So today we’re going to talk about my seven top tips for PhD research proposal writing, this is a follow on from my last article from last week. So go check that out, how to come up with a research topic or idea for your project. And now let’s talk about that it’s such an important thing. So let’s get into it.
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The first thing I want to talk about is the last thing that you should write. And that isn’t the final page, it’s the title.
- Title:
Now you see a title for a research proposal is very important. It has to be understandable, you want to keep it to less than about 15 words closer to an under 10, to be honest, would be awesome.
And the thing about the title is, it’s meant to capture in a single sentence, what your proposal is about. And that can be pretty challenging. So what I like to do is write it at the very end of any grant any application. And if you’re doing a PhD research proposal, just write it at the end.
One thing I like to do is, as I’m writing my research proposal, sometimes you have those little lights, sparks of, I guess, inspiration, or intelligence that pop out. And so what I do is in a document or just on a piece of paper, I write down the sentences or the words that I just connect with. And so at the end of my grant or research proposal, I’ve got a load of words that I can sort of jigsaw piece together to create a title.
Now, I’ve actually never created a title completely on my own. So whenever I think yeah, this will be a good title, I approach my supervisor, I approached my colleagues and I say, what do you think about this? Look, ultimately, if you’re swapping out a word for another word, it doesn’t really matter. That means you’re on the right track. But what you want from them is the ability to understand what you’re doing, and kind of why you’re doing it and the significance. And that’s a pretty hard task for a single sentence.
So yeah, right at last try on a few people, if they can roughly get what you’re doing from that, you are on top of it.
- Put All Of The Important Information At The Front Of The Sections:
Now this is one thing I was terrible at doing. Now imagine this, right? You’re a PhD examination board person, and you need to read all of these different applications. And you kind of get a little bit lost about who’s doing what, you know, you try your best, but you’re just a person as well.
And so what I like to do is put all of the important information in the first paragraph of every section that is the most important paragraph of every section. And that’s because as they’re going through different applications, it’s obvious what you’re doing, right?
I had this issue where I would, you know, in, I think in creative writing, or script writing, they call burying the lead, where you put the important information right at the very back like you feel like for some reason, you need to build up to this really important information. But that is not what you do with a grant application.
Get it up front, really craft that first paragraph to make sure that it answers the question. It’s kind of like I guess, an executive summary. And then later on in the paragraph, and in the word limit, you can include much more information but, you know, keep these people the examination admin board, people, grant reviewers, keep them interested, by giving them all the information they need to tick a mental box in their mind to be like, yes, this person has answered the question, and I understand it, which is important.
- Don’t be too complicated:
It’s really challenging to not try to flex your academic or language muscles as you are writing. It can be incredibly tempting to be like, I need to include all of the biggest words that I know and it is important to include the field specific language, but I’d recommend that you don’t include any unnecessarily verbose sort of definitions or wordy kind of explanations because like I said, You’ve got to get into the mind of your audience. And in this case, the audience is a tired frustrated academic that just want To understand what you’re doing, so they can tick a box, let people know that you should or shouldn’t be accepted into this into this PhD program.
And yeah, that is so very important. Just keep it simple. So one thing I like to do is one of the best tips I heard was use a dictation software. So I use dragon quite a lot when I’m writing blog posts or doing stuff and emails, like I really like dictating what I’m saying. So dragon as well as like just using Google as well, Google Documents has a dictate thing. And that works really, really well. Because if the dictation software doesn’t know what you’re saying, it’s probably a little bit too complicated.
Now I understand that there’ll be field specific terminology that you have to use. But I think that’s a really nice way of trying to get to grips with what the average person would understand.
- Use figures:
Now a picture paints 1000 words and a figure probably sort of gives 10,000 words, I reckon. So if you can show a figure and if you’re allowed to put figures in, you can show a figure that’s clear, that hasn’t got like weird extra information in it.
And one thing I like to do is reproduce people’s figures with permission if it’s being published, but reproduce, but also kind of make clear the bit of the figure that I want to demonstrate, because a lot of times scientific figures have got lots of information that don’t necessarily support what you want to say in your application.
And so I’ll reproduce it, you know, change the color of the line, make it bold, get rid of the other stuff, I have even been known to Photoshop out other parts of the graph to include because, you know, you need to make the figure obvious. And even though a figure paints 10,000 words, you want to make sure that it’s the right 10,000 words, because it could be a figure demonstrates 100,000 words, but you only need 10,000 of the words, you know, I mean, that’s going to get a bit messy in terms of the metaphor.
