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The purpose of the Amgen Scholars proposal that you are required to write and
to submit is to explain to other people:
- what you plan to do in your research
- why this work is necessary or desirable
- specifically, how you will do it
- to persuade, by your preparation and by force of argument, that
you are the right person for the job
The people who will read the proposal will include your mentor and
members of a faculty committee.
Your prospective mentor will,
of course, have expert knowledge about your project, and will be
best able to judge the merits of your objectives and plan of attack.
The evaluators will be less well informed about the background and
motivation of your research, so you will have to provide information
that will help them put the details in perspective.
No two proposals are alike, and there is no general recipe which,
if followed to the letter, will guarantee a good proposal. Most proposals
share a few common structural features, however. These are indicated
by the headings below.
A good proposal will anticipate and answer questions that an informed
(and somewhat skeptical) person might ask. Examples of such questions
are given below each heading. These examples are not exhaustive,
and are not meant to be a checklist. They are included to stimulate
your thinking about the questions that you should raise and answer
in your proposal that are especially pertinent to your project.
A proposal of two or three pages, carefully thought out and precisely
worded, should be sufficient to make all the important points. Some
excellent past proposals have been contained on a single page.
Introduction/Background
What is the general technical area in which you will be working?
What is the problem that you are trying to solve, and how did the
problem arise? Why is its solution interesting or worthwhile? What
is the status of related work by the professor or group that you
will be joining, and what will be the contribution or significance
of your research if it is successful?
Objectives
What do you aim to accomplish in your project? What will you measure,
and under what conditions; or, what will you calculate, model, or
simulate? What are your starting assumptions or conditions, and what
will be the result or product of a successful research project? What
are the criteria for success? How will you know when you have accomplished
what you set out to do?
Approach
Specifically, how will you accomplish your objective? What will you
do? What are the principal steps or milestones along the path? How
long will each take? What steps promise to be the most difficult,
and how will you overcome the difficulties? What equipment or other
resources will you need? Which of these are inherited, and which
will you have to make or procure? With what other people or groups
will you be collaborating? Will completion of your project depend
on results from other people in related tasks? (That question may
be especially pertinent for team projects.)
Work Plan
Making a schedule of the principal activities and events is a good
way of showing the readers that you have taken a systematic approach
to planning your work.
References
List all pertinent papers or reports that you have consulted to prepare
your proposal. Include remarks or suggestions from your prospective
supervisor, from graduate students, or from other people with whom
you have talked.
Proposal guidelines were developed by Dr. William M. Whitney, Deputy
Manager,
Education Affairs Office, JPL
