Welcome to Brainsteering! In this course, we will master the fundamental techniques of proposal writing. We will use pieces of the National Institute of Health’s F-Series Award, and the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship applications as our case studies. We have chosen these awards as test cases, because: 1) NSF GRFP’s instructions are so generally that most awards follow its mold (indeed, you will see that your graduate school applications ask you for exactly what GRFP does), and 2) you should apply for an NIH F-Series award as a graduate student (so let’s start thinking about it now not only to make you more competitive in the future, but to show graduate programs that you are serious). Finally, we will pull all of the writing that you do together to apply for an award for which you are eligible this year.
Our Goals:
- Understand how reviewers in medical research think, and develop writing techniques that meet reviewers’ needs
- Employ narrative thinking techniques to design and write a proposal
- Explore the National Institute of Health’s funding culture, and jumpstart your campaign to win an NIH F-Series Award
- Construct the elements of a personal statement that you can use for fellowship and graduate school applications
- Complete an application for a fellowship that you are eligible for this year
How it works:
- You will complete lessons in this online course.
- Along the way, quizzes will ask you to submit some of your writing.
- Your submissions will trigger a consultation. We will email you after you submit your assignment to schedule a time. You will have 3 consultations along the way. You can keep working ahead on the online lessons after you submit if you want, or you can wait until after you consultation to keep moving forward.
- Patrick will work with you on your personal statements, and Andrew will provide you intensive coaching on both the design and writing of your research plan.
