduate student who spends most of my time doing research in my lab, I am someone who has applied for many different fellowships and grants, so I was hoping to detail some of my experiences to all of you and offer some advice for those who may be applying soon. For most applications that involve funding related to research, programs want to assess your qualities as a prospective fellow in two main ways. The first is through your research interest and topic. This likely is demonstrated through the drafting of a research prospectus or research plan. Second, these programs want to see if you, as a researcher, are a good investment for these companies, departments, organizations, etc., to invest in. They will likely assess this in one of two ways, with a request for a “personal statement” or a list of prompted questions for you to answer. For many of these programs, they want to see that you as a researcher will not only produce strong data, but that you will use this funding to advance the field in which you are working in addition to yourself. I will detail each of these facets below in a bit more detail as well as include some more of my own experience. Drafting a Research Plan When applying for funding for your research, you want to make sure that your project is scientifically sound and ensure that it is relevant to ongoing research in the field. The best way to do this is to first talk to your scientific mentor. Whether this is your Principal Investigator (PI) or a mentor who sponsors you, they will be able to help keep your application competitive in your field, developing a strong outline on what research you can perform. Once you have a strong outline planned, you can begin your writing process. This can be different dependent on what you are applying for: smaller fellowship opportunities (like those from our Department of Biological Sciences or even just in the University), often require much less than those on the national scale. Some opportunities, like those in the university, are most likely to want a smaller research prospectus that focuses more on the importance of the research you are performing rather than the experiments themselves. Thus, it is important to include both a strong background and a significance section, so that any reviewer will be able to understand why your research is not only a good project to follow, but one that is good for the field. Larger opportunities are a bit more of a mixed bag. If you are applying to an opportunity provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF), it is especially important to focus on the experiments you plan to perform and how it will expand science, but maybe less on broader impacts like medicine. On the other hand, applying for an opportunity with the National Institute of Health (NIH), it is important to focus on how your research could work towards developments in public health or medicine. All in all, it is important to know your audience and what they find most impactful in an application. Most applications will include details of who to cater your plan towards, whether it be people in other sciences (Ex. Physics), people in a broad category of your research (ex. Biology), or experts in your field (Ex. Molecular Biology). Without paying attention to this, you may write a beautiful research plan in correct terminology for your field, but if it is being read by someone who has very limited knowledge of the base knowledge of the topic, it will be difficult for them to understand your plan. With this in mind, it is important to check this before writing your plan, or if you find out later, make sure to edit so that your reviewers can understand your plan, making them more willing to fund you! Developing a Personal Statement As I mentioned previously, the second portion for these types of applications is often to assess you as a person. This portion, to me, is the most daunting, and the most difficult to write. I am terrible at talking about myself, and prefer to focus on the work that I do, or the things I am involved in. However, this is not a great strategy for this portion of an application, unfortunately for me and many others. The best advice that I can offer for this is insanely cliché, BE YOURSELF. With these types of applications, the reviewers want to know you as a person, not the details about your life that they could gather from your CV or résumé. Of course, you want to brag about all that you have done and show them that you are a strong candidate for their program. But with this, you do not want to seem too prideful, so make sure to show humility. Do not be afraid to be vulnerable (to a degree), as it is okay to show some weakness and explain where you may have struggled. The path you took to get to the point at which you are at is the one you took, and the best thing for you to do is to own it. You may have made mistakes at one point, and that is okay, just show them how you got back up and found your groove again. Show them that you are resilient, and you will persevere through the hardships that stand ahead of you. Though all of what I just wrote may sound very “motivational speaker” -esque, it is something that can truly help your personal statement to stand out above the rest. If anyone has any questions, I am happy to discuss this at any time, as this journey is still ongoing for me as well, so maybe next time we talk I will have an updated perspective. You can reach me at my email [email protected] at any time, so don’t hesitate, even for the smallest of things!
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January 2022
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