SSHRC 2011

[transboundary]

Anyone who applied to SSHRC for the 2011 competition, weclome! Masters Scholarships, CGS, or Doctoral Fellowships will be discussed here. Last year's waitlisters just started getting offers on the SSHRC 2010 thread so it seemed like a good time to start a new topic for those of us who weren't so fortunate and had to re-apply. For new applicants, you'll find this thread useful for discussion and wild speculation about the weird world of the SSHRC awards process, and as an outlet for obsessive checking and re-checking this spring to see if other students' notification letters arrived before yours. To all who have their 2011 applications in already - congrats! Let the waiting begin. To those of you at schools with later deadlines (like me), good luck with your proposals over the next couple of weeks!

[Amuna]

Good luck everyone. =)

[StrangeLight]

yes, good luck! moving this question over here:

i have some dumb questions about the SSHRC application and i thought i'd ask here before i start harassing the SSHRC staff (which i will do plenty of once i'm waiting on results).

when the instruction say that your name needs to be "within the margins" on every page, does that mean in the 3/4" margin space itself or NOT in the 3/4" space but inside that, in the text/body section of the paper? if i was thinking rationally i'd figure within the margins meant in the margin space rather than "inside" the margins/in the body, but i'm paranoid about doing something stupid with formatting and having my application tossed, so i figured i'd ask here.

and when you get 2 pages for the personal statement but 5 pages for "bibliography and citations," does that mean i can use end notes and put them in those 5 pages or do i need to use footnotes/internal citations within the 2 page statement and give their full bibliographical reference in the 5 page biblio/citation section? i'm having a hard time keeping within the 2 page limit as it is, but if i need to use internal citations or footnotes as part of that 2 pages, i'm going to be in trouble.

thanks for letting me spill this thread over into the 2010/2011 competition. and again, congratulations to the recent winners!

amuna, have you done this before? you said in your 5 pages of citations, you start with citations, then with bibliography... that didn't really make any sense to me. page 1 and 2 are the proposal, page 3 is the end notes for your proposal, and then page 4 and 5 are the bibliography? is that it?

[transboundary]

Hi StrangeLight - I've applied to SSHRC twice, once for my Masters (successful) and once for PhD (waitlisted). Both times I just set all my margins to 3/4" (including header and footer) and put my name in the top right as a header. Are you applying for Masters or PhD? I can't remember what SSHRC tells you for Masters, but for the PhD application you have to give your Program of Study in two pages, that should include the usual in-text referencing where applicable, followed by a max. 5 page bibliography. SSHRC asks that your references from the Program of Study are clearly indicated in the 5 pages, which is what Amuna is referring to when she says put your citations first, then your general bibliography. I format all my references following APA referencing style, no endnotes/footnotes. Hope that helps!

yes, good luck! moving this question over here:

i have some dumb questions about the SSHRC application and i thought i'd ask here before i start harassing the SSHRC staff (which i will do plenty of once i'm waiting on results).

when the instruction say that your name needs to be "within the margins" on every page, does that mean in the 3/4" margin space itself or NOT in the 3/4" space but inside that, in the text/body section of the paper? if i was thinking rationally i'd figure within the margins meant in the margin space rather than "inside" the margins/in the body, but i'm paranoid about doing something stupid with formatting and having my application tossed, so i figured i'd ask here.

and when you get 2 pages for the personal statement but 5 pages for "bibliography and citations," does that mean i can use end notes and put them in those 5 pages or do i need to use footnotes/internal citations within the 2 page statement and give their full bibliographical reference in the 5 page biblio/citation section? i'm having a hard time keeping within the 2 page limit as it is, but if i need to use internal citations or footnotes as part of that 2 pages, i'm going to be in trouble.

thanks for letting me spill this thread over into the 2010/2011 competition. and again, congratulations to the recent winners!

amuna, have you done this before? you said in your 5 pages of citations, you start with citations, then with bibliography... that didn't really make any sense to me. page 1 and 2 are the proposal, page 3 is the end notes for your proposal, and then page 4 and 5 are the bibliography? is that it?

Edited October 23, 2010 by transboundary

[StrangeLight]

i'm applying for the PhD.

thanks, that really helps. but it robs me of a few precious lines of text. goddamn. okay, good to know. i feared that was the case but i didn't want to believe it.

[transboundary]

Oops! Amuna, I referred to you as 'she' without actually knowing how you self-identify gender-wise. My bad. Hope I got it right! Apologies if I didn't.

