NRSA F30 applicant pool?

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stochastic

stochastic

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I am in a non-funded dual degree program about to finish my first year of medical school. I came across the following award:

Individual Predoctoral National Research Service Awards for M.D./Ph.D. Fellowships (NRSA F30)

Since many dual degree programs are fully funded for all years(NIH or otherwise) are there really that many applicants for NRSAs? If so, are there any posting on this board? I have searched and not much came up about NRSAs. It seems that some people going to top MSTP programs sometimes get an NRSA instead of being funded by the school's grant. Any word on how stiff competition is?

I am trying to size myself up with others in the applicant pool and those that have received the award to see if it is even worth my time pursuing. Any advice would be great. Thanks for your time.
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Some schools encourage students to apply for these awards as supplements to their MSTP funding, so there are probably a few students in the applicant pool. I know UNC will increase the stipend for any student successful in obtaining the grant.

I've heard that as long as you have a promising research proposal and evidence that it will work (based on prelim. expts/results) the grant isn't hard to obtain. I don't think the NIH has a quota on how many students to which they give these awards, so it’s likely they look at the applications individually and not competitively. It will be great for your CV -- the earlier you start writing grants, the better.
 
Can someone who was just accepted to a MSTP apply to an NRSA fellowship? Anyone who knows or has done this please PM.
 
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The NRSA's I've looked at (admittedly, not all) state you can't have another federally-funded grant at the same time, T32 MSTP training grant included (grants that issue stipends).

-X

milliardo_L said:
Can someone who was just accepted to a MSTP apply to an NRSA fellowship? Anyone who knows or has done this please PM.
Click to expand...
 
You can apply for these grants as soon as you start your program. I think you are somewhat more likely to get them if you can propose a research project though, and even more likely if you have some solid preliminary data to support.

Students at my institution are all funded (combo of NIH and school money), but the administration encourages us to apply for these grants so as to ease the burden on the program (and allow them to admit more applicants). I know of two students for sure who were awarded these grants in the last application cycle or so.

The F30 covers a wide variety of research topics, but you have to apply to the specific NIH division where your research fits.

In all, I think these are fairly competitive grants to get. You should apply anyway because they're very nice if you get them (they cover all of your training through to the end, both graduate and medical), but realistically it may be easier to be funded through an organization that specifically funds the type of research you want to do. The Dept of Defense has a number of these grants, each earmarked for a specific type of research; alternatively, if your work is relevant to a specific disease, there are often foundations dedicated to raising and distributing money for research in these areas.
 
I just went through the process of re-submitting an F30 application to NINDS. I know that the F30s are made available to many NIH institutes but some things such as competitiveness vary depending on the institute and from cycle to cycle.

I agree with tr's assessment. In particular to NINDS, I think the fellowship was probably easier to get five or ten years ago when the program began, but nowadays (at least from the experience at my program) it's not uncommon to have to submit at least twice before receiving a competitive priority score.
 
It's been a while since this post was alive. Since then I have submitted and received word on my application for an F30 through the NINDS with program announcement PA-01-100.

I will not be funded YET... I was just wondering about the resubmission road (since the previous poster said he just did this). What is a competitive priority score for this type of grant? My advisor says you are starting to get competitive around 150 when it comes to RO1's. Is this right? Is it different for F30's? Does anyone have any resubmission stories to share? How much did your priority score change? What kind of weaknesses did you have to change?

Thanks.
 
Hang in there. I missed the cut the first time too, and was funded on my resubmission, which scored about 40 points lower than my first. My advisor and I mainly addressed the comments made by the reviewers in the resubmission, which, for me, was primarily in the proposal part. I think a score of 160-180 will probably be competitive in general, but it depends on the specific group of applications in your cycle.
 
Way to go.

Most of my "weaknesses" are in the proposal as well. For the most part, they are very specific and it seems as though I could just do exactly as they say and they would have nothing left to complain about. Is that similar to you experience?
 
My understanding is that if you are close to being funded and most of the comments are minor, then addressing the comments should be a reasonable course of action. However, if the reviewers have major issues with the proposal, then minor adjustments may be insufficient. In my case, even though the reviewers were generally positive, we decided to rewrite a substantial portion of the grant. It was successful in my case, but I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, because rewriting it was a pain.
 
bump

Just thought I would bring this back for purely selfish reasons since my due date is fast approaching. Anyone else out there going through this grueling process?
 
