Interesting. I think there are still some alarm bells ringing in my head.
To the extent that giving a specific project idea is for “information about your reasoning and execution skills”, I worry that this seems like some sort of status quo bias. It seems like the most obvious weeding out question to give for getting a grant to work on an issue but I’m not sure why it’s clearly the best. It seems like the equivalent of picking PHD students primarily based on what they said they want to research. Leaves a lot of room open for copycat signaling.
To the extent that it is to “identify the area the kind of problem you are trying to solve”, again is this the best way? It might be, but there are other plausible alternatives. Did you write about some problem or class of problems or solution or class of solutions? Did you attend talks about this thing? What did you study, etc. Also, there are tons of people who actually don’t care that much within a range of things what they are solving. It seems like you are sneaking in an implicit assumption that it is important to line people up with the problem they are trying to solve but from my own experience my passions are not that robust.
Basically, it seems almost too perfect that writing a grant proposal is actually the best signaling mechanism for who is best served to work on such a problem/solution. I’m interested in how grant makers came to this conclusion and definitely have a sense that many just assumed this is how you do it.
Interesting. I think there are still some alarm bells ringing in my head.
To the extent that giving a specific project idea is for “information about your reasoning and execution skills”, I worry that this seems like some sort of status quo bias. It seems like the most obvious weeding out question to give for getting a grant to work on an issue but I’m not sure why it’s clearly the best. It seems like the equivalent of picking PHD students primarily based on what they said they want to research. Leaves a lot of room open for copycat signaling.
To the extent that it is to “identify the area the kind of problem you are trying to solve”, again is this the best way? It might be, but there are other plausible alternatives. Did you write about some problem or class of problems or solution or class of solutions? Did you attend talks about this thing? What did you study, etc. Also, there are tons of people who actually don’t care that much within a range of things what they are solving. It seems like you are sneaking in an implicit assumption that it is important to line people up with the problem they are trying to solve but from my own experience my passions are not that robust.
Basically, it seems almost too perfect that writing a grant proposal is actually the best signaling mechanism for who is best served to work on such a problem/solution. I’m interested in how grant makers came to this conclusion and definitely have a sense that many just assumed this is how you do it.