[Amuna]

Oops! Amuna, I referred to you as 'she' without actually knowing how you self-identify gender-wise. My bad. Hope I got it right! Apologies if I didn't.

Good guess =)

This is my third attempt for the PhD, foolishly never applied during my MA (doh). I've been told by numerous sources that your chances go up as you progress through a program. For multiple reasons.. you're more established, but also they are more likely to fund people for shorter periods of time (ie, 1 or 2 years rather than 3 or 4 hahaha..)

Anyways..

I have my two pages of my proposal, and then five pages of references. In the reference section I sorted it into two sections based upon the sources I cited in the proposal.. and those I did not cite but are including as my bibliography (I hope that is clear, I'm on little sleep and a lot of coffee).

It's unfortunate that the margins issue reduces the number of lines we have.

This year I cut out a lot of fluff from my proposal.. I thought it was important to have white space between the paragraphs (... don't ask my why, I have no idea lol). I think it's easier to read I guess. It was difficult, but I guess I'm getting better at being concise.

Again, good luck. =)

[transboundary]

SSHRC 2011 proposal version #3, revision #umpteen is off to the supervisor for feedback. Fingers crossed he likes it better this time. I was nowhere near this diligent last year, guess that's why I was only waitlisted. Amuna, I think you are right about the whitespace. I did a test recently with some colleagues with all three versions of my proposal to see which one they liked best. They consistently chose the one that is more succinct and has the most whitespace, even though in my opinion it is the one with the most holes. unfortunately it was also most similar to the one that didn't win last year, so I won't be using that little test as my decision-making criteria! Now, how to get more whitespace into the current incarnation....?

[StrangeLight]

i'm on my 6th version of my proposal. next week three faculty members and a few other students are going to sit around and rip it to pieces. i've shown it to 2 professors from my canadian undergrad who are used to seeing SSHRCs. i've also run it through a colleague that won an $80,000 SSHRC a few years ago. i have a database of successful national grants to compare my work to.

i've never worked so hard on 2 pages in my life, not even to get into grad school.

[mmmilitia]

Does anyone know if you should list "fellowships" you were awarded but didn't take (because you ended up choosing a different school?)

OMG- I'm so sick of it already but I guess if you get it you can be picky and choosy about picking up TA work!

[Ziz]

Maybe this is a dumb question, but how do you have 5 pages of bibliography? I mean I know a lot of the sources I am going to use and I am only at one page max. It seems kind of pointless to want us to list 50 references that we may or may not end up using. Or are people doing more of an annotated bibliography where you actually discuss the source?

[SpaceFox]

Hi everyone,

I'm applying for SSHRC PhD award,

Do you guys put in-text citations for the Program of Study or you use the 5 pages in Citations and Bibliography as footnotes? I find that if I start putting my citations in the text, it will eat up way too much space of the 2 pages allowed... I already have trouble keeping it within the 2 page maximum just with the bare minimum of description...

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

[SpaceFox]

Oh, I just realized that question was already answered... sorry:)

[StrangeLight]

Does anyone know if you should list "fellowships" you were awarded but didn't take (because you ended up choosing a different school?)

OMG- I'm so sick of it already but I guess if you get it you can be picky and choosy about picking up TA work!

no, don't list fellowships you were offered but never took.

you can list fellowships that you've been offered for future years at your current institution. for example, i have a fellowship for my research year that'll go on the list.

[StrangeLight]

Maybe this is a dumb question, but how do you have 5 pages of bibliography? I mean I know a lot of the sources I am going to use and I am only at one page max. It seems kind of pointless to want us to list 50 references that we may or may not end up using. Or are people doing more of an annotated bibliography where you actually discuss the source?

i've put my citations in the text in APA style. then, on the first page of my 5-page bibliography, i say "works cited" and give the full bibliographical information for everything cited in the proposal. that takes up 1 full page.

then on the other 4 pages, i write "bibliography" and then "primary sources" (since i'm a historian). i list all the archives and government institutions i'll be visiting and then a list of all their document collections i'll be using from each archive. this takes up about a page.

then i write "secondary sources" and i re-list everything from the works cited page PLUS all the books and works that are relevant to my topic that i didn't cite in my proposal. this easily fills the last 3 pages.

this is the format that a colleague of mine used for her winning SSHRC proposal from two years ago, so it's probably safe to go with this method. maybe it works differently for people in other fields, but for a historian, it should be pretty easy to have 5 pages of bibliography. if not, it suggests that your work isn't that relevant to the existing scholarship, so... i'd recommend finding a way to fill those pages without making it an annotated bibliography.

