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Grant writing tips that actually helped you win funding

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Growing 55 pts 0 followers
N.M.A.M. Institute of Technology · Posted
IoT & Embedded Systems Political Science & Governance

I recently had a difficult conversation with my PhD guide that I think many students can relate to.

The short version: my guide and I fundamentally disagreed about the direction of my thesis after 2.5 years of work. He wanted to pivot to a new application area that I thought was tangential to the core problem I was solving. I felt like I was being steered by his grant interests rather than the scientific question.

How I handled it:

  • Requested a formal committee meeting (not just a one-on-one with the guide)
  • Prepared a written document outlining both directions with pros and cons
  • Asked the committee to weigh in, which gave me cover to advocate for my position
  • Eventually reached a compromise where I did a smaller study in the new direction while keeping my core thesis intact

The relationship with my guide improved after this, partly because I approached it formally and professionally rather than emotionally.

Has anyone else navigated significant disagreements with their guide? What worked?

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46 Replies

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Amit Joshi Starting 15 pts · Accepted answer

The Fulbright SoP is very different from a typical PhD SoP. It needs to focus on cultural exchange and diplomacy, not just research.

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Replying to Amit Joshi
Uday Bose Starting 5 pts · Accepted answer

For longitudinal data with missing values, mixed-effects models handle this more gracefully than imputation in most cases.

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Replying to Amit Joshi
Chetan Jain Growing 100 pts · Accepted answer

Just to make sure I understand the Zotero workflow correctly.is the .bib file synced to Overleaf automatically every time you add a new paper, or do you need to trigger an export manually?

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Replying to Amit Joshi
Geeta Rao · Accepted answer

If you are not already using a reading group format with your students, I would strongly recommend it. Forces everyone to articulate what they read.

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Shiva Prasad Active 480 pts · Accepted answer

Seconding the recommendation for Zotero. Game changer for managing references across multiple projects.

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Xena D'Souza Starting 25 pts · Accepted answer

Just to make sure I understand the Zotero workflow correctly.is the .bib file synced to Overleaf automatically every time you add a new paper, or do you need to trigger an export manually?

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Replying to Xena D'Souza
Ashwin Murthy Distinguished 560 pts · Accepted answer

Much appreciated. I will restructure my proposal along these lines. The point about societal impact being substantive is something I would have gotten wrong.

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Replying to Xena D'Souza
Arjun Venkatesan Growing 195 pts · Accepted answer

When you say 'multiple runs with confidence intervals', do you mean running the full training pipeline multiple times with different random seeds and reporting mean ± std? Or something more statistically rigorous?

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Replying to Xena D'Souza
Admin NITK · Accepted answer

+1 to everything said above. My experience was identical.

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Ravi Patel Starting 25 pts · Accepted answer

This is a known issue with XLM-R on code-mixed data. The MuRIL preprint has a section specifically comparing these.

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Replying to Ravi Patel
Lalitha Mohan Active 230 pts · Accepted answer

This is really helpful context. One more question: for the ethics committee approval, does the institution where the data is collected or the institution where the analysis is performed need to be the primary ethics approver?

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Priya Nair · Accepted answer

If you are not already using a reading group format with your students, I would strongly recommend it. Forces everyone to articulate what they read.

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Indira Balan · Accepted answer

Highly recommend checking out the PMRF portal for the actual numbers.they update the stipend structure annually.

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Fatima Sheikh Growing 95 pts · Accepted answer

Check whether your institution has a Springer/Elsevier waiver agreement.many NITs and IITs do.

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Rajesh Kumar · Accepted answer

For Zotero vs BibTeX management, I moved to Zotero + Better BibTeX 3 years ago and have not looked back.

My workflow:

  1. Zotero browser connector captures papers instantly from ArXiv, Google Scholar, ACM DL, IEEE Xplore
  2. Better BibTeX generates a clean .bib file that auto-updates whenever I add a paper
  3. Overleaf directly pulls from the .bib file via Dropbox sync

One tip: create a Zotero collection per paper/project. When you export the .bib, export only that collection to keep it clean.

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Om Prakash Growing 55 pts · Accepted answer

This is a known issue with XLM-R on code-mixed data. The MuRIL preprint has a section specifically comparing these.

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Replying to Om Prakash
Wajid Khan Growing 110 pts · Accepted answer

This is really helpful context. One more question: for the ethics committee approval, does the institution where the data is collected or the institution where the analysis is performed need to be the primary ethics approver?

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Sunil Bhattacharya Active 390 pts · Accepted answer

I found that writing a paper abstract first (before the paper) and then reverse-engineering the paper from the abstract helped with clarity enormously.

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Karthik Rajan Growing 180 pts · Accepted answer

I found that writing a paper abstract first (before the paper) and then reverse-engineering the paper from the abstract helped with clarity enormously.

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Wajid Khan Growing 110 pts · Accepted answer

For longitudinal data with missing values, mixed-effects models handle this more gracefully than imputation in most cases.

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Sowmya Narayanan Active 310 pts · Accepted answer

The ethics review situation in Indian universities is actually more complex than most people realize.

There is no uniform national framework equivalent to the US Common Rule. Each institution has its own Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC) or Institutional Review Board (IRB).

For anonymous survey research with no identifiable data and no vulnerable populations: most Indian IECs would classify this as exempt, but 'exempt' still needs a formal determination from the IEC.it is not self-certifying.

