Deadlines

In all circumstances, submit your proposal before beginning your project. This may mean that you will submit your proposal before any deadline.

Scholarly Project: No later than September 1 of your graduating year, submit your scholarly project proposal to scholarsinmedicine@hms.harvard.edu.

Fifth Year Funding: At least one month before your begin your funded work, submit your OSE funding proposal to ose@hms.harvard.edu.

In the unusual circumstance that:

  • You already started your project, explain in your proposal what you’ve done on the project and outline your remaining plans.
  • You have completed your scholarly project before the OSE deadline to submit the proposal, contact the OSE to discuss your options.

Instructions

Proposal Template

The proposal should include the 7 main sections listed on the template. The template can be copied and pasted into a document.

Writing Style

  • Write clearly
  • Use the active voice
  • If you use the pronoun “we,” be clear to whom you are referring
  • If you have already completed something, use past tense verbs; if you will be doing something, use future tense verbs

Great scientific writing references are:

  • Strunk and White, The Elements of Style
  • Williams, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (9th Edition)
  • Gopen and Swan, The Science of Scientific Writing. American Scientist 2000

Originality

In the process of crafting your research proposal you will be reading manuscripts and grant proposals written by your mentor and other lab members, as well as relevant published literature. The proposal does not necessarily need to be your own idea. Nevertheless, it is important that your proposal be written in your own words.

You need to write your own proposal about what you are going to do. Even if your project is embedded in part of a larger enterprise, some piece of the project needs to be your own. Part of your proposal should clearly explain how your project relates to other work being done in the “lab” or group (how much is independent, how closely tied it is to the mentor’s projects, etc.).

In the case of specific detailed methods, it is acceptable to quote directly from your mentor’s work (but better to put them in your own words). If you directly quote a source, including your mentor’s work:

  • Use quotation marks
  • Clearly indicate the source (whether it be your mentor’s grant or a manuscript) in a footnote

Consult the Harvard Guide to Using Sources, a publication of the Harvard College Writing Program that outlines the fundamentals of using sources in academic papers.

Collaboration: You may need to include collaborators who bring resources or techniques that your Mentor may not have (e.g., laboratory techniques, statistics, survey methodology, Delphi methodology, etc.). The collaborators who join you should be appropriate to the scope of the project. Mention your collaborators in your proposal in the Feasibility section.

How Your Proposal will be Evaluated

Your proposal will be reviewed by a Harvard faculty member who may have a completely different area of expertise. Faculty without expertise in the specific details of your project should be able to understand your proposal.

Reviewers will expect you to follow the proposal template and address all the sections in the template. See the Proposal Template for guidance on what a complete proposal includes.

Your reviewer will evaluate your proposal and provide comments to you in one of three ways:

  • Comment directly on your proposal document
  • Email comments to you
  • Complete a proposal evaluation sheet (which follows all the elements of the proposal)

Common weak areas in past proposals:

  • Unclear student role: State clearly your own role in the project. Be specific about what you plan to do during your project. Write this in the first person, active voice.
  • Significance section too long: This section should be about ½ a page. You do not need to prove to the reader that you have a handle on the world’s literature about your topic (as would be done in a review article). Use the significance section to frame the importance of your own project.
  • Feasibility: Do not over-reach. Your proposal must be doable, or it will not be evaluated favorably by reviewers. Be sure to provide the timeline for your proposed work so the reader knows how long you plan to work on the project and what will happen and when.
  • Lack of tables, figures, or pictures: Many proposals would benefit from an image, graph, or flow chart. Although they take up a bit of room, a picture can be worth 1000 words. Strongly consider if a figure is right for your proposal. The best place for them to go is in Significance (for supporting figures) or in Approach (for figures about preliminary data) next to the pertinent Specific Aim.
  • Lack of sample size and/or power calculations: In most cases a power or sample size calculation must be included, and even if you cannot or should not have them in your proposal, you must state this explicitly. More info about sample size and power calculation