I'm not going through it yet, but hopefully my PI will let me do so soon. I think that she is thinking about us writing for American Heart Association, but I think that it might be nice to have an NIH grant if I'm going to get one of them during training. Thoughts on this?
 
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Good thread.

I am starting my 3rd year now for my MD/PhD (1st year for the PhD). I have settled into a lab, and have started a project that is yielding some interesting preliminary results. I would love to give back to my institution in the way of easing the financial costs of my education scholarship (Not MSTP, but school funded).

What websites, etc. do I start with the find out more about the format in which an F30 grant proposal should take and where it is to be submitted.

Regards,

-Salty
 
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-05-151.html

I would start there. They're very helpful at my MD/PhD program in getting me hooked up with people who can help me with the grant writing process. You should ask around and see if there's people who can help you with the forms. Here we need approval from some office to submit the grant and they provide you with many of the initial forms, so they're good to contact right away. My understanding is what you're applying for is funding during your thesis years. While your tuition and salary should be covered for your first year or two of PhD training, your advisor picks up your salary for the rest of your thesis. There are ways to offload this burden from your advisor (and pick up small funding for travel/equipment) in the way of the F30 or other training grants.

One thing to note is that there aren't many institutes that issue F30 grants. While many members of my lab have applied to NIBIB (the biomedical imaging institute), they are one of the many that do not accept F30 applications. I'm thinking of applying to NINDS, and while the grant is written, I'm not sure if it's worth submitting.
 
I just re-submitted my NINDS F31 application after a an initial "decent" non-fundable score....200. Literally, its being reviewed today (July 7th study section). As a note, a faculty member at my institution actually sat on the study section that reviewed my round of applications, and she said that the cut-off score for funding (at least for the last batch) was 120. Its getting lower and lower all the time. Here's hoping that I can drop my score into the 120 range. :cool:
 
Ecthgar said:
I just re-submitted my NINDS F31 application after a an initial "decent" non-fundable score....200. Literally, its being reviewed today (July 7th study section). As a note, a faculty member at my institution actually sat on the study section that reviewed my round of applications, and she said that the cut-off score for funding (at least for the last batch) was 120. Its getting lower and lower all the time. Here's hoping that I can drop my score into the 120 range. :cool:
Click to expand...

It's also important to remember to look at your percentile score, which in a lot of cases is going to be more informative that the priority score. My friend recently got a 146, but was in the 2nd percentile for this study section. So she ended up getting the NRSA.

Funding is getting tighter and tighter - for example, NIMH recently announced that they will fund everything up to the 10th percentile, and then, based upon the priorities of the institute, only half of the grants between the 11th - 20th percentiles.

Good luck!
 
LM02 said:
It's also important to remember to look at your percentile score, which in a lot of cases is going to be more informative that the priority score.
Good luck!
Click to expand...

That is true, but unfortunately some of the F30's have way too few applicants and too few funded slots to come up with percentiles. For instance, the old program announcement for the one I applied for said roughly 5 applications per year will be funded. When I asked the NIH liason on the phone how many total applications per year they got, she couldn't give me an exact number, but said it was around 30 and that includes resubmissions.

So if roughly 30 apply to a given institute each year, but maybe 10 of them are resubmissions that have already fixed any critiques by review committees, it seems that your chances of getting it the second time are 50% and <1% the first time. I said this on the phone and she said , "yeah, basically if you didn't get funded the first time but got a 'decent' priority score, don't worry your in good company" meaning your at the top of the heap of first time submissions.
 
Any independant funding (i.e. not from a training grant) looks great on your CV and will help you when applying for post-doctoral or other awards. If a reasonable organization is willing to fund your training and/or research project, it's worth applying for, even if it's a small award. One of our post-docs claims his F30 funding during his PhD training helped him immensely when he was trying to find a post-doc position because it showed a successful funding record (harder and harder to get as the federal research funding shrinks...)

