Getting Started
Understand the NSF Merit Review Criteria
Before you can write a successful proposal, you must understand how the proposal will be reviewed. The following resources can be used to familiarize yourself with the NSF Merit Review Criteria:
NSF Note to CAREER Reviewers (NSF 22-586)
Contact NSF Program Officers
Contacting Program Officers is both allowed and encouraged, by NSF. In fact, most program officers expect to be contacted by prospective applicants, whether for CAREER or other programs. There is however a right way and wrong way to do this:
DO:
• Email a 1- page summary of your proposed research
• Ask if their directorate/program is the best fit for the research
DON'T
• "Cold" call
• Send a summary more than 1 page long
• Send a summary without requesting anything in return, or asking any questions
Contact Information for NSF Program Officers
Articles discussing best practices for contacting program officers
What to say- and not to say- to Program Officers
NSF Program Officer Outreach Guide (from Hanover Research) (2018)
5 Tips on How to work with an NSF Program Officer (2021)
Advice for Meeting with Program Directors
Plan your Writing
RD recommends that you create a timeline to keep yourself on track. Below is an example timeline. Remember that your proposal description will be due in mid-June if you plan to engage in a mock review.
NSF CAREER Proposal Writing Timeline (2022)
As you plan your writing, here are some articles about writing for CAREER that you may want to consider:
5 Tips You Need to Know to Obtain an NSF CAREER Award (2018)
NSF 101: Four Tips for Applying to NSF's CAREER Program (2020)
Needing to rewrite?
Analyzing NSF CAREER Reviews and Planning Your Revisions
Copyright 2024 Academic Research Funding Strategies. All rights reserved.
By Lucy Deckard, co-publisher
This is the season when funding decisions, along with reviews, of NSF CAREER proposals start to trickle back to PIs. (The timeline varies dramatically by program and division, so some of you still won’t hear back for several months.) Unfortunately, the odds are that your proposal will be declined. How you respond to this admittedly painful experience will help determine whether this is a failure or merely a bump in the road to ultimate funding success. Below we discuss strategies to analyze your CAREER reviews, understand what your reviewers are trying to tell you, and respond productively.
- Remember that winning a CAREER grant is often a three-proposal process. Read your reviews carefully. Especially for CAREER proposals, reviewers are usually trying to give you helpful feedback to inform your next steps. That feedback may not be what you want to hear, but it’s important to listen.
- Go through your reviews with your mentors and colleagues in your field who are familiar with NSF. It can be difficult to objective about reviews of your own proposal. These colleagues can help provide a reality check. What may seem like a cascade of criticisms to you (e.g., on a number of methodological details) may actually be earnest advice on how to revise your proposal to make it fundable. Conversely, what may seem like a mild comment to you (e.g., “this research is incremental”) may be central to how best to revise your proposal.
- Your reviews will include a Panel Summary and then individual reviews by reviewers assigned your proposal. Use the Panel Summary as a guide. This is the record of the panel’s discussion of your proposal. If a topic is mentioned in the Panel Summary, then it’s probably important. If a comment by Reviewer #3 is not mentioned, it is likely less important. When a topic is mentioned in the Panel Summary, look down at the individual reviewers’ comments to find that topic. Often, it’s easy to see who might have led the panel discussion on the topic because that reviewer wrote at length about the issue. Pay attention to what that reviewer had to say about the issue. If several reviewers discuss the topic, then that’s confirmation that this is an important issue that you need to address.
- Did the reviewers not like your idea? Big problem – you may need to find another NSF program that’s more interested in your idea, or you may need to move on to a different idea. Discuss this with your program director.
- Were the reviewers unconvinced of the significance of your project? Maybe they’re correct, maybe your topic is just not a good fit with this program, maybe you need to make a stronger argument for significance, or maybe you need to go to a different funder that will find the idea more compelling. (This is often an issue when a proposal topic is too applied for NSF, limiting the intellectual merit. Other funders are interested in funding applied research if it’s relevant to their needs and interests.) Remember, also, that you may be able to reframe your project to emphasize the fundamental disciplinary gaps you will address, inspired by the application you have in mind, rather than focusing on the application. In that way, you may be able to make a more convincing argument for significance and intellectual merit.
- Did the reviewers like your idea but had problems with your approach or methods? That’s something you can fix. Talking to your colleagues about how best to address the methodological concerns may be helpful.
- Were the reviewers unconvinced that you have the expertise to accomplish the project, or were they looking for more evidence that your project is feasible? Perhaps you need to generate more publications in the topic, recruit collaborators with specific expertise to fill gaps, or generate more preliminary data.
- Related to the above, did the reviewers feel your project was overly ambitious? Reviewers want you to be successful, so they are hesitant to recommend a project for funding where the PI is likely to fail (e.g., where everything must go perfectly in the project in order to complete it in five years). You may be able to address that by focusing your project more narrowly, proposing to address fewer gaps or challenges. This will reduce the risk of your project and also allow more space to provide methodological details about the gaps you propose to address.
- Were the reviewers totally confused about your proposal? Your colleagues can help you decide whether this was likely a result of a poorly written proposal, an assumption that your reviewers had more expertise in the topic than they actually did, or a mismatch with the program.
- Always check in with yourself. If the reviewers recommend a course of action or highlight a problem with which you strongly disagree, remember that this is your research, and you are most likely better informed on the topic than those reviewers. Talk to your colleagues and the program director to figure out what the reviewers might be thinking and how best to respond. Also, keep in mind that the panel will be composed of different reviewers next year, so if there was one quirky reviewer, they will probably not be on the panel next time.
In any event, be sure to schedule a time to talk to your program director about the reviews, remembering that the conversation should focus on getting feedback that will inform your path forward. If your reviewers were excited by your ideas but were concerned that your project was too risky, you may want to discuss with the P.O. whether to submit an EAGER for a small project to help you get preliminary results to bolster your case. If you decide to resubmit next year, you will have several months to further develop your project, address weaknesses identified by reviewers, get more preliminary data, and work on pilot projects for your education and outreach activities, so your next submission will probably be much better than your last.
If you won't be eligible for CAREER any longer (you’ve used your three tries, or you have been awarded tenure), you may want to take some portion of your project and turn it into a core proposal to NSF. In fact, a core proposal may be quite fundable since: 1) they fund shorter (typically 3-year projects), which can allow you to reduce your scope and thus reduce risk compared to a 5-year CAREER project; 2) they allow co-PIs, so you can bring in expertise that the reviewers may have felt was missing in your single-PI project; and 3) the expectations for the scope of your education and outreach activities are lower, so even if your reviewers found your CAREER education component unimpressive, it may be fine for a regular core proposal. The drawback is that you will be competing with senior researchers, as opposed to competing only with untenured faculty in the CAREER program.
While being declined is never fun, this is a muscle you need to develop. All researchers who seek external funding will collect a drawer full of declined proposals. The key difference between researchers who go on to develop a strong record of grant funding and those who don’t is that the former learn how to analyze reviews and respond strategically.