My practical advice: go to your institution's research ethics office now, describe what you did, and request an exempt determination in writing. Better to have documentation than to discover the issue during thesis review.

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Replying to Sowmya Narayanan
Bindiya Thomas Growing 65 pts · Accepted answer

Could you clarify what you mean by results-blind review? I have heard of it but never understood how it works in practice. Wouldn't reviewers need to see results to evaluate whether the methodology is sound?

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Replying to Sowmya Narayanan
Ganesh Menon Growing 140 pts · Accepted answer

Strongly agree with the point about choosing venues carefully. One paper in NeurIPS > five papers in obscure workshops.

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Hemant Patwa · Accepted answer

Could you clarify what you mean by results-blind review? I have heard of it but never understood how it works in practice. Wouldn't reviewers need to see results to evaluate whether the methodology is sound?

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Replying to Hemant Patwa
Bindiya Thomas Growing 65 pts · Accepted answer

CSIR-UGC NET preparation: past papers are the most important resource. Everything else is secondary.

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Shiva Prasad Active 480 pts · Accepted answer

Open access is the right direction but the APCs are prohibitively expensive for many Indian researchers without institutional funding.

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Royal Dsouza Starting 30 pts · Accepted answer

Seconding the recommendation for Zotero. Game changer for managing references across multiple projects.

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Wajid Khan Growing 110 pts · Accepted answer

FDR (Benjamini-Hochberg) is widely accepted and preferable to Bonferroni when you have many tests and limited power. The key is to be explicit about which correction you used and why.

On replication: No independent cohort is a genuine limitation but not a dealbreaker for rare disease research, where cohort availability is a known constraint. Many high-quality papers acknowledge this and still get published in good journals. Frame it as future work.

Power analysis: Yes, report it. Showing you are aware of the limitation is better than not mentioning it.

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Replying to Wajid Khan
Vikram Bhatia Active 420 pts · Accepted answer

Just to make sure I understand the Zotero workflow correctly.is the .bib file synced to Overleaf automatically every time you add a new paper, or do you need to trigger an export manually?

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Replying to Wajid Khan
Neha Agarwal Growing 90 pts · Accepted answer

This is very reassuring. I was worried the null result would kill the paper but your framing around transparency and effect sizes makes a lot of sense.

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Replying to Wajid Khan
Farhan Mirza · Accepted answer

Overleaf + GitHub integration is underrated. You get version control and collaboration in one place.

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Asha Pillai Distinguished 880 pts · Accepted answer

The Fulbright SoP is very different from a typical PhD SoP. It needs to focus on cultural exchange and diplomacy, not just research.

0
Replying to Asha Pillai
Karthik Rajan Growing 180 pts · Accepted answer

Check whether your institution has a Springer/Elsevier waiver agreement.many NITs and IITs do.

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Replying to Asha Pillai
Eshan Patil Growing 70 pts · Accepted answer

I am in a very similar situation. Would you be willing to share the outline of your PMRF proposal? Not the content.just the section headings and approximate word allocation.

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Jagdish Rawat · Accepted answer

Thank you for this detailed answer! A quick follow-up: when you mention cosine learning rate with warm-up, are you warming up the LoRA parameters specifically or the entire model including the frozen backbone?

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Deepa Krishnamurthy Distinguished 810 pts · Accepted answer

Strongly agree with the point about choosing venues carefully. One paper in NeurIPS > five papers in obscure workshops.

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Replying to Deepa Krishnamurthy
Fatima Sheikh Growing 95 pts · Accepted answer

Open access is the right direction but the APCs are prohibitively expensive for many Indian researchers without institutional funding.

0
Ganesh Menon Growing 140 pts · Accepted answer

If you are not already using a reading group format with your students, I would strongly recommend it. Forces everyone to articulate what they read.

0
Replying to Ganesh Menon
Sowmya Narayanan Active 310 pts · Accepted answer

If you are not already using a reading group format with your students, I would strongly recommend it. Forces everyone to articulate what they read.

0
Replying to Ganesh Menon
Priya Nair · Accepted answer

I found that writing a paper abstract first (before the paper) and then reverse-engineering the paper from the abstract helped with clarity enormously.

0
Replying to Ganesh Menon
Ravi Patel Starting 25 pts · Accepted answer

Highly recommend checking out the PMRF portal for the actual numbers.they update the stipend structure annually.

0
Yogesh Pandey Growing 70 pts · Accepted answer

Could you clarify what you mean by results-blind review? I have heard of it but never understood how it works in practice. Wouldn't reviewers need to see results to evaluate whether the methodology is sound?

0
Royal Dsouza Starting 30 pts · Accepted answer

The Fulbright SoP is very different from a typical PhD SoP. It needs to focus on cultural exchange and diplomacy, not just research.

0
Replying to Royal Dsouza
Arjun Venkatesan Growing 195 pts · Accepted answer

The Fulbright SoP is very different from a typical PhD SoP. It needs to focus on cultural exchange and diplomacy, not just research.

0
Replying to Royal Dsouza
Indira Balan · Accepted answer

Could you clarify what you mean by results-blind review? I have heard of it but never understood how it works in practice. Wouldn't reviewers need to see results to evaluate whether the methodology is sound?

0
Replying to Royal Dsouza
Karthik Rajan Growing 180 pts · Accepted answer

The IEEE TPAMI turnaround in my case was 7 months for the first review. Plan accordingly.