College of the Holy Cross | Graduate Studies

PROPOSAL WRITING:
THE ART OF PERSUASION

Revised July, 2002

At various times in your life you will need to write a proposal, a statement or statements relating to a project you would like to accomplish. Such a proposal is an example of persuasive writing. It is addressed to the individual or agency whose resources can allow you to carry out your project. Your task is to convince them that your project deserves their support.

Not all proposals are in written form: you have undoubtedly had an idea, discussed it with someone in a position to help you, and off you went. Even then, though, you must have thought the idea through in enough detail that you could communicate effectively what you had in mind, to elicit the other person's support. A trivial example is a child's asking his or her parents for an increase in allowance. Ordinarily parents will want to know the answers to such questions as why the child needs the money, what it will be budgeted for, how they will know it was spent wisely, and what the child plans to do to earn it. The child is more likely to succeed if he or she has considered answers to these questions in advance. In a similar way, a written proposal works best if it tries to anticipate the questions that the evaluator is likely to ask.

How do you discover what those questions are? Most formal proposals are prepared in response to announced opportunities for which you want to be considered. More specifically, various grants, fellowships, and scholarships are awarded in competitions. Applicants are asked to write one or several statements that form the substance of their proposal. You can understand the sorts of questions you should address, even if they are not explicitly stated, by carefully reading published material describing the purpose of the granting agency and the kinds of statements requested. The statements are usually of a prescribed length and format (different for each competition). Frequently they also must fit into one of several categories, for example a personal statement, a project statement, and/or a public policy proposal. Formulating the appropriate response to these requirements can be difficult. The following information is designed to help you through the process. It is organized in terms of general information on the structure of a formal proposal followed by specific suggestions for the proposals demanded by various graduate fellowships.

Ten easy steps toward a clear and effective proposal

Have an idea or a goal that you are excited about. Think about it, discuss it with friends and mentors, and modify your idea if it seems appropriate.
Consider alternative ways to accomplish the idea or goal; select several of the best to pursue.
Identify sources of support to help you achieve the goal.
Investigate in detail the groups granting the support, to see whether their goals match yours.
If so, look closely at the requirements for application and the criteria for success. For some organizations, the project proposal is the main thing. For others it is simply one among several attributes of the applicant that are weighed in the balance: proven scholastic ability, attested to by a high academic average; leadership ability; community service; involvement in athletics; geographical origin or ethnicity; the opinion of respected professors expressed in letters of recommendation.
Make a list of the components of a complete application so that none is overlooked.
Systematically undertake these components, paying close attention to detail at every step. Neatness counts!
Keep your idea or goal at the forefront. Inevitably you will need to select what to include or what to emphasize. Do the selecting in such a way as to shine the most favorable possible light on the goal and on you as the person to accomplish it.
Do not hesitate to apply to more than one organization for support of the same idea (unless it is explicitly forbidden), but consider carefully how to tailor each application specifically to the organization.
Show your application, especially statements of the proposal, to as many people as possible before you submit it. If there are parts that need work, it is better to have friends point them out rather than selection committees! You do not have to accept their suggestions, but at least you can consider them. They may have arisen from a misreading that you can clarify. Among those who would appreciate seeing your proposal (or at least hearing about it) are those you have asked for letters of recommendation.

The structure of the formal proposal

The formal proposal will have various structures depending on its length and what other supporting material is being requested. At one extreme may be the proposal for a grant in support of scientific research that is submitted to an agency such as the National Institutes of Health. These documents are "limited to" 15 pages, and must follow a very particular order and format, designed for the convenience of the reviewers. I had trouble with this format until I realized that it answers a series of questions:

What are you going to do?
Why does it need to be done?
Why should we think you can do it?
How are you going to do it?
Where have you gone for other information?

For most applications you can discover how the review will be carried out by noticing the questions asked. If they are not asked explicitly, you can anticipate them by imagining yourself as a reviewer.

At the other extreme of length is an application requested by the St. Andrews Society of New York for students seeking to spend a year at a Scottish university. A four-page form is filled out listing things like your academic history, honors, extracurricular activities, and in what way you are of Scottish ancestry (a key issue for this organization). You then have 200 words to answer each of two questions:

Why do you wish to continue your education beyond the present year?
Why do you wish to study in Scotland?

