ohboyabbyjoy

Writing my comprehensive exam/qualifying exam/thesis proposal/whatever your program calls it, which is essentially a fellowship application (NIH F31 format), and I'm at a loss of how to really dig into the writing process. I have my aims outlined as well as a significant amount of background research and preliminary data to get me started. However, I feel a little overwhelmed with where to start getting this skeleton filled inso I would love to hear from you. How do you like to approach starting your fellowships/grants? Is there an order you find best? Have any cautionary tales of writing gone wrong?

All of the advice I have been given has said that a mediocre gpa is not necessarily an application killer. What you have to do though I explain why your grades are bad. (i.e. was it at the beginning of college and you needed to mature, was there a personal crisis you were going through, were they courses that weren't related to your major?) They can be very understanding about that if you sound like you are owning up to your shortcomings and have worked on fixing them. One of my colleagues got the NSF last year as a 2nd year grad student and she said had pretty dismal grades as an undergrad but then took a few years off to improve. She also made up for it with good grades in her first year of grads school.

I am wondering if anyone has heard of people's applications being tanked by talking about future science careers that are not research centered? Right now I am talking about potentially going into science policy in my personal statement but I am wondering if including that might hurt more than leaving it out all together.