This would be very helpful. It’s often confusing for the applicant as they have no idea what to change/work on. For me, I’ve been rejected by every EA fellowship I’ve ever applied for (woop woop, highscore) but I don’t know how to improve. Twice orgs have legit emailed me out the blue saying they like my blog/forum content and asking me to apply and then rejected me. I have no idea what stage I failed at. Was my application poorly written? Were my research suggestions poor? Is it a CV issue? Am I over or under qualified? Who knows. Certainly not me. So I’m sat here, still shooting off applications, with no idea which part is letting me down. I sometimes get “your application was really strong but unfortunately...” in the rejection email, but I’m never sure whether that’s being nice or actual feedback.
They say it’s expensive or time consuming to give feedback, and that’s a fair comment, but compared to the possible upside I think it’s a sound investment. I’ve collaborated with a bunch of really talented EAs who gave up applying to fellowships because of this. Deadlines are often extended because they want more applications, but maybe they’d get more applications if their attrition rates were lowered by giving people (especially early careers people) an idea of what areas they need to work on.
You can ask third parties to review your applications, but really only the orgs themselves know why something was rejected.
This would be very helpful. It’s often confusing for the applicant as they have no idea what to change/work on. For me, I’ve been rejected by every EA fellowship I’ve ever applied for (woop woop, highscore) but I don’t know how to improve. Twice orgs have legit emailed me out the blue saying they like my blog/forum content and asking me to apply and then rejected me. I have no idea what stage I failed at. Was my application poorly written? Were my research suggestions poor? Is it a CV issue? Am I over or under qualified? Who knows. Certainly not me. So I’m sat here, still shooting off applications, with no idea which part is letting me down. I sometimes get “your application was really strong but unfortunately...” in the rejection email, but I’m never sure whether that’s being nice or actual feedback.
They say it’s expensive or time consuming to give feedback, and that’s a fair comment, but compared to the possible upside I think it’s a sound investment. I’ve collaborated with a bunch of really talented EAs who gave up applying to fellowships because of this. Deadlines are often extended because they want more applications, but maybe they’d get more applications if their attrition rates were lowered by giving people (especially early careers people) an idea of what areas they need to work on.
You can ask third parties to review your applications, but really only the orgs themselves know why something was rejected.