Advice from a Grad Student.

Reviewers (and their comments)

A number of people will review your application on various criterion depending on the specific application. Typically, the reviewers provide some official notes and scoring that will be returned to you upon completion of the review process. Now initially, these comments can make you feel some type of way, but the feedback is generally quite useful. While grants are highly competitive, many of them allow you to apply more than once. Thus reviewer comments can help give you an edge as you can find your weaknesses and come up with a plan to strengthen them by the next application cycle. In fact in some applications, there is a specific prompt for you to complete if it is a resubmission and you must make your case showing where you improved from the previous application. The key is not to take anything personal and try to be constructive with each comment.

Some common review metrics:
• Impact of research (is your work important to the field or some broader concept)
• Personal evaluation (is your academic/research background adequate)
• Training plan evaluation (is this fellowship going to make you a better scientist)
• Research proposal evaluation (is your research technically sound)
• Personal statement (are you unique and driven)
• Letters of recommendation (how much do people like you?)
• Alignment with program goals (do you personally fit the mission statement for the fellowship)

Easy improvements

• Clarity: It can be frustrating to see a reviewer ask a question which you feel is already answered in your proposal somewhere. However, if it isn't overwhelmingly obvious to the reviewer, than it is 100% your fault. Unfortunately, the entire burden of proof is on you to convince the reviewers that you are worthy of this fellowship/grant. So I try to take these comments in stride as they are showing me my own weaknesses in communication and will help me be a better writer down the line.
• Methods: It's impossible to know everything, so if a reviewer provides different methods to be considered, than you should 100% consider them seriously. However, be aware that sometimes reviewers may come from niche fields and be biased towards experiments related to their work. So you will need to stay focused on the scope of your work and only determine whether the results of the experiments are relevant to your research question. Furthermore, you are not tied down to the exact experiments you propose. So while you shouldn't lie about your proposal, you don't necessarily have to follow through each exact experiment. Additionally, you might get caught with a technical error (wrong protein or assay). These really hurt because your logic is sound but you may have brushed through something too quickly and became a bit sloppy. I have accidentally referred to a protein by the wrong cluster differentiation number (CD31 == PECAM, but I accidentally said VE-cadherin which is another endothelial marker) and its just an unnecessary mistake. So it is very useful to find some way to proofread your own work and be very critical and pay attention to the fine details for the best chance of success.
• Weak impact: Often this can just be fixed by relating your work to the bigger picture. You may think your research is really cool and important, but again the burden of proof is on you to convince the reviewers without a doubt that this research is of paramount importance to the field or the public or etc. This section may take a little creativity and extrapolation, but is crucial as money is limited while ideas are nearly infinite.