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

[StuckInPostDocHell]

Another rejection here Congrats to the "winners." I'm done with MSCA and their host of brain-dead experts for good. You kids have fun playing the reviewer lottery in the years to come. Remember to check the magic link

[Ruboku]

My experience so far...

Last year, I got seal of excellence (87,8): 4.5, 4,2 and 4,4.

I tried to improve the weak parts with the team of my university, and I think we did well. But I have not received any news yet.

Finger crossed

Fingers broken,

Rejection here, another seal of excellence (85,2): 3.9, 4.5, 4.8.
It's funny the part that was high scored last year is down this one.

[Ciccio00o]

How shall we know our ranking in the reserve list?
Also, what does the "Seal of Excellence" actually imply?

Could you please help me with these?

Thank you!!

[Pradeep89]

EF-LIF with 86.6 in the reserve list. I am not sure if that even makes any sense. Why would EC put low scores like mine in the reserve list? Any thoughts?

I don't know what could be actual reason. I have one thinking. i will tell you. Will it have possibility that, there are some scores (between the limit of cut off threshold and most lowest reserve list), no body got it. For instance, they want to keep next 50 scores as reserve list.

Thank you and I have no hopes with that score

[triad_Mon]

Another rejection here Congrats to the "winners." I'm done with MSCA and their host of brain-dead experts for good. You kids have fun playing the reviewer lottery in the years to come. Remember to check the magic link

I don't know if I even want to look at the reviews now. With a quick look they were the commenting on some things that I had 'corrected' from my first tries, and guess what... they wanted me to do the opposite, that is... exactly like I had it the first time round!

[skm]

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.

[skm]

hi guys.
got rejected at 80.2 scroe EF-PHY
this is second time.
last time 76.6%
poor performance..by me. hahah

[skm]

Another rejection here Congrats to the "winners." I'm done with MSCA and their host of brain-dead experts for good. You kids have fun playing the reviewer lottery in the years to come. Remember to check the magic link

I don't know if I even want to look at the reviews now. With a quick look they were the commenting on some things that I had 'corrected' from my first tries, and guess what... they wanted me to do the opposite, that is... exactly like I had it the first time round!

exactly same issue with my proposal review comments.

[michelef]

hi guys.
got rejected at 80.2 scroe EF-PHY
this is second time.
last time 76.6%
poor performance..by me. hahah

I'm really sorry to hear that...

So in the end they did it again, they informed successful applicants first and left the others to wait

[Fragaria vesca]

Hi,
I got 89%, EF-LIF panel and have landed on reserve list. Do you know the cut off?
My score is: 4.2, 4.7 and 4.7
The Evaluation report is ok, but they made some strange and funny comments regarding gender dimension (by the way addressed well) and time allocation (also exhaustively prepared). Some of them are totally nonsense
Guys, I must admit that it's lottery and sometimes they just look for "artificial weekness" to have some excuse. Do not put attention to the magic link. Don't give up and try again and again (sincerely after few attempts I must admit that I am exhausted after trying again and again but what to do....). Cheers!