Naturally, in this case successful students need to make every word count and count toward the obvious goal of the organization: to promote the understanding of Scotland by Americans of Scottish ancestry. An interview is part of the final selection process for this award (as for many others), so the wise applicant will make the responses to the questions open to further conversation in the interview.

While the form and style of proposals vary widely, they all seek to understand what motivates you to undertake the project you are describing. In many cases preparing the proposal will be an occasion to come to self-understanding that will be useful as you pursue future goals, no matter how the particular application is received.
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Specific proposals needed for fellowships handled through the Graduate Studies Office

The following information is presented in alphabetical order by fellowship name.

Beinecke Scholarship

The College can nominate one junior per year to compete with nominees from among 80 or so selective colleges and universities nationwide for 20 awards. These awards provide $32,000 for the last year of college and the first two years of graduate study in the arts, humanities, or social sciences. They are designed to provide for the graduate education of young men and women of "exceptional promise," and to "encourage and enable highly motivated students to pursue opportunities available to them and to be courageous in the selection of a graduate course of study."

The application includes a cover sheet to be filled out with background information and lists of employment experience and extracurricular activities; a copy of a current resume; an official transcript; three letters of recommendation; a Financial Data Sheet, confirming the need for financial aid; and a "personal statement of 1,000 words or less from the nominee describing his or her background, interests, plans for graduate study and career aspirations. The statement should include a discussion of some experiences and ideas that have shaped those interests plans and aspirations."

In designing your personal statement, you should therefore make clear

what you plan to study in graduate school
what has brought you to this point in your education
what the goal of your graduate study would be (in terms either of career opportunities or intellectual skills)
what drives you to be passionate about and committed to this intellectual endeavor
how financial assistance would make a difference in your being able to achieve your goals.

As with any expository writing, the strongest statement will be simple, direct, concrete, and illustrated with appropriate examples. Be true to yourself and to your plans for the future. Do not hesitate to include unusual or distinctive features of your experience or background.

Fulbright grants

These awards offer full support for a year of study or teaching in a foreign country. Research Fulbrights require a plan of study or research; Fulbrights in the creative or performing arts require documented artistic achievement; Fulbright teaching assistantships require an interest and ability in working with adolescent students as well as a project that you could pursue in your free time. The ultimate goal of all three is to introduce American college graduates to the excitement and experience of working and living in another country, an opportunity that is expected to improve the student's understanding of the larger world and to influence the opinion of American youth in other countries. These points should be kept in mind while preparing the application.

The form, among the most complicated of any of the undergraduate awards, is the same for all three kinds of grants. It begins with a four-page form asking for personal information, educational background, honors and extracurricular activities, future plans, work experience, experience living abroad, and an abstract of the proposal. Fill out the entire form, even when the information is duplicated elsewhere, since not all parts of the application end up in the same office. It must be typewritten or printed out from a computer file, provided to applicants on the web.

Then comes the Statement of Proposed Study or Research, in which you have two typewritten pages to "describe your study or research plans and your reasons for wishing to undertake them in the country of your choice. Outline a plan that realistically can be completed in one academic year abroad. Graduating seniors … are not expected to formulate detailed research projects [but they] should describe the study programs they wish to follow in terms as specific as possible." You should include the proposed starting date and the total duration of the project.

Then comes a single-page Curriculum Vitae. This is not a resume, but rather a "narrative giving a picture of yourself as an individual. It should deal with your personal history, family background, influences on your intellectual development, the educational and cultural opportunities (or lack of them) to which you have been exposed, and the ways in which these experiences have affected you. Also include your special interests and abilities, career plans, and life goals, etc. It should not be a recording of facts already listed on the application or an elaboration of your statement of proposed study."

The rest of the application includes a Foreign Language Report, which you must have completed by a professional language teacher, three letters of reference (on forms provided), an evaluation form from the Graduate Studies Committee, and transcript labels (needed only for non-Holy Cross transcripts).

Clearly you need to be on top of the details for this one, since the entire package has to be submitted through the Graduate Studies Office by the deadline.

