Ambiguous news is good-ish news.
Nov. 9th, 2007 02:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaI just got my priority score for my grant resubmission. Alert readers may recall that the first submission was unscored, meaning that my three primary reviewers unanimously agreed that it didn't fall into the top half of applications and therefore shouldn't be discussed by the study section.
A study section is a group of scientists in a specific field (my study section was "Behavioral and Social Consequences of HIV/AIDS") who volunteer to help NIH review and prioritize grant applications. At the study section, the primary reviewer for each application presents the proposed research to the group. Everyone votes on a secret ballot, ranking the application from 1 (top priority) to 5 (lowest priority). The average of these rankings is multiplied by 100 to produce a priority score between 100 and 500. The lower the priority score, the better.
My score: 197.
What does this mean? Let's start with the good news: It's a much, much better score than last time. (Obviously my revisions were on the right track.) Half or more of the study section must have rated my grant a "1" - first priority. So that's pretty awesome, right?
Is my grant going to get funded? Here's where the ambiguous part comes in. A score of 197 is not in the "start spending the grant money" range. Nor is it in the "better luck next time" range. It is potentially fundable. One might perhaps call it fundable-ish. Whether it gets funded now depends on a variety of things: the quality of the other applications submitted under this program; the health of the budget at NINR (National Institute of Nursing Research, the sponsor for this program); NINR's own special priorities; how my project would balance with other funded and potentially funded projects; whether or not the moon is in Jupiter, and so on.
The second level of review comes in January, at NINR itself. Both NINR staff and external scientific advisors will sort through all of the reasonably-well-scored applications and decide which ones to fund. And I probably won't know a thing until they do.
I've been combing the net looking for some kind of data about the odds that a score of 197 will be funded. Every Institute has its own set of standards; it really does depend on how each application fits with their larger priorities. It would help if I had my percentile score, which shows how my score compares to other grants reviewed by the same study section. Some sections are harsher graders than others, and so the Institutes do pay close attention to percentile. But I'm lacking that information right now.
Some Institutes publish a payline, a percentile above which all proposals are funded. NINR doesn't. Some specific funding programs just go down priority scores in numerical order until the money runs out. Most of the information I'm finding about which scores are fundable is aimed at R01s - big, prestigious grants to established investigators, usually budgeted in the millions of dollars. I don't know how different it is for R21s, which are smaller exploratory grants often conducted by new investigators.
Really, there's just a whole lot I don't know. I have a call in to my Program Officer, who ought to be able to answer at least some of my questions. In my gut, I think that I'm unlikely to be funded with a 197. But it's possible, and it's certainly encouraging enough to keep me going. It's possible that one more resubmission would do the trick.
A study section is a group of scientists in a specific field (my study section was "Behavioral and Social Consequences of HIV/AIDS") who volunteer to help NIH review and prioritize grant applications. At the study section, the primary reviewer for each application presents the proposed research to the group. Everyone votes on a secret ballot, ranking the application from 1 (top priority) to 5 (lowest priority). The average of these rankings is multiplied by 100 to produce a priority score between 100 and 500. The lower the priority score, the better.
My score: 197.
What does this mean? Let's start with the good news: It's a much, much better score than last time. (Obviously my revisions were on the right track.) Half or more of the study section must have rated my grant a "1" - first priority. So that's pretty awesome, right?
Is my grant going to get funded? Here's where the ambiguous part comes in. A score of 197 is not in the "start spending the grant money" range. Nor is it in the "better luck next time" range. It is potentially fundable. One might perhaps call it fundable-ish. Whether it gets funded now depends on a variety of things: the quality of the other applications submitted under this program; the health of the budget at NINR (National Institute of Nursing Research, the sponsor for this program); NINR's own special priorities; how my project would balance with other funded and potentially funded projects; whether or not the moon is in Jupiter, and so on.
The second level of review comes in January, at NINR itself. Both NINR staff and external scientific advisors will sort through all of the reasonably-well-scored applications and decide which ones to fund. And I probably won't know a thing until they do.
I've been combing the net looking for some kind of data about the odds that a score of 197 will be funded. Every Institute has its own set of standards; it really does depend on how each application fits with their larger priorities. It would help if I had my percentile score, which shows how my score compares to other grants reviewed by the same study section. Some sections are harsher graders than others, and so the Institutes do pay close attention to percentile. But I'm lacking that information right now.
Some Institutes publish a payline, a percentile above which all proposals are funded. NINR doesn't. Some specific funding programs just go down priority scores in numerical order until the money runs out. Most of the information I'm finding about which scores are fundable is aimed at R01s - big, prestigious grants to established investigators, usually budgeted in the millions of dollars. I don't know how different it is for R21s, which are smaller exploratory grants often conducted by new investigators.
Really, there's just a whole lot I don't know. I have a call in to my Program Officer, who ought to be able to answer at least some of my questions. In my gut, I think that I'm unlikely to be funded with a 197. But it's possible, and it's certainly encouraging enough to keep me going. It's possible that one more resubmission would do the trick.
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no subject
Date: 2007-11-09 07:52 pm (UTC)At my university, there's an internal funding programme that automatically rewards a 4A rating with around $5000 in research money, no strings attached. Is there anything like that at your university? That really helped us a LOT while we were waiting for the big bucks (and it encouraged us to apply again, too, because at least we could expect the $5000 even if we didn't get funded by SSHRC again).
-J
no subject
Date: 2007-11-09 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-09 08:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-09 08:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-09 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-10 01:58 am (UTC)1.97th place
Date: 2007-11-14 06:30 am (UTC)Wow. Thanks for the roller-coaster update, and good luck!