Criteria for Success
- Your proposed research is eligible for the Fellowship (e.g., you do not propose research about a particular disease or on clinical practice).
- Your research proposal convinces a panel of academics that you are qualified to receive the Fellowship, with equal consideration of the Intellectual Merit and Broader Impact criteria.
- You show that the proposed research is creative, original, or transformative.
- You show that you are actually capable of performing the research.
- Your proposal meets the formatting and page limit criteria.
Structure
The sections, their sizes, and their order is just an example, not the rule.
Purpose
Your research proposal (technically, the “Graduate Research Plan Statement”) is part of an application that should convince the selection panel to award you the Fellowship. The proposal is the part of the application where you get to lay out a plan for your graduate research career. The personal statement gives you space to explain the big picture of your past and future career; the research proposal is a place for more nuts and bolts. It is an opportunity to convince the selection panel that you are capable of being a successful researcher: that you have the intellectual ability to propose a creative, feasible plan of research.
Note that if you win the Fellowship, no one will actually hold you to this particular research plan; this is a demonstration of critical thinking, not a commitment.
Audience
Your entire application will be “reviewed online by virtual panels of disciplinary and interdisciplinary scientists and engineers and other professional graduate education experts”. These are academics, usually from your broad area of science (e.g., engineering) but not from your specific area (e.g., colloid simulations using MD). They will judge your application using some combination of (a) the NSF’s official criteria for the Fellowship and (b) their own ideas about what constitutes good science.
The people on the committee read many, many applications. Make it easy for them to figure out that you are qualified for the award by referencing the Intellectual Merit and Broader Impact criteria that they use to judge your application. It may be wise to, for example, have sections in your proposal that are explicitly labeled “Intellectual Merit” and “Broader Impacts”. It may also be wise to have an “Abstract” or “Executive Summary” at the beginning of the proposal. Use simple language rather than field jargon.
The selection panel knows that this is a graduate student fellowship and not the sort of grant that is going to a principal investigator. Real grants are big documents with heaps of citations and references. Because this application is about funding you and not a specific project, the panel is more interested in seeing what your proposal says about you rather than about your project. Spend more words showing that you are capable and creative rather than showing that you can cite many papers.
Skills
Do your homework
A mature and sophisticated proposal for research is more likely to win you the Fellowship. Before sitting down to write, do your homework. Read the literature in the field to ensure the project that you are proposing is both novel and feasible.
Find mentors to help you develop and refine your ideas. Senior scientists such as postdocs and faculty members have more experience writing research proposals and can give valuable feedback. Additionally, they may be representative of members of your selection committee. Your proposal should also excite someone who is in your exact field. If they have any reservations about whether the project is interesting or feasible, then scientists outside your field will have an even more difficult time believing that the research is worth pursuing.
Demonstrate creativity
There’s typically a tradeoff between risk/reward and credibility. Low-risk projects, like obvious, simple extensions of your undergraduate thesis research, tend to be very credible: it’s clear that you can do them. They also tend to be low on reward. Projects that are very ambitious and have huge rewards tend to be unbelievable and impossible for a grad student. There’s a sweet spot in between: find a problem that you can probably solve and that demonstrates that you took some initiative, know your field, and have some creative thoughts.
Include Intellectual Merit and Broader Impact criteria
Read the program solicitation so you know what “Intellectual Merit” and “Broader Impacts” mean to the NSF, and show that your proposed research meets those criteria. In particular, do not just make up your own ideas about what “Broader Impacts” means. The NSF has specific lists of activities that constitute Broader Impacts. These criteria are so important that the solicitation even says that “applicants must include separate statements on Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts in their written statements [… and] should include headings for Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts in their statements.”
Write for a reader who is outside of your field and short on attention
It’s more important that all the members of your panel understand your work than that you impress the one member of the panel who happens to be in your field. When you write a paper or a grant, it will probably be minutely reviewed by people in your exact field. However, your panel for the NSF GRFP will likely not be in your field, and your application will be one of many they read. They may very well miss points in your proposal that you think are “subtle” or “implicit.” Explicitly state what you are doing and why, and make it clear even to someone who does not know your field, and who is fatigued from reading many applications.
Lay out concrete hypotheses, approaches, and outcomes
Strong research proposals say what motivates the project, how the project will get done, and what the project’s outcome will mean with respect to the motivating scientific question. In the life sciences, scientists often label their hypotheses or objectives as “specific aims”.
When discussing research approach and outcomes, make it clear that the project has a clear endpoint that is well within the timeline of a PhD. It’s great if your project leads into a lifelong line of research, but the NSF GRFP only funds graduate study. To win the Fellowship, the proposed research should be able to be completed within a few years.
As best you can, describe concrete outcomes. Will you discover a protein? Will you have designed a certain tool? Having a concrete outcome can help you show how your research will meet the Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts criteria, by saying, “Once I have X in hand, Y will be intellectually possible or will have Z effect on society.”
You may also indicate multiple possible outcomes, showing that you have given careful thought to the project. For example, you could say, “If we observe X then we will take route Y. However, if we observe Z, we will have to look at an alternative route.” Research does not always go according to plan, and showing alternative ways to complete the project will show that you are prepared to be a successful graduate student researcher.
Your research proposal will be judged, in part, on the basis of whether or not the panel members believe you will actually be able to carry it out. It might therefore be wise to name the key resources in your target institution and program. Your success as a graduate student will depend on your advisor’s mentorship, the opportunity for collaboration with other scientists, and the resources that you will have at your target institution. Make it clear that you will have the right equipment and intellectual input that you will need to solve your problem. (Again, this is not because you’ll be expected to actually complete this research. Rather, the goal is to demonstrate your resourcefulness, and the likelihood that you’ll excel as a researcher in general.)
Resources and Annotated Examples
Annotated Example 1
This is a research statement that was part of an MIT ChemE graduate student’s successful NSF GRFP application (written while an undergraduate). 1 MB