A key question the Fulbright selection committee asks is "Is this project feasible?" In other words, you need to persuade the committee both that the project is worth doing, that you are the best person to do it, and that you must do it in the location you have selected. The single most persuasive thing you can provide is some evidence of "affiliation:" letters from faculty at the host institution expressing willingness to supervise your project (if you win the grant), documentation that you have begun to apply for admission to the university where you want to study, or other signs that you have seriously looked into the feasibility of the project you describe.

In addition to establishing some sort of affiliation, you should think about practical matters such as the scope of the study you plan to undertake, particularly if you are not yet completely prepared academically or linguistically. You should not plan to use archives without some advance assurance that you will be given access. You should not propose field research without a clear signal from someone at the site that such research is appropriate for the question you are investigating and that you have the proper preparation to undertake it. You should not plan to work in a scientific laboratory without a letter of commitment from the laboratory director confirming that you will be welcome. If you plan to study at a foreign university, you should investigate the requirements for admission and be sure that the program you seek to embark on can be completed in a year. (If not, have a plan for extending your stay with other funding).

Applicants for Teaching Assistantships should have a supplementary study in mind that they will undertake in their spare time. Its purpose is to demonstrate your interest in getting to know the people and culture where you will be living. The Project Proposal here would fall into two sections: first, what you would bring to the teaching of English to adolescents in that country; and second, what other interest you would develop when not in the classroom itself.

Crafting these two essays requires serious attention, since the space is so limited. Be as specific as you can, identifying key issues that might arise and suggesting ways you might deal with difficulties that you have anticipated. Be particularly careful to establish that your linguistic fluency is adequate to accomplish the project.

As John Wilson, former Graduate Studies Advisor, put it,

"For research grants, the project essay might follow this format:

1) Specify the university or institution (museum school, etc.) you want to attend, the course of study you want to pursue there (also indicating the specific research topic or intellectual issue you might focus on) and explain why that course of study is especially suited to that institution in that country.

2) Explain why this course is worth pursuing and the "results you hope to obtain."

3) Explain why you are qualified to do it, on the basis of your undergraduate course work or other experience .

4) Describe steps you have taken or will take to investigate the program of study. (Have you written for or received information regarding faculty, courses, library or other facilities? Do you have an application?) Include in your application any letter or e-mail documenting that you will be welcome to the institution.

5) Explain how the program of studies relates to your future career interests.

"For teaching assistantships ‘candidates should indicate both their reasons for wishing to serve as teaching assistants and the supplementary study they would undertake in their free time.' Your essay might stress the following points:

1) Your interest in the culture and your knowledge of it, especially your facility with the language. If you have spent your junior year abroad in the country, or traveled extensively there, stress that experience. Although preference is given for all Fulbright awards to someone who has spent fewer than 6 months in the host country of the proposal, it is particularly helpful in application for a teaching position to be able to demonstrate knowledge of the host culture. The preference is applied only when "everything else is equal." If you have not had experience of the country, emphasize instead how important it is that you should improve your knowledge of its language and culture. (If you are applying to teach in France or Germany, you must have a command of the language already, but you do not have to have lived there.)

2) Stress any aspect of your academic background or extracurricular experience that makes you especially qualified for teaching in general and for teaching language in particular: advanced academic projects, tutoring English as a second language here or overseas, summer camp work, Big Brother/ Sister programs, etc. Stress the benefits you will derive from teaching. If you intend to be a language teacher, stress that career goal (prospective language teachers are given preference in the German and French competitions). If you are at all familiar with the educational system of the country, stress that as well. If you have taken courses in English or especially American literature or history, or if you have traveled widely in North or South America, mention this background. In sum, convince the reviewers (and yourself) that you are an interesting American who has much to offer the young people you will serve as a native English speaker. If you are interested in a career other than teaching such as international relations, diplomacy, or business, explain how the Fulbright grant will further that goal.

3) Discuss briefly a specific program of reading, study, or other project you would pursue in addition to your teaching assignment. This is your chance to present yourself as a creative person with deep cultural interests in the host country. For Korea, Hungary, Turkey, stress that you want to learn the language and culture.

"The personal essay gives you the chance to present yourself as intellectually alive and culturally aware, a tactful person of goodwill who will make an excellent ambassador in the Fulbright year. Explain how your proposed program of studies or teaching assignment relates to your personal intellectual growth at the close of your undergraduate years. Stress any special intellectual interests, avocations, artistic or musical abilities that you could develop or contribute during your Fulbright year. Coordinate this personal essay with the project statement. Finally, your essay must display a graceful and concise command of your native language, so plan to revise, revise, and revise. Both Fulbright essays are subject to strictly enforced page limitations. They must be carefully composed and coordinated, without fluff or redundancy."

