Introduction
One task that follows researchers everywhere is the grant application. Anyone aiming for a research career cannot avoid it, yet it is often overlooked.
I suspect many people struggle with application forms.
I am one of them. I went into the School of Science precisely because I was bad at language arts, and yet, of all things, writing turned out to be the obstacle standing in my way….
In recent years, support for PhD students has become substantial. Beyond the JSPS Research Fellowship (DC), there are university-internal grants funded by JST programs, WISE (Doctoral Program for World-leading Innovative & Smart Education) programs, JASSO, and more. Existing schemes have been expanded and new ones continue to be added.
If you can secure this kind of support, it will cover most of your living expenses during the PhD, and you can also receive help with tuition.
I myself have faced and submitted several university-internal applications.
How they differ from the JSPS fellowship application
University-internal applications are, for the most part, quite similar to the JSPS (Gakushin) application.
The reason is simple: getting the JSPS fellowship is the ultimate goal.
Also, requiring a different format would only add to the student’s workload, so most programs adopt the JSPS format and build in a process that lets you refine the same document.
The selection criteria center on the research content and on the applicant’s aptitude and future potential.
What matters is presenting these clearly so that they get across to the reader.
There is absolutely no need to write elegant, literary prose.
Although internal applications share much with the JSPS application, there are differences.
Chief among them is that the kind of person an internal program is looking for differs somewhat from what JSPS is looking for.
The call itself states what kind of applicant the program is seeking, so you need to write in a way that matches that.
The biggest difference from the JSPS application, however, is who reads it.
The JSPS application is assigned to a field, so it is read by someone with at least some relevant expertise.
Internal applications, by contrast, are basically read by people within your own university. Even within the life sciences, a plant researcher may end up reading your animal research proposal.
On top of that, each reviewer often has to read more internal applications than JSPS ones.
In other words, keep the content accessible so that its appeal comes across even to someone in a different field.
And make sure the content and its appeal register at a glance.
Fundamentally, you should assume reviewers have no desire to read your application, and write one that catches their interest and makes them read it.
Use figures and highlighting appropriately so that the important points are obvious at a glance.
Tips for writing
The keys to a good application are logical flow and concreteness.
Logical flow means giving readers the information they want, at the moment and in the order they want it.
In other words, you create logical flow by connecting each sentence to the next and by writing what the reader is already vaguely anticipating.
For example:
“During my undergraduate years I belonged to several student organizations and helped run each of them. Through this I developed leadership and the ability to work smoothly with others.”
Running an organization → leadership and the ability to work smoothly with others
When sentences connect like this, without friction or gaps, we can say the writing is logical.
Next, concreteness. Adding it to the example above gives:
“During my undergraduate years I belonged to several student organizations that planned events and social gatherings for students, and in each one I took the lead in running those events. Through this I developed leadership and the ability to work smoothly with others.”
Adding concrete detail strengthens the logic of what exactly you did in the organization, how you were involved, and what abilities you gained as a result.
The critical obstacle to achieving both, however, is the character limit.
These limits are set quite tightly, and once you try to describe things concretely you run out of space.
That is precisely why, in the rush to cram in content, these two elements tend to get neglected.
Summarize the content concisely and clearly.
The tension between that demand and the demands of logical flow and concreteness is the central problem in writing an application.
The key to striking this balance is understanding what kind of person the program wants to select.
Most calls specify which items they want you to address and what kind of content they expect.
The reader must be able to see clearly where in your text each of those items is addressed.
Don’t make them infer or read between the lines; the distinction should be obvious enough that they simply cannot miss it.
If you keep this front and center, it becomes clear which sentences are necessary and which are not.
An approach to writing
When writing an application, start by listing the points you want to make as bullet points, then write out the prose without worrying about length.
Then flesh out the content while keeping logical flow and concreteness in mind.
At this stage you will usually be well over the limit, so the next step is cutting the text down.
Rephrase and reword until you are only slightly over the character limit.
At that point, have someone else look at your application.
This stage is extremely important.
Getting feedback early and often keeps you from drifting far off course and helps you develop your own way of writing applications.
Showing your work to others is daunting, and pride often gets in the way, but this is the moment to set that pride aside and share it.
In my experience, the stronger a student’s academic record, the more they tend to agonize over the application alone and delay showing it to anyone.
Once you receive feedback, reread your own draft in light of it, recognize what needed improving, and rewrite.
Having others read your draft is the single most important stage.
Nobody writes a perfect application from the start, and criticism is not a rejection of you as a person; take it as advice that you are capable of more.
Summary
An application exists to be read by someone else.
Never fall into the complacent assumption that reviewers will read it carefully, or that it would be unreasonable of them not to.
If people won’t read it, then write something that makes them read it.
No matter how good the content is, it means nothing unless people actually read it and the message gets across.
A common piece of advice is to take the total amount of funding a grant application would bring in, divide it by the number of lines in the application, and work out how much each single line is worth.
This gives you a clear standard for judging whether what you have written is worth that much to the reader.
If you don’t think a sentence carries that much value, it may need to be rewritten.