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After Submission
Most RFPs will state when award announcements will be made; expect to wait
six months for a response from most Federal agencies. Sometimes there are
delays in making these announcements. A telephone inquiry approximately 2-3
weeks after the announcement date is usually appropriate if you haven't
heard. You should also follow up if you haven't received acknowledgement of
the receipt of your proposal by the date promised.
Success rates for
proposals to NIH and NSF hover at around 30%; the success rate for new
investigators with no proven track record at those agencies is around 18%.
Agencies such as the Dept. of Ed., NEA and NEH and the more prestigious
foundations have still lower success rates. These statistics can discourage
faculty from making applications at all. However, these are the statistics
faced by all investigators at all institutions, and your chances of success
are just as good as anybody else's.
There is still no
getting around the fact that competitive grant applications take
considerable effort to prepare and that rejection is a strong possibility.
A few tips for coming to terms with that possibility:
- There are many factors in
addition to strict scientific merit that affect the ultimate success
or failure of your application, so rejection of a grant proposal may
be taken somewhat less seriously than rejection of an article by a
peer-reviewed journal.
- Remember that grant
proposals are a means to an end, not ends in themselves. Many new
investigators agonize over their proposals and frequently delay
submission until the next round of funding. Research grant proposals
in particular are by nature tentative and exploratory: you are
proposing to do something whose exact outcome cannot be predicted.
There is no "state of perfection" for a grant proposal and
in most instances you are better off submitting a proposal to get
reviewer feedback at an earlier date, rather than tweaking it for
another six months or a year and still having to revise and resubmit
it.
- Having several applications
pending at one time reduces your investment in the success of any one
of them. Recently, a NSF-funded researcher mentioned that he usually
has four applications pending, figuring one of them will probably get
funded. This is a healthy attitude and good advice given the 30%
success rate at NSF. Remember that four pending applications does not
necessarily translate to four entirely different proposals.
- Even the most successful
researchers sometime get their grant proposals rejected.
Finally, never accept a
rejection as a final step in the grant application process. If a sponsor
provides you with reviewer comments, they do so, among other reasons, in
hopes you will revise and resubmit. Call the program officer to discuss the
feedback you receive in further detail and remember that a program officer
is more likely to expand on the details of your proposal's evaluation if
they have previously spoken with you.
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