Goldwater Scholarship

This award is for sophomores or juniors majoring in the sciences who intend to pursue graduate study leading to the Ph.D. and a career in teaching and research. It provides support for undergraduate tuition in the last one or two years, in expectation that that will help the student qualify for the best graduate programs.

Holy Cross can nominate up to 4 students per year; we seek recommendations from science department faculty, but interested students can contact the Graduate Studies Advisor directly. The application involves an information form, copies of high school and college transcripts, three letters of recommendation, and a 600-word essay discussing a significant issue or problem in your field of study that is of particular interest to you. You must describe the issue or problem, discuss an idea for research that could have an impact on the issue or problem, describe an aspect of the research in which you would be involved, and explain the relevance of it to you as a mathematician, scientist or engineer. The more specific the question you are asking, the more persuasively you can describe your route to an answer. The essay is directed to a knowledgeable reader, but not necessarily a specialist in your field. It can be derived from research in which you have been involved; if so, you should indicate others with whom you collaborated to carry it out.

This is an unusual task, rather difficult for those who have not had prior research experience, but not impossible if you start early and seek assistance from faculty mentors. If more than 4 students seek nomination, the Committee on Graduate Studies will select the College's nominees.

Marshall Scholarships

These awards are highly competitive, designed to honor the "best and brightest" American college graduates by providing funds for them to spend two years earning a degree at a British university. All disciplines are eligible and the scholarship can be held at any British university. Such an opportunity is not only one of the highest honors a student can receive, it also enables Marshall Scholars to significantly advance their education. In the available time a person with an American bachelor's degree can earn a second British bachelor's, or in some cases a master's degree. In some cases these degrees are transferable to graduate, medical, or law degree programs upon returning to the United States. Forty awards are made each year, distributed among 6 regions of the United States.

A key qualification for a Marshall Scholarship is high academic ability, to the point that applicants without at least a 3.7 grade-point average in the years after their first year of college are discouraged from applying. The stated objectives of the program are as follows:

to express the gratitude of the British people to the American people for the Marshall Plan;
to bring for study in the United Kingdom intellectually distinguished young Americans who will one day become leaders, opinion formers and decision makers in their own country;
to enable them to gain an understanding and appreciation of the British way of life and British social and academic values;
to encourage them to be ambassadors to the United Kingdom for their own way of life, and to establish long-lasting bridges and ties between the peoples of the United States and the United Kingdom, at a personal level; and
to raise the profile of the United Kingdom in the United States, particularly among its young people.

The selection committee seeks "distinction of intellect and character as evidenced both by their scholastic attainments and by … other activities and achievements. Preference will be given to candidates who combine high academic ability with the capacity to play an active part in the life of the United Kingdom university to which they go, and to those who display a potential to make a significant contribution to their own society. Selectors will also look for strong motivation and seriousness of purpose, including the presentation of a specific and realistic academic programme."

Applicants for British Marshall Scholarships are required to "outline their proposed field (and level) of study and to nominate a first- and second- choice university in the United Kingdom; they are further required to justify their choice of course and institution in a statement which forms part of the application process. Candidates are expected to prepare their application as fully as possible …"

Thus preparation of an application requires the student to look carefully into the possible courses of study, and select among them those that match best the student's interests and goals. Then the proposal itself must persuasively justify the choices made. The two major statements to be submitted are

a statement of fewer than 1000 words describing the applicant's academic and other interests and pursuits, and
a statement of fewer than 500 words identifying the proposed academic program, and giving the reasons for wishing to undertake the study proposed and for preferring the first-choice university as a location.

In addition there are forms to be filled out (available on-line), and four letters of recommendation, which will be much more persuasive if you have discussed your plans with the recommender. The Graduate Studies Committee provides the institutional endorsement that must accompany each application. There are no limits on the number that we can submit.

