An Encouraging Comment on Proposal Acceptance Rates
Greetings again. I hope you’re doing well.
Last week I was a speaker at a 3-day workshop designed to help women and members of other underrepresented groups succeed in academic careers. This workshop was for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and early-career faculty.
The workshop, which was here at Texas A&M University, attracted mainly researchers working or studying in Texas. Some attendees, however, traveled here from elsewhere in the United States. I met attendees originally from a variety of native countries.
The workshop focused largely on writing grant proposals. It also included sessions on other topics. I gave 2 talks on writing and publishing. I also took part in a panel on non-traditional funding sources. The workshop included many chances for networking.
At the workshop, I heard an insightful, encouraging comment from a speaker who is an expert on applying for grants. This speaker said not to be discouraged when funding sources say that their acceptance rates for grant proposals are low.
Here’s the speaker’s reasoning:
The speaker explained that funding sources receive many proposals that are very weak—for example, ones that propose poorly designed research, are terribly written, or do not follow the instructions.
These weak proposals, the speaker noted, are readily rejected. Among the remaining proposals, the acceptance rate tends to be much higher than that stated for the funding source as a whole.
The speaker urged those listening to submit the best proposals they could, so they could be in the group with a higher acceptance rate.
Excellent thoughts!
Until the next post—
Barbara