8 ms·

You know, the thing I always found extremely frustrating or non-transparent about the academic grant process (and it leaks over into government / NSF / etc appl

You know, the thing I always found extremely frustrating or non-transparent about the academic grant process (and it leaks over into government / NSF / etc applications by the nature of who evaluates those: academics again) is how much unofficial or unspoken criteria come into it. You get extra credit points if you're active in visiting other universities and giving talks on the annual job circuit. You tend to do well if you advisors are well-connected. You have to sprinkle a bit of fad-ish topics into your research if even if it's a stretch to do so. I suppose that it has always been so. And now looking back, I don't find huge fault in that you should be able to connect your research with larger ideas. Or that people in richer environments with more information are generally more successful. But having tried to be on the faculty track before, from a middle-tier university, I never knew these things. Or the professors I was around never told me those unofficial factors. And I thought it very unfair that the judges allowed those factors to creep into their consideration without making it clear to everyone that those were important. If giving talks in person is important, tell people at least. I naively (I guess) thought that the strength of what you wrote in the application/grant document dominated. Maybe it does for some fields or if reviewers are diligent about understanding the blinders they wear and their availability bias. Well, anyway, I left the field all the same. No regrets, but I wish these fields would improve their explicit processes about it. I do note with some amusement now in industry, that basically I am able to approve spending of $500k for certain things with approximately a 30 minute conversation with leadership (with appropriate justification and documentation)...