As you prepare the Marshall statements, you should try to project yourself as destined for future leadership, in the broadest possible sense. A certain self-confidence (but not arrogance) is particularly effective. If you can identify instances where your actions have made a difference, try to work them into your personal statement. If you can identify a program at a British university that particularly extends your long-held and passionate ambitions for further study, that is ideal. And of course, the statements must be flawlessly written. What would impress a selection committee is a coherent picture that emerges of a disciplined and dedicated student, one who is confident to follow his or her own path and who exercises good judgment in choosing that path. This description is necessarily vague, since the hallmark of such a student is his or her individuality.

Again, John Wilson's words of advice are valuable:

"The Personal Statement, should put together ‘a case on personal grounds why they should be awarded a Marshall. For students, the essay is perhaps the most challenging part of the application. What they use it for should provide selectors with a good sense of their personality and motivations.’

"For the second essay ‘Candidates should describe … their proposed academic programme, giving reasons for their choice of course and preferred university [in Britain]. Those hoping to read for a research degree should give an outline proposal of the research they wish to undertake.’ (One page, single spaced.) For this essay you must be informed regarding faculty and courses in your subject at the two universities you select. The following reference works, available in most large public or university libraries, are recommended: Commonwealth Universities Yearbook, published by the Association of Commonwealth Universities and distributed in the US by Stockton Press, New York; British Universities Guide to Graduate Study, (Association of Commonwealth Universities); Current Research in Britain (The British Library). In addition most British universities maintain excellent web sites that you can consult."

Professor Lorraine Attreed, Department of History, is a former Marshall Scholar, and is willing to advise interested applicants.

Mellon Fellowship

These awards are applied for in the senior year independently of the Graduate Studies Office. They support the first year of graduate study in the humanities in the United States. You need to obtain application materials directly from the Mellon Foundation. They include an application form, a form attesting to your foreign language competency, three letters of recommendation, and a statement of intellectual interest, along with GRE scores and a transcript.

The statement of intellectual interest is the critical part of your application. It must be a signed, typewritten essay of no more than 1000 words explaining your plans for graduate study and an academic career, with the emphasis not on biography but on intellectual interests and how you intend to pursue them in graduate study. It helps to include descriptions of projects you have worked on or plan to pursue in graduate school. Attached to the essay you need to list the graduate schools to which you plan to apply and for each, your reasons. You also need to list academic honors and senior projects you are engaged in. This frees up the essay itself to explore how your mind works, what drives you intellectually, what passion for knowledge and insight motivates you to seek a graduate-level education.

Standards for selection of Mellon Fellows are like those for Marshall Scholars, in the sense that the highest level of academic excellence is sought. It is a highly prestigious award and provides opportunities otherwise rather scarce in the humanities. Professor Jessica Waldoff, Department of Music is a former Mellon Fellow and is willing to advise interested students.

Rhodes Scholarship

Like the Marshall Scholarship, the Rhodes rewards achievement at a very high level while providing the opportunity to study in any field at Oxford University for two to three years. The four criteria for selection of the 32 Americans each year, as specified by Cecil Rhodes in 1903, are as follows:

literary and scholastic attainments
fondness for and success in sports
truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness, and fellowship
moral force of character and instincts to lead, and to take an interest in one's fellow beings.

As an academic scholarship, the most important criterion is intellectual distinction, measured in large part (but not exclusively) by grades and academic honors. Letters of recommendation can provide important supportive evidence of intellectual distinction. The criterion of success in sports is to show that you have the energy to use your talents fully. Thus other ways of demonstrating energy, physical vigor, and ambition besides participation in varsity athletics are acceptable. At the same time, leadership and teamwork are often well demonstrated in competitive sports, and unusual athletic distinction is a definite plus. The leadership sought is in any field, not simply political. The Rhodes seeks to identify and nurture those who will advance the course of human civilization in all its manifestations, a lofty goal indeed!

The application process requires an institutional endorsement (from the Graduate Studies Committee), between five and eight letters of recommendation, a list of principal activities and honors in college with dates (no more than two pages of at least 10-point type), and a 1000-word essay describing your academic and other interests, the specific area of proposed study, and why you wish to study at Oxford. The selection committee will place special emphasis on this personal statement, so it should be the very best work of which you are capable. Since you will have already listed many of the qualifications that you believe to be most significant, this is an opportunity to describe how they relate to one another and to your long-term goals. Particular experiences connected with these or other incidents in your life can be described to the extent that they have shaped your development and the direction of your interests. To persuade the selection committee to choose you over the many other qualified candidates, you need to present yourself as a unique individual, competent, imaginative, ambitious, disciplined, with a vision for yourself and your place in the world, and with a particularly appropriate idea of how to further that vision by earning an Oxford degree.

