Maggie Wang

“If you can, try to get feedback from both domain experts (e.g. your advisor) and people who may not be as familiar with your particular area of research (e.g. PhD students in other biosciences programs). The former are great for helping you sharpen the technical rigor of your application. The latter probably won’t understand all the nitty gritty details, which means they can challenge you to see the bigger picture of why your proposed research matters and how it aligns with the NSF research mission.

To emphasize the “Intellectual Merit” and “Broader Impacts” of my research plan, I explicitly incorporated phrasing and vocabulary from the NSF definitions of intellectual merit and broader impacts. I had initially thought this might be too blunt, but it helps to make it really clear how your plan meets the NSF criteria, especially for reviewers who might be reading your essay very quickly.”