derbOac 5y ago
I went to a grant writing workshop sponsored by the university. When I got there the entire thing, and I mean entire thing, was about buttering up the grant review officers, how to network with people at the agencies, how to work your way into being their friends, and so forth. Not a single thing about the writing process, or how to frame your ideas, or anything like that. I know that's not how grants are always awarded, but as a junior faculty member it's hard to know what to make of that, when a university-sponsored workshop is structured around those issues. It's difficult for me to wrap my head around this all most of the time, to convey to an outsider what bothers me so much about the whole thing, or to even articulate it to myself. I can make comparisons to certain things (Theranos, cryptocurrencies, or economic bubbles) but it's very abstract and fuzzy and imperfect. So much of it seems empty to me, or false.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Fomite 5y ago
  In contrast, ours focused almost entirely on polishing and refining our specific aims page. Eight weeks on what was effectively perhaps two pages of writing. Draft after draft, peer review, etc. Landed said grant on first submission.
  - prash_ant 5y ago
    This is impressive. Did others in the workshop have same experience as you of getting grant on first submission too? If so, the workshop can get credit, else you deserve the credit.
    - Fomite 5y ago
      Candidly, my hit rate isn't high enough to assume it was me ;) I didn't keep track of most of my cohort from that program, but the ones I have had been fairly successful. Mostly, I think the benefit was structured time and an available "red team" to read it (one contract research organization I've worked with had one of these, and it was an amazing experience) etc.
- neel_k 5y ago
  When I went to one of these things, it was pretty much entirely about how to scope the work and how to write the proposal. Eg, for a big ERC grant, you need to propose something big and exciting enough to be worth 2 million euros, but small enough that you and 3 students/postdocs can do it in five years, since that's what 2 million euros can pay for. But our grant office did make sure that most of the speakers were people who had actually applied for these grants in the last round. One really key thing for me was to reach out to senior colleagues in the same area (definitely not just at the same university) to get multiple examples of what successful grant applications look like. There's a bunch of text in the grant call, but the panel are going to be senior in-area academics who may know what a good application looks like, but won't necessarily be able to articulate all the rules. Everyone I know finds writing proposals hard. So much of writing papers is being careful about citing prior work and not over-claiming for your results, but for grant proposals we are basically forced to make big claims about things that we have not done. However, it's worth noting that no one on the panels or at the grant agencies see research proposals as binding promises to do certain work: they mostly all want you to follow the science and change course if you spot something better.
langsoul-com 5y ago
I believe that's the problem with most not for profits. Their bottom line is very arbitrary, so objective decisions are difficult. Compared to, say if I was a paper clip salesman. What makes money and what loses is far more obvious. In addition, if the plan lost money, its immediately obvious and can be stopped
dhash 5y ago
Academia, just like venture capital is made up of people I used to think that academia was up to merit, during my teaching days The only and I mean only reason I ever got a grant is because I called the asshole and asked him to craft it for me
Fomite 5y ago
Having been both a grant writer and a reviewer for NIH and NIH-alike grants, there's an element of both. Established groups definitely get a bit of a pass with "Well, surely Professor So-and-So will sort this out" that an early career person won't. And environment does come into play in terms of whether or not a university has the ability to manage a grant, and yes, large universities basically get an auto-pass there, but it's something people talk about. But I will say that even for established people at large universities, you do have to stick the content. A ton of recent cycles have been dominated by "Hey, we do COVID research now!" from groups that never did infectious disease research before, and a lot of those got clobbered in review. But I also do my best to teach my students about the "soft factors" of academia - there are a lot, and they are, by and large, hidden. Your last point isn't lost either - I occasionally get a little bitter when I translate funding rounds on Hacker News into grant-equivalents.
pinot 5y ago
> You get extra credit points if you're active in visiting other universities and giving talks on the annual job circuit. You tend to do well if you advisors are well-connected. You have to sprinkle a bit of fad-ish topics into your research if even if it's a stretch to do so. Sounds a bit like any job: * Cross train in other departments * Demonstrate your functionality/team’s functionality to other groups through talks, white papers, ‘internal consulting * You do well when your boss does well, make your boss look good * Buzzwords and trends make the world go round
- urthor 5y ago
  Instead of buzzwords and trends, more accurate to say: "Communicate all your ideas using narrative form. Embed your ideas in motifs, illustrate them with visual icons. Explain their worth by using existing context." The reason buzzwords and zeitgeist terminology works is because they're a shorthand to understanding a topic, and a linker to existing context. It's important to consciously understand how that works though.
3pt14159 5y ago
I've gotten a fair amount of grant money from different Canadian research grants, some retrospective, some prospective. I've also written grants as a side thing. Probably all summed together I've helped pull in around $1m–$2m. I don't know about the academic side, but for corporate grants this part: > sprinkle a bit of fad-ish topics into your research if even if it's a stretch to do so. Does work, but only if the core thing you're tackling isn't as meritorious as what the reviewer is used to seeing. So, for example, one grant I wrote for a hardcore AI startup that had huge data engineering issues on a shoestring budget. Former Stanford, Google, etc folks. I didn't need to pull in anything. I just straight wrote the claim (retrospective grant applications are called claims) and we got a big cheque. Most of the work was meticulously going through their pull requests and estimating hours that were research vs traditional software development. As an aside, I make around $5k per day with this type of work because I get pulled into the most technical claims and I'm very good at it, but I don't enjoy it as much as software development so I only take stuff that I think needs my help.
op00to 5y ago
Getting your talk accepted to a tech conference is exactly the same way with unwritten criteria. People are crazy animals.
hyperbovine 5y ago
How is this different than any other walk of life?

derbOac 5y ago

I went to a grant writing workshop sponsored by the university. When I got there the entire thing, and I mean entire thing, was about buttering up the grant review officers, how to network with people at the agencies, how to work your way into being their friends, and so forth. Not a single thing about the writing process, or how to frame your ideas, or anything like that. I know that's not how grants are always awarded, but as a junior faculty member it's hard to know what to make of that, when a university-sponsored workshop is structured around those issues. It's difficult for me to wrap my head around this all most of the time, to convey to an outsider what bothers me so much about the whole thing, or to even articulate it to myself. I can make comparisons to certain things (Theranos, cryptocurrencies, or economic bubbles) but it's very abstract and fuzzy and imperfect. So much of it seems empty to me, or false.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Fomite 5y ago
In contrast, ours focused almost entirely on polishing and refining our specific aims page. Eight weeks on what was effectively perhaps two pages of writing. Draft after draft, peer review, etc. Landed said grant on first submission.
- prash_ant 5y ago
  This is impressive. Did others in the workshop have same experience as you of getting grant on first submission too? If so, the workshop can get credit, else you deserve the credit.
  - Fomite 5y ago
    Candidly, my hit rate isn't high enough to assume it was me ;) I didn't keep track of most of my cohort from that program, but the ones I have had been fairly successful. Mostly, I think the benefit was structured time and an available "red team" to read it (one contract research organization I've worked with had one of these, and it was an amazing experience) etc.
neel_k 5y ago
When I went to one of these things, it was pretty much entirely about how to scope the work and how to write the proposal. Eg, for a big ERC grant, you need to propose something big and exciting enough to be worth 2 million euros, but small enough that you and 3 students/postdocs can do it in five years, since that's what 2 million euros can pay for. But our grant office did make sure that most of the speakers were people who had actually applied for these grants in the last round. One really key thing for me was to reach out to senior colleagues in the same area (definitely not just at the same university) to get multiple examples of what successful grant applications look like. There's a bunch of text in the grant call, but the panel are going to be senior in-area academics who may know what a good application looks like, but won't necessarily be able to articulate all the rules. Everyone I know finds writing proposals hard. So much of writing papers is being careful about citing prior work and not over-claiming for your results, but for grant proposals we are basically forced to make big claims about things that we have not done. However, it's worth noting that no one on the panels or at the grant agencies see research proposals as binding promises to do certain work: they mostly all want you to follow the science and change course if you spot something better.

