In our final week on Announcements, we’ll cover Evaluation Criteria. I touched on these in an earlier newsletter on listening, but we will dive deeper here. The evaluation criteria are more important than many PIs realize. They must be specified in an announcement, and the review must be built around assessment of them, and no others. That doesn’t mean there’s no subjectivity around review processes, but it does provide a framework to make the review as objective as possible.

Here are the two big mistakes I see PIs making with evaluation criteria:

(1) Not considering the criteria at all, and/or assuming they already know what they are. This may be because a PI often submits to NSF where the criteria (i.e., Merit Review Criteria) are often as straightforward as Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts. That’s deceptively simple, though, because there are actually five elements under each of those two criteria (check the Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG). Further, many NSF opportunities have different or additional evaluation criteria. Never assume; always check. For example, even when applying to a new organization, many PIs don’t think to look at the evaluation criteria when they first consider an announcement.

(2) Not considering how the criteria are weighted and factoring that into the proposal from the start. It’s understandable to be excited about certain aspects of the opportunity the agency is asking for and develop those parts especially well. Then, when reviewing the criteria, to gloss over the ones that are less exciting or familiar. What can go wrong here is creation of a lopsided proposal with important areas under-developed. As the clock begins to tick down and you are rushing to complete everything before the deadline, an educational component, for example, can end up not well-developed and feel tacked on. One way to prevent this from happening is to assess the weight of each criterion from the start, thinking in terms of the pages that you will dedicate to it. However, equal weight doesn’t always have to mean an equal amount of page space because some concepts will require more space to explain than others.

When you are applying for a project with many evaluation criteria, consider calling them out within the proposal and explaining how your effort will meet each one. This can be done creatively, using bolding or a table, for example. This enables reviewers to easily find within the document how you are addressing each. If you do address a criterion but an evaluator misses it in the text, they may or may not go back to search for it. This could result in your failing to receive ‘full credit’ and getting a lower score on that criterion. Keep in mind this may not always be a good strategy; it depends on the structure of your proposal and other factors.

In summary, review the evaluation criteria at the outset and develop a plan to address all of them before you start writing. Revisit these criteria often during the writing process. When you are close to the final draft, review them again and consider if (1) there are any sections you need to flesh out further and (2) if there is anything you can do to make it easier for reviewers to locate pertinent information within the document.

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