But yeah, get rid of the bits of the figure, if you’re reproducing it that you don’t need highlighter, arrows like all of that stuff really helps. And once again, from the aspect of a reviewer, looking at a grant application, you want it to be obvious, as soon as you look at that figure or that graph, what it is you need to get from it, the caption goes a little way to helping that as well. But ultimately, you need it to be super obvious.
So include figures, because figures also do something very important, they also give the brain a chance to relax away from the words. Now I don’t know how many words are in the average kind of grant application. But for a research proposal, let’s say it’s between about 200 – 4000 words. And if you’re reviewing, say 10 of them, that’s a lot of words that’s like 40,000 words to get through. So a figure gives the reviewer a break. And so I like to space out my figures, as I kind of can is it just so that it’s like figure block of text figure block of text. And yeah, it really helps the reviewer, get a nice feeling. And that’s what really comes down to is giving them a nice feeling towards your research proposal or grant application.
- Formatting;
Formatting is one of the most overlooked aspects of PhD research, proposal writing and grant applications. And I’ll tell you why. It’s because we think as scientists that our words matter the most and so we cram them in with cramming loads of words, we say like, Ah, you know, this is what we’re doing, or it doesn’t look meaty. And when you look back at it, you go, Yeah, like I’m super awesome. And this is like, this is some good work. This has got loads of words in it.
- But when you’re a reviewer, looking at a big block of text is really intimidating, right? You look at you go, Jesus Christ, like I gotta get through all of this. But what you can do to help that, is formatting and use everything to use Bold, Italic, Underline.
And I don’t mean just like check it in randomly. If yÂÂou have an important point to make, or, you know, this one sentence just sort of like explains everything, and just gives this sort of perfect little summary bolded. Use space, use white space around important bits to make it stand out.
The human brain will always try to pick out patterns and when it’s just read in line after line after line, and all of a sudden there’s a break and bold boom, you’ve got the brain’s attention again, right? It’s always looking for different First thing is trying to make sense of the environment. And so yeah, formatting, I tend to do formatting as I go. But I checked at the very end that I haven’t ever done it, you can overdo it and it looked like sort of like a teenager, or a kid has written this research grant proposal.
But really, it comes down to using formatting to highlight the most important parts. And in combination with I think it was tip number two, where you put all the information at the front is super powerful to make your proposal sticky, like stick in their mind because you’ve made the information obvious, and you’ve put it up front. That combination is an absolute winner. Okay,
- Spell Check and Proofread:
Now, you don’t need to give this PhD examining panel, any excuse to say no, they have plenty of other options to say no, but you don’t want lousy spelling and grammar to actually allow them to dismiss the seriousness of your application.
And so yeah, just use all of the normalized spellcheck things like Grammarly is word. But also it may be worth if English is a second language, getting a reviewer or an editor to actually go through it and pay some money. Now there are plenty of awesome places you can do that. Look at Upwork look at Fiverr look at other kind of freelancing websites or apps, where you can say, hey, I’ve got this amount of words and the reviewer and the editing should take about a week.
And it’s worth it like it’s worth the little amount of investment because you’ll be sure that the examiners or the PhD admissions panel can’t just dismiss you because of silly spelling mistakes that we all make.
- For PhD research, proposal writing is all about timing.
Now this is the weird thing that I had to learn is; everything takes twice as long as you think. So if you think it takes two weeks, you’re going to allow at least four weeks. And that’s for a number of reasons.
Firstly, job will fill the void that you give it. So you know, if you give it four weeks, you’ll have that amount of time to relax, you could probably finish it in two weeks, but it’s probably not going to be your best work. So give it double the amount of time and chip away at it every single day just a little bit at a time, you know, spread it out. And another thing is that quite often, if your research potential research supervisor wants to see the work, they will just sit on it for ages, academics and researchers and supervisors, incredibly busy people.
And they like to tell you that as well. But they will set on your proposal and without the right enough time, it may just be incredibly rushed. I’ve known people send it to their supervisors get it back the day before loads of questions and have to pull all nighters and that sort of stuff.
So what I like to do is I trick them. And I say, hey, this is my research proposal. Can you get it back to me and I say a week before the deadline is that it’s due and they go oh yeah, so it means you get it back at least a week before and then you have a whole extra week to work on it. It’s a little bit tricky, but you’ve got to know I guess how to work with these people. And that’s one way I found that getting stuff back on time was achievable.
If they want to see your research proposal is Yeah, just learn how they work and tell them little white lies if you need them to get stuff back on time.
So there we have it. There are my seven top tips for PhD research proposal writing, let me know in the comments what you would add to that and good luck go and read my other video which was the one before this all about research proposals all of the elements that you need to make it awesome combined with this article, I think you’ll be on to an absolute cracker of a research proposal.