[transboundary]

Yes, I will second StrangeLight's comments Ziz. Judging by the fact that you are studying Political Theory, I suspect the SSHRC committee will expect to see more than just a page of sources. If you haven't really delved into the literature much because you haven't yet started your degree it may be more difficult to do this. I would talk to your supervisor for help. Your supervisor might even provide you with a more comprehensive bibliography related to your topic. In my case, I'm a year into my program and my bibliography could easily be 10 pages long. I've cut it down to six and am struggling to weed out the remaining references without under-representing certain aspects of my proposed research.

I think the format StrangeLight suggests is a good one - but, really? StrangeLIght, you think we need to duplicate our 'works cited' in the bib.? I guess if you got that from a winning proposal, it's hard to argue against. Sigh. that's an additional page of refs I'll need to cut.

Maybe this is a dumb question, but how do you have 5 pages of bibliography? I mean I know a lot of the sources I am going to use and I am only at one page max. It seems kind of pointless to want us to list 50 references that we may or may not end up using. Or are people doing more of an annotated bibliography where you actually discuss the source?

[lewin]

Does anyone know if you should list "fellowships" you were awarded but didn't take (because you ended up choosing a different school?)

I wouldn't list those kinds of fellowships, but I did list a masters OGS that I declined in favour of a SSHRC.

[StrangeLight]

hmm, i'm not sure i'd list the OGS if you didn't take it, but i guess it wouldn't hurt too much to write it in and then write DECLINED in capitals next to it.

but i mean... i won a 5-year highly competitive university-wide fellowship from a school i didn't go to that would've paid me way more than the SSHRC would, but i'm not listing it because i didn't ultimately go there.

I think the format StrangeLight suggests is a good one - but, really? StrangeLIght, you think we need to duplicate our 'works cited' in the bib.? I guess if you got that from a winning proposal, it's hard to argue against. Sigh. that's an additional page of refs I'll need to cut.

hey, i agree, i thought it was weird to re-list the sources from the works cited too, but i'm following the formatting from this winning SSHRC to the letter anyway. if anyone else out there has a past winning proposal on their hands that didn't relist the citations, let me know because i could use the extra space too!

and Ziz, i second the recommendation to talk to your advisor and ask them what the relevant books and articles are for your field. put down stuff that relates directly to your regional and thematic topics AND put down stuff that has influenced your theoretical or methodological approach but has nothing to do with your specific topic AND put down any major work whose findings would be altered, contradicted, or reinterpreted by your conclusions. if this doesn't easily fill 5 pages get your advisor to help you pad it.

[Ziz]

Ok well I can pad away then! I guess in my midn I was limiting myself to sources that were directly relevant instead of reading 'around the subject' that I've done. Seems kind of silly, but I will do it!

[StrangeLight]

i mean, you don't want to pad too much. if i were to only cite the studies that hit the regional, thematic, and temporal elements of my project, i'd have two dissertations from another field in 2006 and nothing else. so i include the major works that hit two of the three (regional + thematic, regional + temporal, temporal + thematic).

it's really not silly because you'll need to read those books in the course of writing your dissertation. maybe you won't read some of them that thoroughly, you'll just skim them or use the index to find relevant chunks, but at some point you're going to have to know what's in them.

... i actually wish i had more space in the bibliography. providing the english translations for some of the titles robbed me of 3 or 4 more entries!

edited to add: i just had someone return an edit of my proposal, but it's version 4 of 6. man... version 4 wasn't good. and to think without all these intensely helpful maniac professors, i would've turned in version 1.

Edited November 1, 2010 by StrangeLight

[Canuckonomist]

hmm, i'm not sure i'd list the OGS if you didn't take it, but i guess it wouldn't hurt too much to write it in and then write DECLINED in capitals next to it.

Sorry to bring back an older post, but I'm going to disagree strongly with this one. It's important to include awards you declined for bigger ones, because you did in fact win them. You're short-changing yourself if you don't. If you check the CV I've posted on my website, outside of the SSHRC win, the awards section is the same as the one I sent to SSHRC last year. Not saying that having a declined UTF helped, but it's nice for them to know that I had other funding before getting my OGS, so that the university was willing to fund me had I not received the OGS that year. It's just another way for them to differentiate you, with the fact that there was another committee that thought you were also award-worthy.