langsoul-com 5y ago

I believe that's the problem with most not for profits. Their bottom line is very arbitrary, so objective decisions are difficult. Compared to, say if I was a paper clip salesman. What makes money and what loses is far more obvious. In addition, if the plan lost money, its immediately obvious and can be stopped

dhash 5y ago

Academia, just like venture capital is made up of people I used to think that academia was up to merit, during my teaching days The only and I mean only reason I ever got a grant is because I called the asshole and asked him to craft it for me

Fomite 5y ago

Having been both a grant writer and a reviewer for NIH and NIH-alike grants, there's an element of both. Established groups definitely get a bit of a pass with "Well, surely Professor So-and-So will sort this out" that an early career person won't. And environment does come into play in terms of whether or not a university has the ability to manage a grant, and yes, large universities basically get an auto-pass there, but it's something people talk about. But I will say that even for established people at large universities, you do have to stick the content. A ton of recent cycles have been dominated by "Hey, we do COVID research now!" from groups that never did infectious disease research before, and a lot of those got clobbered in review. But I also do my best to teach my students about the "soft factors" of academia - there are a lot, and they are, by and large, hidden. Your last point isn't lost either - I occasionally get a little bitter when I translate funding rounds on Hacker News into grant-equivalents.

pinot 5y ago

> You get extra credit points if you're active in visiting other universities and giving talks on the annual job circuit. You tend to do well if you advisors are well-connected. You have to sprinkle a bit of fad-ish topics into your research if even if it's a stretch to do so. Sounds a bit like any job: * Cross train in other departments * Demonstrate your functionality/team’s functionality to other groups through talks, white papers, ‘internal consulting * You do well when your boss does well, make your boss look good * Buzzwords and trends make the world go round

urthor 5y ago
Instead of buzzwords and trends, more accurate to say: "Communicate all your ideas using narrative form. Embed your ideas in motifs, illustrate them with visual icons. Explain their worth by using existing context." The reason buzzwords and zeitgeist terminology works is because they're a shorthand to understanding a topic, and a linker to existing context. It's important to consciously understand how that works though.

3pt14159 5y ago

I've gotten a fair amount of grant money from different Canadian research grants, some retrospective, some prospective. I've also written grants as a side thing. Probably all summed together I've helped pull in around $1m–$2m. I don't know about the academic side, but for corporate grants this part: > sprinkle a bit of fad-ish topics into your research if even if it's a stretch to do so. Does work, but only if the core thing you're tackling isn't as meritorious as what the reviewer is used to seeing. So, for example, one grant I wrote for a hardcore AI startup that had huge data engineering issues on a shoestring budget. Former Stanford, Google, etc folks. I didn't need to pull in anything. I just straight wrote the claim (retrospective grant applications are called claims) and we got a big cheque. Most of the work was meticulously going through their pull requests and estimating hours that were research vs traditional software development. As an aside, I make around $5k per day with this type of work because I get pulled into the most technical claims and I'm very good at it, but I don't enjoy it as much as software development so I only take stuff that I think needs my help.

op00to 5y ago

Getting your talk accepted to a tech conference is exactly the same way with unwritten criteria. People are crazy animals.

hyperbovine 5y ago

How is this different than any other walk of life?