In this Roundup post, we collected a group of six blog posts from GradFund Conversations that speak to the topic of revising your application, regardless of this being your first time applying, or a resubmission to the same funder, these blogs contain useful tips and advice for tackling the revision process.
Revising after you have a first draft:
In this blog post, Raechel describes the importance of editing your work. She gives some practical tips on how to begin the process of revising a fellowship or award application. These tips go from having confidence in your research ideas, and how to properly manage your time for edits, to thinking about your audience, and making sure you proofread your work. This post will be the most useful for those starting to put an application together.
Tips on how to meet an application word count:
Kill Your Darlings! Why You Should Feel Good About Deleting Your Work
Lytton walks the reader through the difficulties of editing your own work, especially when one has to cut-out full paragraphs or delete certain sentences. However, the author also tells us about the usefulness of deleting things in order write in a concise and precise manner; while at the same time staying within the word limit required by funders. The post concludes with four suggestions on how to delete pieces of your writing and “feel good about it”. This post will be most useful for those in the middle and last stages of their application.
For those reapplying for a fellowship:
How to Revise and Resubmit an Unsuccessful Funding Application
This blog post gets at the issue of dealing with an unsuccessful application, while getting ready to apply again. Fellowship Advisor, Dara Walker, provides you with a few questions that will help you revise your application for the next fellowship round. She also addresses that revising also means starting your application from scratch, and Dara explains why this is important even though it is hard to start again.
Revise and Resubmit: Demonstrating Intellectual Growth
As a continuation of her previous blog post, Dara addresses in more detail why previous applications should not be recycled, especially given the fact that you need to show your progress and growth as a scholar since the last application cycle. She advises that looking at the changes that your scholarship and research have experienced during this period is key in building a competitive application. This post leads you through the “how to” when starting an application from scratch, as she had suggested to do in the previous post.
Responding to Reviewer Comments
For those funders who give you feedback after an unsuccessful application, Fellowship Advisor Kelsey Bitting guides you through what are the do’s and don’ts when making use of these comments for reapplying. Remember that some funders encourage you to ask/request the feedback the reviewers submitted for your application; while others do not give past applicants any feedback whatsoever, even though they encourage them to reapply.
When does the revision process end?
In this very concise post, Raechel walks you through the process of “letting go” of your finished application, that is to say, knowing when your draft is done and ready for submission. This post addresses the important final step of the application process, and guides you through putting aside all the blocks stopping you from submitting your application.
Leave a Reply