A friend of mine at MIT won the NSF and was then admitted. If you compare him to another MIT student who also has the NSF, they may have already had departmental funding offered to them, and have it as declined on their CV. By comparison, the one with the NSF and the MIT fellowship should be more desirable, no? (MIT has a history in Econ of taking those with an NSF because they don't have to fund them -also those students are brilliant, and it's a great indicator, but money's important too.)

So, show off as much as you can. You earned it.

Edited November 2, 2010 by Canuckonomist

[transboundary]

Glad to see you're still checking in on us Canuck...helps us deal with the separation anxiety from our break with the 2010 thread.

Along similar lines, I'm wondering if it's ok to list an article recently submitted for review? SSHRC guidelines give three options: refereed contributions, other refereed contributions, non-refereed contributions and forthcoming contributions. 'Forthcoming contributions' clearly requests only items formally accepted for publication. Buuut, since I'm a little weak on the publications end, I figured it was okay to add another category 'refereed contributions (recently submitted - yet to be accepted)'. I can't see any harm in this, at worst they'll ignore it, at best it will help a little. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Edited November 3, 2010 by transboundary

[Canuckonomist]

Glad to see you're still checking in on us Canuck...helps us deal with the separation anxiety from our break with the 2010 thread.

Along similar lines, I'm wondering if it's ok to list an article recently submitted for review? SSHRC guidelines give three options: refereed contributions, other refereed contributions, non-refereed contributions and forthcoming contributions. 'Forthcoming contributions' clearly requests only items formally accepted for publication. Buuut, since I'm a little weak on the publications end, I figured it was okay to add another category 'refereed contributions (recently submitted - yet to be accepted)'. I can't see any harm in this, at worst they'll ignore it, at best it will help a little. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

See, this is where I'd toe the party line. I tried that two years ago, with one that was only in submission. I didn't make it far at all. This year, I took that one off, and, well, you know the result of that. I'm not saying it made the difference for my win, but I think when they specify that they don't want something, you don't include it. That said, if it's a working paper, or in submission, and related to your proposal, note it there. That's how other classmates of mine have got around that. It's also a way to delve a bit into what the submission was about.

Again, just a little piece of my experience. Take it for what it is.

[StrangeLight]

yeah, the SSHRC specifically says to only list publications under review if they've been accepted, so only list them if they've been accepted.

one of my profs is on the review committee for ACLS mellon awards and another spent years working for the SSRC as the first guy to cut proposals before they made it to committee and both have said: follow their instructions exactly. they are looking for any reason to throw out your application so don't give them a reason to cut you by doing exactly what they tell you not to do.

don't shrink your margins below the minimum, don't use 11 pt font or arial narrow, all that stuff.

as for listing awards you didn't take... i totally get listing the OGS because you got another (better?) fellowship in competition. what i'm not keen on is listing a fellowship granted by a university that you decided not to enroll in. for example, i was accepted to miami and offered $30,000/yr for 5 years in their university-wide fellowship. but i didn't go there. i don't think i should list that award on my CV. most US schools give you some sort of fellowship when they accept you, so listing those on my CV would be the same as just listing every school i got into. if i'm wrong about this, i guess i should just list the award...

[Canuckonomist]

"one of my profs is on the review committee for ACLS mellon awards and another spent years working for the SSRC as the first guy to cut proposals before they made it to committee and both have said: follow their instructions exactly. they are looking for any reason to throw out your application so don't give them a reason to cut you by doing exactly what they tell you not to do."

Yes. This is very true. Everyone should follow this advice.

"what i'm not keen on is listing a fellowship granted by a university that you decided not to enroll in."

This is absolutely true. Don't list these.

"for example, i was accepted to miami and offered $30,000/yr for 5 years in their university-wide fellowship. but i didn't go there. i don't think i should list that award on my CV."

Absolutely. I agree with you.

"most US schools give you some sort of fellowship when they accept you,"

This not true for most schools in the US, at least not in economics. It's more true in Canada. In fact, I'd say a good percentage of schools in the U.S don't. Chicago, UW-Madison and Boston U fund less than 1/3 of their incoming class via fellowships for economics. MIT, UPenn, UCSD, UCLA and UC-Berkeley are also notably as stingy, and these are the big schools, with big money.

"... so listing those on my CV would be the same as just listing every school i got into."

I don't see how this follows. From listing the fact that you were given a fellowship, even if it's university-wide, I don't see how this is the same as listing every school you got into, even if they all offered you a fellowship of sorts, so I disagree with this point.

Edited November 4, 2010 by Canuckonomist