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It’s been three years since I started coaching and mentoring Graduate Research Fellowship Program applicants through Rice University’s Center for Written, Oral, & Visual Communication. This year, I am thrilled to announce that several students with whom I worked have been recognized by the National Science Foundation! It’s been an honor to be a small part of their journeys.

Congratulations to new GRFP Fellows Katie Brown (first year in Bioengineering), Constantinos Chamzas (first year in Robotics and Computer Vision), Gebhard Keny (second year in Cultural Anthropology), and Felix Wu (graduating Psychology undergraduate), and honorably mentioned students Izzy Bilotta (first year in Industrial/Organizational Psychology) and Hana Jaafari (second year in Biophysics)!

As an NSF coach, one of the most frequently asked questions I received is, “How do I cite things?” Because there is no formal convention, students have a lot of leeway here. To this end, I always recommend using the most economic citation format — you want to maximize real estate for your actual statement writing. Below, I detail my method, which by no means is required or even necessarily recommended; you can and should explore options and norms in your field. This is just what worked for me.

In-text citations: I personally used superscript numbers in the body of my statement. I assigned a number to each reference as it occurred in the statement, starting with ¹,²,³, etc.; if the same reference was cited later in the statement, I would label it with the same number that it had originally been given.

References section: Here, I decreased the font size from 12-point to 10-point. Note (September 2020): The NSF application now requires a font size of 11 or greater for the References section! Please adhere to these guidelines (and always read the most up-to-date solicitation) to make sure you don’t get disqualified for minor reasons.

I then plugged in only the essentials for each reference:

• Author(s)’s information: last name; first and middle initials. If there were more than six authors, I only included the first author’s information and added “et al” afterward.
• The abbreviated name of the journal, if it’s in a publication
• The year of publication

My references section ended up looking like this:

References: 1. Beach, M. C. et al. Med. Care (2005). 2. Smedley, A. R., Stith. A., & Nelson, A. R. (The National Academies Press, 2003). 3. Hebl, M. R. & Xu, J. J. Int. Assoc. Study Obes. (2001). 4. Paasche-Orlow, M. (2004). 5. Betancourt, J. R., Green, A. R., Carrillo, J. E. & Ananeh-Firempong, O. Public Health Rep. (2003). 6. Salas, E., Tannenbaum, S. I., Kraiger, K. & Smith-Jentsch, K. A. Psychol. Sci. Public Interest (2012). 7. Corbin, J. & Strauss, A. (SAGE Publications, Inc, 2007). 8. Bhandari, M. et al. Acad. Med. J. Assoc. Am. Med. Coll. (2003). 9. Olguín Olguín, D. (MIT, 2007). 10. King, H. B. et al. (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US), 2008). 11. Weld, L. R. et al. Am. J. Med. Qual. (2015).

An obvious note: This may also mean forgoing the normal reference style within the field. In my case, the American Psychological Association (APA)’s format would have taken up substantially more space than this strategy. It seems reviewers understand the name of the game!

The NSF GRFP requires that applicants explain the importance of their research through two domains:

The Intellectual Merit criterion encompasses the potential to advance knowledge.

The Broader Impacts criterion encompasses the potential to benefit society and contribute to the achievement of specific, desired societal outcomes.

The intellectual merit criterion is usually pretty self-evident: all your accomplishments and greatest hits as a scholar. However, as a grant-writing mentor and coach, I’ve seen applicants struggle to articulate the latter. One exercise to help identify broader impacts involves thinking through different “types” of influence:

1. How does your work benefit society?
   1. How will your research improve society?
   2. Can it influence policy?
   3. What will you do to help your research reach lay audiences? (e.g., talks, workshops, policy briefs, other forms of dissemination)
2. How does your work benefit the field scientifically?*
   1. Does it introduce new concepts, theories, or knowledge?
   2. Does it test new methods?
   3. How else can it push boundaries of what is currently known?
   4. Does it cross any boundaries? (e.g., interdisciplinary work, interprofessional collaboration)
3. How will you, on an individual level, contribute beyond your research?
   1. Will you incorporate broader impacts in the actual implementation of your work? (e.g., mentoring others)
   2. Will you be involved in service in your department, university, communities, and other groups? (e.g., volunteering, serving on graduate committees)

* This sometimes overlaps with intellectual merit, but you can also argue for a case here if appropriate.

Of course, you want to be careful not to overstate the impact of your research. That’s why it’s helpful to not just focus on the “quality” of your experiences, but the “quantity” too: the many avenues through which you can affect change. It can thus be useful to triangulate your broader impacts, including through consideration of the above questions.