Tips for SSHRC and OGS Applicants
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SSHRC Tips
by Gregor Smith
1. Don't leave the application to the last minute. Start about a month before the due date and advise your referees of what you are doing. Get feedback on your proposal and ask your referees to proof read it. This helps to provide a more polished proposal and allows your referees to comment on your application in a more informed manner.
2. Make sure that you write a serious proposal. Don't rely just on your academic record. (MA and 1st yr PhD students can apply but they will be at a natural disadvantage in providing a research proposal and must have /very /strong academic records.) You are allowed about two pages for your proposal, plus a bibliography. Including the bibliography gives you the opportunity to show that you are up on the literature.
3. The proposal will be read by at most 2 economists and by 2-4 noneconomists. This means that you should try to avoid technical language if and when possible.
4. Letters from well-known faculty are easier to evaluate by members of the committee and carry more weight.
5. Some members of the adjudication committee will be impressed by topical proposals.
6. If there has been an illness or other event that has caused a disruption in academic performance (either undergraduate or graduate) take the opportunity to provide a brief explanation.
7. Reapply if you're not successful the first time. You'll be able to write a better proposal in upper years. Besides the applicant pool and adjudicators change from year to year, so there is a lot of randomness in the process.
Advice to Graduate Co-Ordinators
By Sue Howson
1. Explain any "anomaly" in the rankings; that is, make sure that your ranking is consistent with transcripts and the referees letters or explain the reason for the difference.
2. Some committee members give more weight to the proposal, others just look at grades. Economists tend to put more weight on the research proposals, but it is difficult for adjudicators in other disciplines to appreciate the research proposal. MA students and students entering their second year with stellar grades but relatively weak research proposals should be encouraged to apply.
Advice to Referees
By Sue Howson
1. Specific information (eg. the student ranked highly --say, 2nd out of 15-- relative to this year's class or compared to previous years' classes) is much more valuable than a generic statement such as "This is an excellent student who deserves support".
2. Discuss research strengths as well as course performance.
Advice to Students
By Sue Howson
1. Get someone who knows your work well and will provide detailed information. Take the offensive. Make sure that you let them know in advance that you are planning to apply for a SSHRC. Give them a copy of your transcript, CV, and proposal. Make sure they look at it.
2. A well specified proposal can make a big difference on the margin. What do you plan to do? Why? Describe research methods, etc. If you have an empirical proposal, where will you obtain the data?
3. On the margin, interdisciplinary proposals (or those that can be more easily appreciated by noneconomists) will do better.
4. The "social value" of a proposed project gets some weight.
OGS Tips
By Don Dewees
Don was on a committee that evaluated OGS applications by domestic students. His committee was composed of 3 economists and they only considered applications by economics students. Applications are received from undergraduates who intend to go on to graduate study, students currently in their MA year who intend to pursue a PhD, and students currently enrolled in a PhD program. They were divided into two groups based on their status when they would receive the award: MA and PhD. There are separate allocations of fellowships for each group. For each group, students were ranked into 5 categories and only those in the top two categories (about 40%) were awarded an OGS fellowship. Don emphasized that the committee receives very little information about an applicant. Here is what he saw:
1. Cover sheet giving your name and summarizing where you have studied
2. Referee's forms that ask the referee to rank your abilities in various categories relative to other students, along with space for some comments. Referees can choose to provide a separate letter in lieu of the brief comment.
3. Graduate Co-ordinator's ranking of all applicants from that university. This form also contains a summary of the Grade Average (you need at least an A- to apply so there is very little variation in applicant's grades). * Transcript
4. Proposal or statement of interest.
Based on this, Don pointed out that there are very few margins that a student can use to improve their chances so it is important to make the most of the few available.
1. The referees' letters are very important. Provide your referees with the relevant information and make sure that they know you well enough to write an informative letter (Don pointed out that having served on this committee he now regrets about 2/3 of the letters that he has provided in the past). Letters from well-known faculty at prestigious universities (such as the UofT) help, largely because it is much easier to interpret these letters.
2. The graduate co-ordinators rankings matter a lot. (FWIW, my own rankings are determined by a combination of objective information, such as the referees' letters and the transcripts, along with evidence of research ability. For the latter, I give a great deal of weight to the second-year paper).
3. A coherent, well-written proposal is very important. Trendy research is not so important, but a substantive proposal can help a lot.
OGS Tips
By Don Dewees
Arthur was on a panel that looked at applications from visa students. It was an interdisciplinary panel and they considered applications from law, geography, anthropology, etc. as well as economics. Arthur emphasized that most of the information that you provide to the OGS panel is determined before you sit down to fill out the application. He provided a small list of margins to work on:
1. Although the proposal will matter for economists, other members of the committee can't be expected to evaluate it very well. So while the return to a substantive proposal is positive, it is even more important that it be well written. Get someone else (preferably one of your referees or the graduate co-ordinator) to read and proof the proposal. A poorly written proposal (with spelling and grammatical errors) can be caught by all committee members, regardless of discipline, and provides an easy reason to eliminate you from consideration.
2. It is very important to cultivate your referees so that they can provide an informative letter.
3. It is very important to write to the panel's background. It appears that domestic students should aim for a more specialized economics audience, but visa students should keep in mind that they will be adjudicated by a more interdisciplinary panel.
4. There is lots of noise in the system so keep trying.