Three National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellows joined the final session of the 2024 NSF-GRF Summer Writing Lab to share their experiences with the application process and answer questions from participants.
The National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF-GRF) is one of the nation’s premier fellowships for graduate students in STEM who are U.S. citizens, nationals, or permanent residents. The three-year fellowship provides a $37,000 stipend, a cost-of-education allowance, and additional benefits to students in the early years of a research-based program of study.
Each summer, the Graduate College Office of External Fellowships offers a Summer Writing Lab for potential applicants to the NSF-GRF. The Lab builds on our self-guided Canvas course, “NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Fundamentals,” which introduces students to the nuts and bolts of the competition. If you missed the Lab, never fear! You can enroll in the Canvas course at any time and attend our NSF-GRF workshops this fall.
Below, we distill key insights from awardees Amos Jeng, Jeannette Cullum, and Abhi Kamboj on drafting the two required statements, the Graduate Research Plan Statement and the Personal, Relevant Background, and Future Goals Statement, and other considerations for a competitive application.
How do you choose a project when you have more than one idea?
With only two pages allowed for the Graduate Research Plan Statement, there’s generally space to explain only one project. But what if you’re considering more than one project? For Abhi, a key challenge was settling on a project to present in the Graduate Research Plan. “Part of the reason it was difficult was because I was writing this when I was already in grad school, and I was jumping back and forth between a few different labs.” He was unsure whether to write about a project he was already involved in, or “something that I was really interested in and passionate about.” He settled on “writing about something that I was really interested in, and I had relevant knowledge for, but hadn’t yet made significant progress on. That was the better choice for me, and it ended up working out.”
How do you present a cohesive research project in sufficient detail, given the two-page limit?
Abhi’s advice is to “overwrite” and then revise for concision. “It’s hard to strike a balance” and find the right level of detail, he acknowledges. “You want to be specific. But you don't want to get so into the technical details that someone who doesn't know your exact niche wouldn't understand. What I usually try to do is write a little more than the page limit on purpose—I overwrite—and then I try to condense it all down, keeping as many details as I can.”
How do you make your background “make sense”?
The Personal, Relevant Background, and Future Goals Statement asks applicants to explain their educational journey thus far, but perhaps you have skipped around, changed interests, or taken a detour on the way to graduate school. Amos articulated a common challenge faced by applicants when drafting the personal statement: “I don't naturally think about my life experiences in terms of a neat narrative or story, so it felt unnatural for me to piece them together and try to describe them as such.”
In the Summer Writing Lab, students brainstorm a list of significant life experiences that includes all college-level research experiences. This is a fine place to begin a draft of the personal statement, but applicants must then find a way to develop that list into a compelling narrative. This requires reflection, or as Amos explained, “intentionally looking at each of these experiences and thinking, what did I draw from this that impacted me as a scholar, as a student, as a worker, etc.? Because at the end of the day, even if these experiences may have seemed small to me in certain contexts of my life, all of them did have some kind of impact on me, something I drew from it that I took with me into the next stage of life, and just figuring out what that was, just taking the time to do that by myself and with other people is what helped the most.”
Jeannette also found it challenging to persuasively present the relevance of experiences seemingly unrelated to her proposed project: “For example,” she explained, I don't work with human research subjects anymore—I work with animals. But for two and a half years between undergraduate and graduate school I worked as a clinical research coordinator. And so, I wasn't doing things like pipetting and data analysis and fieldwork—all things that I do now—which I was very worried about. But I did a lot of work with patients and consenting them for research studies. Consent forms have to be written at a fifth-grade reading level. That's science communication. That's making science more accessible to everyday audiences. So, it was a matter of digging into those finer details that you wouldn't think at first would connect to your abilities as a scientist.”
Seek feedback from outside readers:
A common theme was that each applicant sought out a range of perspectives on their ideas, from lab mates to professors and advisors in the Office of External Fellowships. As Amos said, “Talking about your experiences with other people helps a lot. I found that getting outside perspectives on my different experiences, even if they didn't fit together in a way that necessarily made sense to me in the moment, I think people who know me well, or have mentored me in my academic career, were often able to see connections in these experiences in ways that I couldn't initially.” A conversation during the drafting process also helped Jeannette find her “hook.” “One of my lab mates started asking me questions, like, ‘what was your first experience with biology? What do you remember about science in elementary school, or middle school?’ And so on. That really helped me nail down a hook for my personal statement, which really helped to root the narrative and make it flow.”
Find the narrative thread:
Each fellow effectively conveyed their motivation in a way that drew their application together into a cohesive whole. Abhi was motivated to develop more equitable technologies by the realization that “technology is often designed as a luxury, even when it has become critical for modern life.” Jeannette’s demonstrated commitment to K-12 curriculum development was spurred by her own less-than-robust early science education. Amos’s interest in how cultural identity shapes educational experiences emerged from his own negotiation of his Taiwanese heritage in predominantly white spaces.
Finally, applicants need to remember that NSF reviewers assess applications holistically. Abhi noted that this was reflected in the reviews he received: “They’re really assessing more than just the writing in the Graduate Research Plan, like how good I am for what I'm proposing. One reviewer said the advisor I'm working with is relevant and that the lab I'm in is suited for the project I'm proposing. Again, I think they're trying to look for that, given the resources I have, I'm able to create a plan that has high potential.”
Manage your recommenders:
Applicants should address the needed resources in the Graduate Research Plan, but reviewers also look to the letters of recommendation for corroboration. As Amos said, “having letters of recommendations that represent the mentorship and team that I'll be surrounded by, and show that I have access to those resources in the project I propose, made a huge difference.” Jeannette shared that one of her letters of recommendation came from a professor with whom she had been working on developing K-12 educational materials– a reminder that the ideal set of letters will reinforce the applicant's strengths in terms of both NSF criteria of intellectual merit and broader impacts. Applicants would be wise to ensure that their letter writers understand these criteria!
NSF-GRF deadlines traditionally fall in mid-October. Potential applicants are invited to learn more about the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, join our self-guided Canvas course “NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Fundamentals,” attend our workshops on writing an effective Graduate Research Plan and Personal Statement, and reach out for one-on-one proposal advising. We look forward to helping you prepare a competitive application for this prestigious award!
Amos Jeng, a doctoral student in Educational Psychology, researches the role of cultural background in help-related behaviors among college students.
Jeannette Cullum, a doctoral student in PEEC, studies disease ecology, specifically the effects of anthropogenic stressors on Daphnia, a zooplankton that is a keystone species in lakes across North America.
Abhi Kamboj, a doctoral student in ECE, studies multimodal AI and sensing, working to incorporate multiple sensors into an AI model to help it understand human motion and behavior.
Dana N. Johnson is the Director of External Fellowships in the Graduate College, where she enjoys supporting Illinois graduate students as they compete for national and international fellowships and grants. Dana earned a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and continues to follow her research interests in Serbia, migration, and the socioeconomic aspirations of youth. You may see her around town at a lecture on one of these topics, picking through an antique mall or watching her dog chase squirrels.