There are no limits on the number of candidates Holy Cross can support.

Truman Scholarship

This award provides support for the senior year of college and for graduate school for students preparing for careers in public service. Each year the College can nominate up to 4 juniors who compete for 80 awards nationwide. In addition to the total of $30,000 in the award, winners receive leadership training, internship opportunities with federal agencies, and counseling and preferential admission to graduate programs. The Truman Foundation defines public service broadly, including positions in government, the nonprofit sector (including education), and advocacy sectors, all aimed at improving service to the public and protection of resources.

Criteria for selection of finalists include the following:

extent and quality of community service and government involvement
leadership abilities and potential
academic performance and writing and analytical skills
suitability of the nominee's proposed program of study for a career in public service.

Students attending business, medical school, or law school are eligible to the extent that their program is designed specifically for a career in public service.

The finalists are interviewed and the Scholars are chosen based on

leadership potential and communication skills
intellectual strength and analytical ability
likelihood of "making a difference" in public service.

The phrase the Truman people use is "becoming an agent for change."

The application process involves an information form requesting lists of college and high school activities, public service and community activities, government-related and political activities, part-time and full-time jobs and internships since high school, awards and honors. It also asks for short paragraphs describing one specific example of your leadership (to be confirmed by one of your three letters of recommendation), your most satisfying public service activity, the problems or needs of society that you want to address when you enter public service (bolstered with appropriate statistical data), the three most significant courses you have taken in preparation for that career, the graduate program you would pursue with a Truman Scholarship, your goals after you have completed your studies, what you plan to be doing 5 to 7 years later, and any additional personal information you wish to share. Taken as a whole, these paragraphs should form a comprehensive view of your motivations and talents, the trajectory of your academic career and how it serves your ultimate professional goals.

The hardest part of this application, however, is the Policy Proposal. You are asked to write an 800- to 1200-word essay examining a significant policy issue or problem in your intended area of public service, presented in the form of a memo to the government official most likely to have the authority to resolve the issue. You need to define the issue, describe your proposed solution, identify major obstacles to the implementation of your solution, and recommend a course of action. You must fit it all on the application form (2 pages), but you are allowed a third page for references and illustrations. Obviously it is important to select a topic for your proposal that is consistent with your aims and goals as described in the first part of the application. To express a fascination with early childhood development and the influence of poverty and then to propose a policy on distribution of AIDS medication in Africa invites rejection.

This is an unusual form of proposal, one that you might find it helpful to discuss with faculty members in Political Science or Economics, for whom the approach is more familiar. You might also be able to prepare the proposal as a part of a course assignment, with the approval of the professor. It will surely take as much time and attention as a serious paper for a course. Professor Loren Cass of the Political Science Department is a former Truman Scholar, and Professor Vickie Langohr of Political Science has also agreed to assist students preparing applications.

Watson Fellowship

This award allows "exceptional college graduates the freedom to engage in a year of independent study and travel abroad." Unlike some of the others, it is not strictly an academic award, but rather supports a focused and disciplined exploration of your own devising. The requirements are that you must be away from the United States for a year, during which you carry out a project that immerses you in other cultures. You are not allowed to enroll in a foreign university nor to repeat experiences that you have already had. The project is best characterized as "creative, feasible, and personally significant."

Successful Watson Fellows are characteristically independent and adaptable. Though a strong academic record is desirable, it is not the prime criterion that is demanded for many other awards.

Holy Cross may nominate 4 seniors each year for competition with nominees from about 50 other selective colleges and universities. From these, about 50 Fellows are chosen. Generally many more than four Holy Cross students compete for this award, so the Committee on Graduate Studies and Fellowships select the nominees based on a preliminary application that models the final one. It includes a personal statement and a project proposal, each about 5 pages in length.

