Introduction
The National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) program was introduced in 1989 by an act of Congress to increase the number of U.S. citizens receiving doctorates in STEM disciplines of military interest. Like all graduate fellowships, NDSEG provides successful applicants with a number of benefits including guaranteed funding (which makes advisor selection and acceptance easier), travel funding to attend relevant conferences, and access to a network of other fellows to tap throughout a career in STEM.
NDSEG is on par with the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP) in terms of fellow support, prestige, applicant pool, and success rate. Because they have similar requirements, the NSF GRFP can be a useful starting point for an NDSEG application. The NDSEG deadline is typically in early November, so the timeline works for applicants to submit their GRFP application and revise their essays for the NDSEG within the same application cycle.
Despite their similarities, applicants should make sure to fully update any previous work to meet the call of the NDSEG, rather than recycling too much material. The NSF GRFP application provides a useful framework for the NDSEG but is distinct in its requirements and deliverables.
Criteria for Success
An effective application…
- Proposes a research topic of military relevance and application;
- Addresses one of the Department of Defense’s Strategy Documents (formerly Broad Agency Announcements);
- Succinctly proposes a research plan with clear milestones and specific goals;
- Demonstrates the applicant’s ability and interest to pursue a career with the Department of Defense after graduation;[1] and
- Includes evidence for the applicant’s research ability and understanding of their topic.
Identify your Purpose
The purpose of your NDSEG application is broadly the same as the NSF GRFP application–to convince your reader that you are able to think critically about a single research question, to develop a plan to answer that question with specific steps and milestones, and to provide evidence for why your plan might be successful.
There are, however, important differences between the NDSEG and NFS GRFP application, including the fact that for NDSEG you must also demonstrate your ability to write to an area of interest to your funding agency, as listed in the Department of Defense’s Strategy Documents. There are many Funding Opportunity Announcements (formerly called Broad Agency Announcements) available from the various military branches and tailoring your approach to that branch and its interests is vital for a successful application.
Analyze your Audience
Your audience may or may not have a technical background. As you prepare your application, try to use generally approachable language that an educated person who is not necessarily an expert in your field can understand. Given the NDSEG’s emphasis on the research statement in the application (it is three pages long while the personal essays are much shorter), your proposal should be detailed and well thought out. Generally, practice good writing techniques: write succinctly; show, don’t tell; and give evidence from the literature that supports your ideas.
Research Proposal Structure
The research proposal is a core component of the NDSEG. This diagram outlines a possible way to structure your statement and core questions to consider.
| Introduction | Approach | Expected Outcome | ||
|
What is the research area? |
How will you complete the project? What skills, tools, and methodology will you use? |
What do you expect to learn from this proposed project? How does this expected outcome align with the BAA? |
||
| Research Plan | Conclusion | |||
| Objective/Hypothesis |
What is the value of this project given its expected outcome? What benefit does this project bring to the military? |
|||
| What question are you trying to answer? |
Skills
- Identify a relevant funding call from the Department of Defense Strategy Documents.
As a part of the NDSEG fellowship application, you are required to apply to a funding agency (e.g., the Office of Naval Research or the Army Research Office) to ensure that your proposed research falls into an active area of research supported by the Department of Defense. Your research proposal will need to align with the goals of a particular call supported by these funding agencies. Begin with the Department of Defense’s Strategy Documents to identify funding calls (formerly known as Broad Agency Announcements) from each of the various funding agencies. These documents define the areas of research that each agency is interested in pursuing and contain all the thrusts that they have funding to support. While you are not applying directly to these offices for a specific project, you should treat the NDSEG application like a dry-run for this formal grant application process.
It is critical to choose an appropriate funding call. This demonstrates and can create research proposals of interest to them. It also ensures that an appropriate evaluator is reading your research statement.
This FAQ page for NDSEG (Where can I find the DoD Strategy Document (e.g., BAA/FOA) title?) includes more details about how to find relevant funding calls. This older resource is also available to peruse and provides additional context.
The author of our annotated example used this search tool at the Office of Naval Research and searched for “Electrochemical Materials,” which resulted in a hit with submission instructions for a specific BAA. They filled in the corresponding fields of their application as follows:
- BAA: N00014-22-S-B001
- Title: Electrochemical Materials (the general BAA is titled: FY22 Long Range Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Navy and Marine Corps Science and Technology)
- All of those words were what the author entered into the title field.
Successful applicants we spoke to referenced an entire funding call in previous cycles, but you should confirm the latest requirements with NDSEG.
- Tailor your research proposal to NDSEG and your selected funding area.
A common mistake is to use the same strategy and format of the NSF GRFP research statement as the NDSEG research proposal; however, there is no requirement of intellectual merit nor broader impacts in the NDSEG application. If adapting an NSF GRFP research statement, applicants should carefully revise sections which outline the intellectual merit and broader impact of their research proposal, couching them in terms that align with their NDSEG application.
NDSEG is sponsored by the Department of Defense and a common strategy is to explicitly state how an applicant’s research might benefit some facet of the military. For example, the author of our annotated example wrote about how their carbon dioxide capture and sequestration could be beneficial in submarines, where they might have to spend long stretches of time underwater. Specifically, they shared, “Air revitalization on submarines and space-/aircraft is essential to remove gaseous containments associated with human metabolism. Submarines in particular need methods to routinely remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the ambient air, as levels can reach as high as 2,000 to 5,000 ppm and have shown to negatively impact human cognitive function.”
- Economize your Personal Statement and adapt it to the NDSEG short-form application.
According to NDSEG, your personal essays serve as your introduction to your reviewer. However, the NDSEG selects scholars who might consider working for them, so consider slanting your proposal to be more research driven than industrial. The one requirement of NDSEG Fellows is to attend a research conference at the end of your second year on the fellowship. This conference has been described as a sort of job fair that the DoD uses as a recruitment tool. As such, one common strategy on this essay has been to demonstrate past experience or future interest in working with the DoD, military, or other government agency. Stating your genuine interest in working at the DoD or a military research lab is a pertinent addition. In general, the same narrative strategy employed in the NSF GRFP can be adapted to the NDSEG personal statement. This strategy is outlined in this CommKit article from our colleagues in NSE.
Additional resources:
Additional guidance and an example from an NDSEG recipient in cognitive neuroscience.
Authors:
Jesse Hinricher
Jesse applied for the NDSEG Fellowship three times in 2018, 2019, and 2020. He was awarded the NSF GRFP in 2020.
Katelyn Ripley-Kenyon
Katelyn applied for the NDSEG Fellowship twice in 2019 and 2021. She was awarded the NDSEG Fellowship in 2021.
[1] There is no expectation of future employment with the DoD, but stated willingness to do so is a plus in the application.
