Hayato M. Yamanouchi

Tag: PD

  • Making Your JSPS Research Fellowship (DC1, DC2) Application Even Better [Advice from a Successful FY2024 DC Applicant]

    The results for the JSPS Research Fellowships (DC1 and DC2) were announced at 14:00 on Wednesday, September 27, 2023.

    I was one of the students who applied, and I am happy to report that I was selected.
    On X (formerly Twitter), people were saying that this year’s acceptance rate was lower than usual.

    Apparently the initial acceptance rate was about 14%, or around 17% including the second round of selections.

    I had heard that it is usually close to 20%, so when I saw this year’s rate my first thought was, “Seriously?”

    Through this application process—reading many other people’s JSPS applications and writing my own—I’ve put together some points worth keeping in mind to improve your chances even slightly.

    I think this advice applies not only to JSPS applications but to any writing meant to be read by others, such as grant proposals and job application essays, so I hope you’ll read on.

    What matters lies beyond the application itself

    First, the key to writing an application is conveying what you want to say within a limited space.

    An application explains your research and argues for its importance: this is who I am, these are the things I can do, and therefore I can achieve this goal. So please fund me.

    In other words, you need to keep in mind what lies beyond the writing itself.

    While writing, it’s easy to get caught up in immediate concerns—producing elegant prose, or writing something your advisor won’t complain about—and lose sight of what an “application” fundamentally is.

    It isn’t self-satisfaction: someone reads it, evaluates it, and scores you on that basis.
    This is clearly different from an exam, and precisely for that reason there is no single correct answer.

    My impression is that many people who have spent their lives taking tests with defined answers suddenly hit a wall when faced with an application, unsure of what to write or what “correct” even means.

    Even while writing, you need to keep asking who the application is for.
    Writing a few applications for other funding bodies before the JSPS one and having people read them makes a striking difference in readability.

    The keywords are “logic” and “specificity”

    Logic

    The two things I paid the most attention to when writing my JSPS application were logic and specificity.

    Logic means that your argument is consistent and that each topic connects to the next.
    You need to consider these connections at multiple scales: between sentences, between paragraphs, and across the application as a whole.

    To put it in more practical terms,
    a logical piece of writing is one in which the reader finds the information they want, in the order they want it.
    When this is done well, the content flows effortlessly into the reader’s mind.

    The point is to judge from the reader’s perspective.
    No matter how logical you think your argument is, it may not come across that way to someone else.

    Guides on writing JSPS applications often recommend inserting phrases like “in other words” or “the details are described below,” but the underlying purpose is to give the reader signposts that make the structure easy to follow.

    Opinions differ sharply on whether such phrases are necessary, but one thing is clear: if omitting them makes your structure hard to follow, you should include them even at the cost of precious space.

    Specificity

    Specificity means, quite literally, providing exactly as much information as the reader needs.

    You’ve probably often heard people say, about applications or research talks,
    “My research needs so much background that I just can’t fit it into a short format.”

    I’ve felt the same way myself—facing a 10-minute conference talk and thinking there was no way I could finish in 10 minutes.

    But it often turns out that even a talk you confidently packed with content contains plenty of information the audience didn’t need, and almost none of what they actually wanted to know.

    In other words, you haven’t decided what to keep and what to cut.

    To make those decisions, first determine what you most want to convey.
    Then keep what is necessary to explain that core message and discard what isn’t. That is how you achieve specificity.

    In applications like the JSPS fellowship, you have to describe your research and yourself in a very small amount of text.
    People often suggest dividing the fellowship funding by the number of characters in the application to calculate the value of a single sentence.

    I think the point of that exercise is to make you ask: is this sentence really worth that much money? If not, rewrite it.

    Background sections describe the field from a third-party perspective and are necessary to make your own work stand out, but since they describe other people’s research, their intrinsic value is low.
    Whether you keep them to a minimum or find some other value in them is up to you.

    Revising in this way is how you refine your content.

    So far I’ve talked about specificity while only discussing what to cut, but the real point is to condense the content and make each sentence as specific as it needs to be—no more, no less.

    Throughout the process, I kept logic and specificity constantly in mind, periodically stepping back to reread and rewrite.

    Show it to others early

    One of the most important things about an application is getting other people to read it early.

    Some people wait until it’s finished and they’re satisfied with it, and only show it a week before the deadline—which is honestly a waste.

    Showing your draft to others means both checking whether you’re heading in the right direction and getting feedback.
    It isn’t just about corrections.

    As the saying goes, the quality of a JSPS application depends on how many people have read it: feedback brings new insights and can even change your fundamental way of thinking.

    Ideally, aim to have someone other than your supervisor read it at least three weeks before the deadline.

    Don’t stare at your application nonstop

    When application season came around, I often saw people cutting back on experiments to focus entirely on their applications.
    It’s true that these documents require a fair amount of time, and revising them over and over eats up an enormous number of hours.

    That said, once you’ve written a reasonable draft, there’s no point in reading it over and over and burning time for nothing.
    In fact, you should put some distance between drafting and revising before you read it again.

    An application is an important document with your future riding on it.
    But it doesn’t improve in proportion to the time you pour into it. The real challenge is producing the best possible version as efficiently as you can.

    Rather than being glued to your computer, keep your experiments moving along, and even take breaks to refresh yourself. Writing that way lets you keep a level-headed perspective.

    I didn’t write only at the university. I would take my laptop to cafés and other places, changing my surroundings often as I wrote.

    Closing thoughts

    This year’s provisional acceptance rate is said to be about 14% at the first-stage screening.
    To put it the other way around, 86% of applicants were not selected for a JSPS fellowship.

    Since the vast majority of applicants are not selected, there’s no need to be more discouraged than necessary if you weren’t.

    At the same time, those who are selected have, in effect, secured their place ahead of many other people’s dreams and livelihoods.
    The award does reflect a genuine evaluation of your research as it stands, but beyond that it carries the responsibility to work even harder from here on.

    I want to keep that in mind myself and continue giving my research everything I have.

  • How to Write a JST Application (Internal University Application): A Memorandum

    How to Write a JST Application (Internal University Application): A Memorandum

    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.

    Further reading

Hayato M. Yamanouchi

PhD student, Kamikouchi Laboratory, Nagoya University / JSPS Research Fellow (DC1)
Systems Ethology (Neuroethology × Informatics)

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