The Watson application gives the following description of these essays:

"The project proposal and the personal statement are an opportunity for you to give us a sense of yourself as a person likely to derive genuine benefit from the unique opportunities which the Watson Fellowship provides. The proposal should outline your intended project, your reasons for pursuing it, and your preparations for undertaking it. The personal statement might include some discussion of your background, your college years and your professional goals and aspirations. In other words, we ask you to describe how your project fits you--how it reflects your talents, concerns and commitments. Each are also opportunities to provide whatever additional information you believe would be helpful to us when we evaluate your nomination. In each case, the specific content of the document is up to you, but we request that neither statement exceed five typewritten pages."

In preparing your Watson proposal, think through the following questions:

What specifically do I want to find out by doing field research in a certain culture or in the cultures I compare? Remember a general topic (e.g. "Alcoholism in Lithuania") is not a project; you should have either a hypothesis or at least a clear statement of what you want to discover about the topic. The best topic will pose a question for which you are genuinely open to discovering the answer, whatever it might be.
What method am I going to use in conducting my project?
Why is this a worthwhile project to fund -- why is this information worth gathering in terms of contemporary concerns or historical knowledge? (The project can be in any field: the arts, religion, ethics, science, medicine, gender, sports, politics, philanthropy, environmentalism, business, economics, etc.).
What background reading have I done on this topic? Do I know what others have thought and written about it?
How does this project relate to previous experiences in my life or to my future career plans or avocations? Why is this a project I want to do immediately after graduation?

In other words you want to persuade the Graduate Studies Committee and then the Watson selection committee that you would be a worthy candidate for their resources, well prepared and open to new experiences that will, in turn, shape your view of the world for the rest of your life.

The three key features of a successful Watson project are its negotiation of the tension between creativity, feasibility, and "stretch." Creativity speaks to the personal significance of the project for you as a unique and growing individual. You must be passionately committed to the project, so that discouragements that arise during your year do not deter you. Feasibility refers to your preparation to undertake the project. Do you speak the needed language(s)? Have you had academic experience in the area of the project? Have you done similar kinds of field work elsewhere? Stretch demands that this be a new activity for you. The Watson Foundation is unwilling to support a repetition of a senior thesis, or a return to a location where a student has spent a junior year abroad. Clearly there is tension between feasibility and stretch.

Here are some tips to keep in mind:

A key influence on feasibility is the candidate's ability to communicate; thus mastery of the language(s) of the country or countries you plan to visit is absolutely crucial, especially if your project will involve direct contact with the people. It is taken as a very bad sign for a student to claim that his or her inability to speak the language will not be a detriment to the project, since "everyone speaks English." You are expected to have enough cultural sensitivity to realize that even in countries where many of the educated people speak English, the quality of your information will vary with its source, and fluency in the native language will guarantee the widest possible access to that information.

Another factor affecting feasibility is a sense of how practical you are in constructing the project. It is helpful to think not only about the broad outlines of the year as a whole, but also the details of daily living. Where will you live? How will you find accommodations? What will a typical day look like? Have you made any contacts who can help you locate and gain access to resources for your project? What special equipment would you need? Is transportation of the equipment apt to be difficult? Will you be working in an area of the world where cultural norms make it a problem to function alone (for example, women may find it dangerous to travel alone in many parts of the world)? If so, do you have ideas as to how to find companions? You need to have investigated conditions in the countries you plan to visit, so that you can anticipate problems and plan for contingencies in solving them. In some cases this might involve having a back-up site to carry out your project, if the preferred site becomes politically unstable.

An important element of stretch is that you must be totally independent to construct your project. Thus if you plan to ask for help from contacts abroad, you should make it clear the limits of your dependence on those contacts. The question that you should ask each morning of your Watson year is "What do I plan to do today?" not "What am I supposed to do today?"

It can be helpful to submit supplementary material in addition to the two essays. Samples of your work in the medium that you propose to use during your year of travel can be particularly persuasive that you can, indeed, do what you have proposed. If this is inappropriate for your project, you can use the personal statement creatively as an expression of your personality and your approach to new experiences. The project statement should be clear and straightforward, but you can be somewhat more individualistic in your personal statement.

Summary

Even when you submit essentially the same proposal to multiple funding agencies, you need to see each application as a specific, individual effort that addresses the boundary between your needs and those of the agency offering support. By thinking that through, and incorporating your understanding into your proposal, you will greatly improve your chances for success.