2022 Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (HE-MSCA-PF-2022)

[AR Khojasteh]

Rejected 85 ENG

[Willy_wonka]

Hi guys (gender neutral) I got my rejection, my advisor is gonna go through the comments with me, but he also suggested to find a winning proposals as a reference. I specifically didn't perform well in the management and in the quantification of the impacts. Does anyone of you know where I can find winning proposal or if someone is willing to share some aspect leaving out details of their winning proposal?

I have one, but I fail to see how you can use it, since I used it two times after it won and it failed both.

I know it is a lottery, I know every proposal must be specific. However it does not harm to have a look on a winning proposal, it is not like I have to use it as an outline, I just need a different perspective to frame my weaknesses.

[JYS]

A first-time applicant here,

I did not make it to the deadline last year due to time mismanagement with my host. But I did submit pretty much the same project to two different funding sources one in Germany and another in Ireland and got, respectively, 92 and 89,5. (in the first case, I was "the best" of those who were not funded). I just got this year's MSCA results, disappointing --below 70 is not something that I was expecting. I was told, many times by an uncountable number of people that they take a purely utilitarian approach in social sciences, especially in politics, that is, in what ways it will impact on/improve the EU or its member states etc. I wanted to try, nonetheless, although knowing that my project is far from being utilitarian and critical of the quantified political science. hence the results.

There is this lottery debate that many people brought in several times. wholeheartedly seconded. If you are lucky enough you will fall into the hands of someone who has some background in what you try to do. even if so, the chances to overpass the intrinsic logic of utilitarianism, which is the exact opposite of critical (and therefore good) research in politics, is pretty low.

I know we all spend weeks / months on this, we put a lot of energy and nerves into these projects. the labour, tears, and sweat that we put into these are n-times more than the actual research that we can conduct. I don't mean to be disrespectful to anyone of you. But I think I am done with playing this lottery in the name of scientific research. It is simply too heavy a process for any self-caring self-respecting human. I am getting tired of being watched like racing hounds, cheerful around, painful inside.

[triad_Mon]

Hi guys (gender neutral) I got my rejection, my advisor is gonna go through the comments with me, but he also suggested to find a winning proposals as a reference. I specifically didn't perform well in the management and in the quantification of the impacts. Does anyone of you know where I can find winning proposal or if someone is willing to share some aspect leaving out details of their winning proposal?

I have one, but I fail to see how you can use it, since I used it two times after it won and it failed both.

I know it is a lottery, I know every proposal must be specific. However it does not harm to have a look on a winning proposal, it is not like I have to use it as an outline, I just need a different perspective to frame my weaknesses.

The one I wrote that won, it was by following all of the suggestions of the national contact points. There is absolutely no originality. I will not share it, personally, because I think that it might actually do more harm than good. But if you ask around a bit more, and specifically at the national contact points etc. they might have one for you.

[Steminist]

Hi dear all,

Steminist in here.
I applied with H2020 first time before the graduation (PhD) and I got 70ish. (got the result from dreamer, I was ranked later than others, even a day later)
Later I implemented all the feedback got little less than seal of excellence. (submission to evaluation in an hour).
This year even I have a nice position, I just submit it to see what I can get and I funded with 99/100. (ranked at 02/02, later than others, at least a day).
I am just gonna come back here next year to make the people relax. Becuz it seems like ranking time does not make sense, and its just a lottery.

See you around next year, and I really suggest you not to give all your hope to this fellowship but to keep it as B plan. But never A one!

[Blinkilah]

Hello all ! I got the MSCA fellowship in Physics (96.6 %). I would like to share my experience: it was my 4th time applying (the previous 3 times I failed with descent scores). This year I made an improvement of my last year’s submission. However, being disappointed from my previous unsuccessful efforts, I didn’t expect much this year. I even completely forgot that today the results might be announced; I read the congrats email when I woke up without particular excitement. Now, I am of course super glad I was successful. What I am trying to say is that even if we fail, life goes on and we need to find alternatives! We are young people with the life ahead of us and nothing can stop us to chase our dreams; so keep trying your best and the reward will come at some point.

Don’t get too excited but also don’t be disappointed! If you are worthy, sooner or later you will shine. Be professional with your applications and do your best always.

PS: this forum has been a very useful platform keeping me company in every unsuccessful result! I can feel everyone of you who didn’t make it! Never give up if you believe that you have potential!

[player]

Currently there are ~120 guests... please register and share your experience!

Hi all,

Here is my MSCA experience hoping that maybe some future applicants find it helpful. I lurked a bit this forum last week, so I want to give something to the community.

I tried for first time in 2022 getting 3,8/3,8/4,4 (EF SOC) - I dedicated some weeks to the proposal with decent help from my host. I started in June, devoted little time in July and August and worked hard for 3-4 weeks before the deadline if I well remember. I got feedback from the reviewers and found it moderate at first glance, not as detailed as I expected.

