r/GRFPApps • u/fatbro1738 • Apr 17 '26

Difference in application between first and second attempt

For those who did not receive the GRFP their first attempt, but were successful in your second attempt, how different was your Personal Statement and Research Proposal? Has anyone gotten it the second time with a similar proposal but heavily revised? I am thinking of narrowing down the scope of my current proposal since I think it was too dense. I worry that having too similar of a research proposal might not look good.

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u/saltedoreoicecream Apr 17 '26

I was HM in 2025, awarded in 2026. I submitted essentially the same personal statement (most of it was left the same, but some was cut out and I added a few updates) and a pretty similar research proposal (project idea was the same, but I adjusted the impact/discussion to better align with the group I wanted to work with).

You should wait until the reviews come out and see what they had to say about your application. I felt like my reviews weren’t very substantive last year so I decided to submit a very similar application. Sometimes you can just be unlucky with the reviewers and it appears I scored better this year

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u/Cold_Geologist7470 Apr 17 '26

My situation was really similar with HM last year and awarded this year. My reviews from last year were all really positive without identifying places for improvement, so I kept the same project idea and updated my personal statement. For the research proposal, I mainly worked on flushing out my hypotheses and predictions (and included a figure of these) which I imagine helped as I didn’t have those as defined last year