Some Candid Suggestions for Applicants for Research Funding

• Capture the Reviewer's Attention
• Aim for Clarity
• Establish the Context
• What's the Payoff
• Use a Fresh Approach
• Describe Your Methodology
• Specify Your Objectives
  A well-composed proposal, like a sonata, usually ends by alluding to the original theme. How will research procedures and their products finally connect with the central question? How will you know if your idea is wrong or right? In some disciplines this imperative traditionally means holding to the strict canon of the falsifiable hypothesis. While respecting this canon, committee members are also open to less formal approaches. What matters is to convince readers that something is genuinely at stake in the inquiry - that is not tendentiously moving toward a preconceived end - and that this leaven of the unknown will yield interesting, orderly propositions.

  Proposals should normally describe the final product of the project: an article, book, chapter, dissertation, etc. If you have specific plans, it often helps to spell them out, because specifying the kind of journal in which you hope to publish, or the kind of people you hope to address, will help readers understand what might otherwise look like merely odd features of the proposal.

• Final Note