chemist2010 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 09, 2021 2:25 pm
Hi Guys,
I see a lot of you being absolutely disheartened and sad upon the receipt of Marie Curie results and are talking of leaving academia, feeling demotivated and so on. I will share my story and maybe it will help.
I had applied for the MCIF fellowships in 2017 when I was in my final year of PhD. And, honestly I had decent publications (with Impact factors >10 for two). I had got a good host in Germany who was renowned and also hard working and we had spent close to 5 months working and editing on the proposal to make it scientifically accurate and eye-catching. Unfortunately, I got 88.5 and was rejected. I did not give up and wrote a Newton Fellowship with an UK Host, and a Fulbright fellowship with an US Host. The Newton proposal was rejected and so was the Fulbright Fellowship. However my US boss applied for a NSF grant based on my proposal and it got through. He immediately asked me to move to US and work under him, and I worked for him for two years, got some decent papers. But with Trump cancelling VISAs left, right and center, I tried moving to Europe and finally got a host who asked me to write a Humboldt Fellowship. I was pretty frustrated knowing that I have had such a terrible record with scholarships and wrote a proposal in 15 days, didn’t even bother formatting, type setting and completely forgot about it. 6 months later, I received an email that I was selected and I moved to Germany in late 2020.
So, my point is don’t give up. I am a pretty average student with average publications, I had been rejected four times, maybe the European Commission gives some weightage to postdoctoral experience too, and a good proposal doesnot always mean acceptance. It is pretty random, and just like your phd, if you persist hard and long enough, you will be successful. I hope my experience will motivate you to do the same.
This is an encouraging story, thanks for posting it.
The thing is, as you get "older" (years post PhD defense), things get harder and harder. Like many others said here, some of us have been living abroad, moving around, living away from our partners and basically putting our work before our personal life for years, and the road doesn't get easier, quite the opposite. More and more calls are reserved for "young" researchers (2/5 years max after PhD)... the older you get, the more difficult it is to secure funding. So it is very difficult to stay positive...
I'm honestly relieved to see how many people notice inconsistencies in their review (same here). My feeling is that this basically means that reviewers didn't agree - while someone might have found that the proposed science was excellent, if one person doesn't agree it automatically lowers your score, and you're left with something like:
"Strength: the ideas are new and interesting
Weakness: the proposed research isn't really groundbreaking".
Maybe the message here is that all three reviewers need to love your project. If any of them gets confused or dislikes anything, you don't get funded... and you're left with an evaluation that basically says "we couldn't agree on this project, ciao".
