Do You Have To Follow Nsf Template Gfrp

Criteria for Success

You are eligible for the Fellowship (i.e. you lot are non proposing to pursue an Doctor-PhD; you lot are not proposing research nearly a particular illness or clinical practice).
Your personal statement convinces a panel of academics that y'all are qualified to receive the Fellowship, especially with respect to the Intellectual Merit and Broader Impact criteria.
Y'all evidence simply those skills and experiences that demonstrate how you fit those criteria.
The skills and experiences that you show are concrete and quantitative.
Your personal argument meets the formatting and folio limit criteria.

Structure

nsf-personal1

Note that the Broader Impacts sections can be woven through the rest of the experiences every bit well as highlighted in separate sections. Sizes of sections are guess.

Purpose

Your personal argument (technically, the "Personal, Relevant Groundwork, and Future Goals Statement") is function of an application that should convince the option commission to award yous the Fellowship.

The GRFP website says, "NSF Fellows are expected to become globally engaged knowledge experts and leaders who can contribute significantly to enquiry, educational activity, and innovations in science and engineering. The purpose of this statement is to demonstrate your potential to satisfy this requirement."

The personal statement is the only part of the application where y'all get to lay out the experiences y'all've had, the goals you intend to pursue, and how those experiences and goals qualify y'all for the Fellowship.

Analyze your Audience

Your entire awarding will be "reviewed online by virtual panels of disciplinary and interdisciplinary scientists and engineers and other professional graduate education experts". These are academics, usually from your wide area of science (due east.g. biological science) but not from your specific area (e.grand. polymer biomechanics). They will guess your application using some combination of (a) the NSF's official criteria for the Fellowship and (b) their own ideas about what makes skilful science or a good scientist.

The people on the committee read many, many applications. Make information technology piece of cake for them to figure out that you are qualified for the award by referencing the Intellectual Merit and Broader Touch criteria that they use to judge your application. Make information technology easy for them to think you by creating a narrative that "brands" you.

Skills

Include Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts criteria

Like many awards or job offers, there are explicit criteria that show if you qualify for the Fellowship. Read the program solicitation to learn the criteria that the selection committee are using to judge your application. Write your personal statement in a way that makes information technology as clear as possible that you lot meet these criteria.

The 2015 NSF solicitation says (emphases added):

The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students who are pursuing research-based master'south and doctoral degrees in science, applied science, engineering, and mathematics (Stalk) and in STEM education [and senior undergraduates]. The GRFP provides 3 years of back up for the graduate didactics of individuals who have demonstrated their potential for pregnant enquiry achievements in Stem and Stalk education.

And:

Reviewers may consider the following with respect to the Broader Impacts Criterion: the potential of the applicant to benefit club and contribute to the accomplishment of specific, desired societal outcomes based on a holistic assay of the complete application, including past personal experiences, professional person experiences, educational experiences and future plans.

Read these materials so you know what "Intellectual Merit" and "Broader Impacts" mean to the NSF, and use your personal statement to bear witness how you encounter those criteria. Practice not just make up your own ideas about what "Broader Impacts" means. The NSF has specific lists of activities that establish Broader Impacts.

Note that applications prior to 2018 did not require "Intellectual Merit" and "Broader Impacts" to exist addressed nether separate headings. Exist sure to follow the well-nigh up-to-appointment guidelines provided by NSF, peculiarly if you lot are referencing older examples.

Create a personal narrative

Unlike a grant that funds a specific project, the NSF GRFP invests in the professional and scientific growth of individuals. The program solicitation talks about building a "globally-engaged workforce" and ensuring "the Nation's leadership in advancing scientific discipline and engineering research and innovation".

Your personal statement is your opportunity to prove the selection panel that your personal goals (e.g. collaborating with foreign scientists) marshal with the program's goals (e.g. creating a globally-engaged workforce). Tell a narrative virtually yourself that is honest, that you're excited about, and that shows this alignment. Use this narrative through your entire personal statement. It should help you avoid writing a personal statement that is only a resume in essay format.

Concretize and quantify your experiences

Your experiences are the "what" of your essay. Which experiences led yous to develop your skill ready and passions? Where have you lot demonstrated accomplishment, leadership, and collaboration? Research, pedagogy, and relevant extracurriculars are all relevant. State physical achievements and outcomes like awards, discoveries, or publications.

Quantify your experience or impact to make them more than concrete. How many people were on your team? How many protocols did y'all develop? How many people were in competition for an honour? As a TA, how oft did you run across with your students?

Describe your actions rather than changes in your mental or emotional country; your personal argument is not a diary entry.

Vague experience	Concrete feel
During this projection, my mind was opened to the possibility of using unlike programming languages together to create code that is faster to run and easier to empathise and modify.	During this projection, I collaborated with other grouping members to develop a user-friendly Python wrapper for a x,000-line Fortran library.
I showed initiative in my second project in the lab.	Frustrated with the management of my commencement project, I consulted with other faculty and proposed an entirely new project.
During my first twelvemonth, I became a more curious and capable scientist.	I explored the literature and proposed two alternative procedures to make the experiment efficient.
I won the physic section's Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation Focus prize.	I won the physics department's prize for top student among my cohort of 20 students.
I learned about the role of enzymes in cancer.	I quantified the kinetics of three enzymes implicated in cancer onset.

Explain the meaning of your experiences

The significant of your experiences is the "why" or "so what" of your personal argument. It's good to have quantitative and concrete feel; information technology'southward even more than important to attribute meaning to those experiences.

Every prepare of experiences should speak to i of the requirements that the NSF GRFP solicitation lays out:

How has this experience prepared you to seek a graduate degree?
How will it help you become a globally-engaged noesis expert or leader?
How will information technology assist you contribute to research, education, or innovations in science and engineering?
How will your graduate experience prepare you for a career that expands scientific agreement or benefits society?

The connexion between your experiences and the NSF GRFP's goals may feel obvious to you, only you should make these connections explicit for your audience: this volition make it easy for them to put your awarding in the "yes" pile.

For a writing fashion that creates logical flow, employ statements well-nigh the meaning of feel as transitions betwixt experiences. Effort to "wrap" meaning around your experiences. Putting the pregnant at the beginning and terminate of a paragraph makes it piece of cake for a reader to understand what they should exist taking abroad from the details in the middle.

Experience only (schematic)

Experience and Meaning

Sophomore year, I coded image-processing algorithms.
Junior year, I studied cell cytoskeletal structure.
Senior year, I applied microscopic techniques and computational epitome assay to studying prison cell development.

During my undergraduate career, I realized that I was nearly excited near applying interdisciplinary approaches to fundamental questions in cell biology.
I gathered complementary perspectives and skill-sets from diverse inquiry experiences.
- Sophomore year…
- Junior twelvemonth…
- Senior yr…
I look forward to applying my interdisciplinary background to new research questions in prison cell biology as a graduate student.

This content was adapted from from an commodity originally created past the MIT Biological Engineering Communication Lab.