This post is my attempt to compile what I’ve learned about writing though applying for government scholarships. Most of it comes from my own trial and error, but some I also picked up from workshops¹, and by looking at other people’s proposals ².

Disclaimer: I’m not a writer by training, and I definitely haven’t won all the awards I’ve ever applied to. This is really just a list of things that I wish I knew the first time I applied to government scholarships. All the following tips are aimed at building technical project proposals, with a bias towards NSERC because that’s the agency that my work falls under.

General advice

Use a citation manager

If you’re not already using a citation management tool, then your life is harder than it needs to be. I use Zotero, but some people prefer Mendeley, or Paperpile, for example.

I explain all the reasons I love Zotero here.

Don’t expect to nail it on the first try.

A common theme seems to be “I didn’t get any awards at all at first, then something clicked and I seemed to get them all at once”. You will probably have to apply several years in a row before you have a good grasp on the language to use to describe your problem, and build a strong understand where your work fits within the field as a whole.

Luckily, the easiest thing to work off of is your own past writing. If you start early, you will become a valuable resource to your future self 😁

Get writing help

Many universities have a writing center, with workshops aimed at specific scholarships. Look into their calendar ahead of time, as you’ll get the most out of it if you can bring a draft with you.

Get someone else to read it

Bonus points if they are not in your field, and are able to grasp your research proposal enough to get excited about your problem. This is a good litmus test for writing clarity.

An algorithm to write to

I use this same process for both technical writing, and personal statements. This is what works for me personally: take what you like and ignore the rest 😊

Warning

I am writing this in 2022. The specific formatting instructions might have changed since then. Never listen to anyone about presentation standards, except the official instructions.

Do the following things in this order:

Set up page margins to 2cm
Set font to 12pt Arial
Write the title and your name in the header. Don’t forget to paginate where appropriate.
Paste the instructions into the document, anything that gives guidelines on what the content should be. Check back on these as you write, especially if you get stuck on what to write about.
Write a bullet point outline of all the ideas you want to include (past/present/future work, practical implementation, etc)
Write statement-style headers for each section, in a way that captures the narrative flow of the story. These headers should be written such that they are sufficient that someone reading them could explain your whole project, even though you haven’t written the content yet. Put them in bold.
Assign the bullet points to headers. These will guide how you flush out the body text.
Write the content paragraphs. Don’t worry about writing them in order. If you have trouble making progress on one, write a brief skeleton the best you can, and move on to a different section. The headers from step 5 will give you a strong sense of which chunks of text are self-contained.
Edit. Go back to any paragraphs that are not flowing correctly. Use a read-aloud service (ex. in Word) to listen to your draft.
Realize you’re about 20% over the page limit. Change font to 12pt Times New Roman. Now you’re done.

Steps 5 & 6 should only contain sentence fragments and ideas that are easy to write. Do not spend time agonizing over wording in these steps.

I learned #6 by reading other people’s examples. Done correctly, your headers will greatly improve readability. Ultimately you want your writing to be as skimmable as possible. This is important, because your application will be one of a large number of others that reviewers will have to read through.

#10 is also a critical trick for me: always draft in Arial before finalizing to Times New Roman. TNR is much more condensed, and this font conversion will gift you extra space, as long as you don’t start by writing in it. I tend to over-write, and this trick helps me avoid having to spend a lot of time cutting content.

When it comes to getting the exact wording you want, don’t let perfect be the enemy of progress. When you get stuck on a word:

Use a thesaurus
Look at other writing samples (some of mine are available here)
Write down a few synonyms of the word you’re trying to find as a note to self and come back to it later.

