I wrote the piece below about six months ago after submitting my fellowship application. A few weeks ago I received the comments from reviewers and sent through my ‘rebuttal’. It reminded me that I didn’t press send on this!
About 5,000 words later, and 2,000 of those binned, I’m ready to press the fellowship submission button. My eyes ache, my brain is over-stimulated but I’m feeling quite content. I’ve created an idea that I think will be exciting to implement, challenging, and rewarding.
Writing fellowships is hard work. Not just getting the words on paper but coming up with an idea that I’m as excited about at submission as I was when I first started thinking about it. While it’s very easy to complain that the time spent writing the fellowship could be put to better use, and I’ve definitely ignored a lot of requests from others over the last few weeks, putting the energy into a bright and exciting idea is rewarding. And even more so if funders agree!
I’ve written a number of fellowship applications at different stages of my career. I’ve had two funded, one that I took up. I’ve put together a few thoughts, reflections and recommendations below, quite a few are re-hashes of advice found elsewhere but I’ve found them useful:
- Start early, and especially allow time to ‘mull things over’. Everyone says this but it’s really true. The ‘Case for Support’ always takes loads of time to get right, and then there are always several additional sections which also require attention. Getting feedback from critical friends is so important, and giving them time to provide this feedback needs to be factored in.
- If you’re not sure where to start, write a concept note. In fact, if you’re fortunate to have lots of ideas, write several concept notes! This time I had two ideas that I wanted to develop – by writing a concept note for both I realised that one idea was much stronger than the other.
- Take advantage of the fact that a fellowship IS NOT a grant – the purpose is investing in the fellow and the idea. I really value spending time with researchers in other institutions and always have something in the fellowship plan to support this. It’s also a perk of being an academic! For this application I’ve included a section where I will second myself to a collaborator for six months to get a better understanding of their priorities and really work with them. For personal reasons I’ve restricted the in-person period to three weeks and the rest will be online, but given that this collaboration is with an international NGO remote working is the norm. In my previous fellowship I spent a year at Oxford university doing an MSc (paid for by the funder), this was a great time until the looming exams started to worry me, but overall the experience was a worthwhile one.
- Plan early for feedback from critical friends, including those outside of your immediate research area. And I emphasise several critical friends…because not everyone is going to provide feedback (and it’s not their fault – there’s just so many competing priorities). I fully appreciate feedback on grammar, the pitch of an idea, career development, the scientific content. And all these are unlikely to come from just one critical friend.
- All applications have a style and set-up and your plan needs to align with this. Most universities provide input on this so I won’t repeat it here. I’ve also found external courses to be very worthwhile – one I recently attended was delivered by Andrew Derrington. Writing isn’t my strong point and the input provided has been valuable. The style of a fellowship plan is quite different to writing a paper so those finely tuned paper writing skills need to be adapted.
- Once you’ve had a break post-submission, it’s really worth thinking where else the idea could be sent. The time writing a fellowship can be a lot and starting from scratch each time would not be time well spent. But equally, having time to reflect and think how it could improved is also worthwhile.
- Be prepared for rejection. The success rate is about 10% on average. You rarely hear of failed applications on social media or even the coffee room so it might seem like everyone is successful. So when you get rejected, have a whinge in the coffee room, but it’s good to take time to reflect on the comments and decide what to do. A re-work might be a real contender, it could be right idea, wrong funder, and many other reasons. Most funders are happy to engage a bit, and it’s worth taking this up (but only when you want to hear constructive criticism).
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