I wasn't sure about if I wished to retry, I was busy until late June this year. Anyway, I decided to retry trying to follow the reviewers' comments and put as supervisor a more established scholar from the same institute (to address the comment that my initial supervisor had little experience with postdocs). I worked for 2 weeks in July 2022 and for 2-3 weeks before the deadline (10-15 hours a week; I'm freelancing, so it was tough to be fully on that). I made mostly technical changes clarifying the methodology, adding details on the skills section and polished the implementation section. The idea, institution, international collaborations, milestones and timeline were the same. I highlighted a bit 1-2 catchy points (according to my sense of trendiness anyway).
I wasn't very optimistic cause I scored low in my first try but got 4,7/4,8/4,8, earned the grant and still can't believe it.

My impression:
1) The reviewers’ feedback was valuable (maybe I was lucky, I have seen many applicants complaining about the quality of the comments).
2) The process isn’t exactly a lottery (I don’t think that someone can get this grant with a sloppy proposal) but luck plays a role with reviewers - in the 2023 ESR the reviewers loved the research idea while in 2022 they only recognized some originality in the topic [the idea was the same; I changed almost nothing in section 1.1]
3) It's hard to make a competitive application without continuous support from the host. I earned a couple of competitive grants in the past (so I wasn’t a novice), but felt that MSCA requires emphasis on some key points which don't exist in most applications and it's tough to know where to focus without good guidance. I received comments from two profs and two grant advisors. If the host doesn't help you continuously, look for another host.

This was my story in brief. Congrats to winners. Those of you who didn't win this time be strong and stay confident. Grant writing is tough. It's a pity that projects with excellent scores, even above 90/100 still don't earn funding, research makes this world more livable and interesting and EU should invest more on that.

Thank you.
can you tell what are those
1. fancy and trendy points you wrote?
2. if possible and ok. can you post what were weakness in first time and what was you updated or focussed on, and how?

May be i try again, but thinking of radically changing the project content but with same concept.

Hi,

1) The project uses some trendy media material as one of its sources, and I tried to give to this dimension a more central position in the second try.
I don't know if this really played a big role - still, the reviewers argued that the project is very topical in the 2nd review. I'm in media studies, so it's always important to have a topical idea, in other disciplines this is likely less important.

2) In the first review the comments concerned these issues:
a) the methodology was not described in sufficient detail - they did not comment a lot on what was not very well explained, so I tried to better explain the main concepts and added a couple of tables with the proposed methods. I did not change my methodology, only explained everything more meticulously.
b) open science was not well explained - I added more info on expected research outcomes and open access strategy.
c) the expected skills section was not well developed -once again, I added some details on what I expected to earn from the experience. Nothing impressive, just more info on expected new skills.
There also was a superficial comment on the infrastructure of the host in section 3, which I addressed adding some silly details such as that the host offers all software facilities etc. Very silly comment as my project does not require any specialized infrastructure indeed.

In brief, as I didn't have time to make very fundamental changes, I tried to address the comments as much as I could and this worked.
If your host has a group of experts, try to give it to as many people as you can. Unfortunately, evaluation is always a somehow subjective process, so there is no guarantee of success; from my experience with journal articles and grants, when many eyes see it, chances for acceptance increase.

Hope this helps!

[player]

[/quote]

Thank you for your story and huge congratulations! May I ask your total score? I'm in GF SOC and got 4,7/4,2/5 and am in reserve list with quite low chances to ever being called.
[/quote]

Thanks!
95 - but mine is a EF and the cutoff score is always slightly different I think.

[Fu Manchu]

Hi dear all,

Steminist in here.
I applied with H2020 first time before the graduation (PhD) and I got 70ish. (got the result from dreamer, I was ranked later than others, even a day later)
Later I implemented all the feedback got little less than seal of excellence. (submission to evaluation in an hour).
This year even I have a nice position, I just submit it to see what I can get and I funded with 99/100. (ranked at 02/02, later than others, at least a day).
I am just gonna come back here next year to make the people relax. Becuz it seems like ranking time does not make sense, and its just a lottery.

See you around next year, and I really suggest you not to give all your hope to this fellowship but to keep it as B plan. But never A one!

Awesome! Congratulations!

Very happy to see old forum fellows getting funded!

[teddyberry]

Hi guys,
I got it. I received the Grant Agreement Preparation Letter. 92.8, CHE-panel. Ranked on 1st February 10am. To those still waiting, I hope good news for you. Cheer up and thank you all~!

Big congratulations!! ! Did you apply for EF-CHE or GF-CHE? I am on reserve list for GF-CHE(92%).

Thank you. I applied for EF-CHE. Fingers crossed for you~