OGS & CGS/PGS specific advice

I have used more or less the same structure for my successful award applications³:

OGS 2021
PGS-D 2021
QEII-GSST 2022
DSI fellowship 2022

Structure of the research proposal

Note

This is just one structuring example which I have followed. Don’t feel bound to what I describe here, if your writing heart leads you elsewhere

There are a few points in this structure that are subtly distinct. You should not just paraphrase the same sentence twice for these, which is a pitfall I’ve run into. I have highlighted pairs of elements in this structure should not get conflated, because these elements have different roles in the proposal. Distinguish them from each other by changing the scope of what you describe.

Background and motivation
1. Where we are now (state of the field)
2. What’s needed (key steps in new knowledge generation)
Objectives and hypothesis
1. What you’re developing (one-liner)
2. What it will enable (big picture impact of your results)
Knowledge gap (The direction your results will take the field in. Keep it large enough scale/scope that your project does not completely fill this gap, but maybe your project, plus 3-5 years more research would.)
Significance (Implications of what your project will enable)
Experimental and theoretical approach
1. Summary of 2-3 goals. Goals should describe the overarching themes of what your results will show.
2. 2-3 aims, with substeps that build to each aim. Aims should be actionable steps you will take, and build on each other logically, however later aims should not strictly rely on the success of earlier aims in order to be possible to execute. (What would you do if the early stuff didn’t work out? You don’t want to leave your proposal vulnerable to that question.)
Why you are uniquely positioned to execute the research here and now

Pitfalls

The biggest challenge for new grad students is not yet having a strong grasp on the state of their field, and how their project fits in that context.

Probably your PI has a good idea of this, and your lab may have an overarching research story that you can tap into. Ask you PI for writing advice!
The only other thing you can do to improve on this is to read widely and engage with other researchers in your field. This is more of a student-lifestyle thing than it is writing advice, but it makes for a good researcher (and subsequently, research proposal).

Research contributions

Your research contributions should include everything you did. This also means things that you had shared responsibility with others. (ex. put down writing if you wrote part of the original draft, even if someone else also wrote part). I recommend referring to CRediT taxonomy for a list and description of roles.

Relevant Activities

I treated this section as place to highlight my non-research CV items. They should ideally have some tie-in to your career goals, and speak to your attributes as a researcher. See Create a draft that harmonizes with your reference letters below.

Reference letters

Offer to draft your referee’s letters for them

This will make it a lot easier for your referees to agree to be a reference for you. It will also let you have a hand in what your letters look like, and ensure that they highlight the same strengths you show in the rest of the application.

At the very least, you should provide your references a few bullet points to work with.

Create a draft that harmonizes with your reference letters

A common recipe that I have noticed in the successful applications that I’ve seen (and tried to model in my own application) to prove that your leadership is “above and beyond” goes along these lines:

You have a series of examples of times you were in a leadership position, and did something extra
- You made the leadership position your own in some way
- You took an active role in supporting others
- You created something new to solve a problem
Between your two reference letters, all the examples you listed are repeated, but discussed from a different perspective
Your referees identify the impact of the “something extra” that you did
Your referees are able to explain why what you did made others admire/respect/be grateful to you
Your referees have a lot of positive adjectives to describe your character

Leave a full day for formatting

Do not underestimate the time sink that is uploading all your files, reuploading, editing the CCV because of a missing comma, reuploading, now there’s an extra comma, reuploading, etc.

The first time you put everything into the CCV system is the most painful.
After that it is easier :)

Vanier

Vanier is a different beast. There is a heavy emphasis on leadership, and the expectations are not the same as CGS. Preparing a Vanier application is more work than CGS, and takes more time.

Silvia Sellán has generously shared advice and examples from her application - which I recommend reading.

Good Luck!

Footnotes

Shout-out to Daniel Newman ↩︎
Special thanks to SG, SS, AD, TS, JW, and SK for helpful advice they’ve shared with me.↩︎
Of course, I’ve also used it on applications which were ultimately unsuccessful: CGS-M 2019, CGS-D 2020, Vanier 2020, Vanier 2021. However, I’d like to believe that I improved my writing skill over time, and this resulted in my later success.↩︎