h-index

Thanks for the responses, all -- best to confront the uncomfortable reality now rather than deeper into my career. I guess that I took it pretty hard realising that I didn't have a feasible path -- sorry if I came off as brash or condescending, or if I didn't communicate clearly. My experience has been primarily with later career-stage grants, so that must have distorted my perception. When I worked with PIs and graduate students on their grant proposals, my work was typically focused on the research dimension (e.g., preparing figures and reviewing specific aims). The biographical sketches in the grants I read had also given me the wrong impression. This is, I think, critical. I (wrongly!) framed my original question in a very dichotomous "either/or" manner, when I realise now that I was really looking for options further toward the research end of the continuum. In my case, GRFP is out, but I'd like to think Hertz and NSDEG are both still worth a shot.

That was the overall impression I got from reading reviewers' responses to the awardee applications hosted online: Example 1 Example 2 In general, reviewers' critiques of the broader impacts section don't focus on the potential societal impacts of the applicants' research as much as they do on the applicants' personal background and engagement with the public (for instance, running popular science blogs). This post from a recent awardee captures my impressions quite well. What I'm basically looking for is a funding source that looks more like a traditional NIH/NSF grant and less like a college application. To answer my own question for anybody who might ask in the future, it seems as though the Hertz Fellowship is in general far more research-oriented than NSF GRFP. NDSEG has sections for engagement, but these are short sections, and the application doesn't appear to hinge on them as much as the GRFP hinges on Broader Impacts.

I realise that this is quite an open-ended topic, but I was wondering if you were aware of any funding sources awarded based on (1) the merit of the research that you propose to do in graduate school and (2) the potential for research that you've demonstrated in your scientific career thus far. To clarify, I mean this to the exclusion of other factors such as college extracurriculars, personal narrative, and "leadership". I had formerly believed that GRFP was like this, but I recently found out that it strongly weights a "broader impacts" dimension that is orthogonal to research merit. Guess that's one fewer fellowship that I'll be applying to. (I am asking from the perspective of somebody who will be applying in the 2018 cycle.) Thank you for your input.