As in some of the above posts, an F32 training grant covers everything in our DDS/PhD program, but we are required to write an individual F30 before the qualifying exam. The goal is to open up more slots on the training grant for new students sooner. My F30 got funded out of cycle - I was a bit shocked when the NIH telephoned. It was a small award - just for 1.5 years (you are only allowed 5 years of NRSA funding total, including training grant years) and was funded when they had money left in the F30 "pot" at the end of the year. There are fewer F30 applications at the NIDCR (NIH dental and craniofacial research) compared to other institutes, but it's still much more competitive versus 5 years ago. The main question when they called to tell me it was funded was why I had not resubmitted the application, as it would have been funded earlier. Resubmission seems to be the key to getting any funding form the NIH right now. Good luck!!!
 
bump...

I was just wondering if anyone knows what is the highest priority score that has gotten or may get funding for the F30. I have heard only one personal story besides my own where the first submission was 200 and the resubmission was 160 and it was funded. I just got my resubmission priority score on the eRA commons site and I am anxious. Summary statements don't come out until January...
 
Priority scores vary by institution - some are more competitive for F30s than others (you know this). I know of 2 "higher" priority scores on funded F30s since the more recent cuts in the NIH budget - one was 191 and the other was 176, both NIDCR applications.

Good luck!!! :clap:
 
Don't gauge the competetivness of your application by the priority score alone. Your percentile is really the number that means the most. Priority scores vary from study section to study section. For example, a 160 might get funded on one cycle, and not the next. The priority score funding cutoff is completely dependent on the entire range of scores for that particluar cycle and only a certain percentage of ALL applications are funded. Multiple study sections are used for ONE cycle of F30's, so one section may score all apps very well, while another may score them very poorly and this will tend to skew the cutoff. These applications are NOT the same as for RO3's or RO1's, which have only one study section for applications. In this way, you app is not necessarily gauged directly against all other apps for that cycle. If you happen to be put in a tough section, while another app tends to be put in "easier" one, you are already at a disadvantage. Bottom line: you need to be in the top 12 percent of apps to get funding. Going from a 35th percentile to the 12th on a single re-submission is not unheard of. Going from the 60th percentile to the 12th is probably a long shot at best. Good luck.
 
Does it take a specific number of applications for a given PA in order to come up with a percentile? My reason for asking is that on my resubmission and my original application, I have not received a percentile. I guessed there were probably only 20 applications max for my PA. But who knows, that's just a guess without any support. Any thoughts?
 
Hm......that's interesting. I received a percentile score for both my original and my resubmission (approximately 1 year ago).
 
I have an F31 NRSA received on first submission, you dont need it if it since you are fully funded but it looks good on the CV for top residencies in university centers.
 
I finally just heard on my own NINDS F30. I was supposed to hear in January, but my eRA commons status is still pending and I had to e-mail the program official to get the news. My 193 was not funded, and the score cutoff was 180.

According to the program official, the NINDS does not give percentiles to their F series grants.
 
How did you find the cutoff score? My first score (not funded) last year was 170 and I resubmitted (the study section is today). If the cutoff is really 180 I will probably get funded!
 
Which program official do you have? Also, do you think that cutoff will be applied to future review sections?
 
My re-submission was for this last deadline...Dec 5. Originally I had submitted for the previous deadline (April 5) and got a 170...the cutoff was 150. I am trying to assess if the 180 cutoff you are referring to is going to be applied to each study section, or if it is decided by each section independently. I'm not sure how it works. Anyone out there with info please help!
 
The cutoff is different for each funding institution... so, the 180 score mentioned above is specific to only one of the F30 groups. That may be unfortunate but it's the only way it should work. If the NIA gets 10x more applications than the NIEHS (which is what I applied to), then it would be likely that the NIA would have 10x as many applications with a score of 180 or less.

Each institution has an amount of money to fund F30... which is essentially the money they have left over after they make decisions on all the other grants (e.g. R01s, R03s) that they receive in a cycle. So, the amount can very significantly each year and, thus, the number of F30s they can fund each year can change.
 
I would definitely apply for an F30 if my research interests were applicable to any of the supporting institutes, but unfortunately they're not. Does anyone know of other individual training awards eligible to cancer/immunology related research? Thanks for your advice...
 
2 questions

1. where to i obtain eRA status?

2. where to look for departments that might be funding F30s? is there a consensus site, or do i need to individually look/contact NINDS, etc.

thanks
 
Just an update...as far as NINDS is concerned, my F30 was approved this time around with a score of 153 :). I have a feeling the cutoff was 150...my PO contacted me and asked for updates on how my progress was going so he could tell the committee. The deadline I applied for was December 5th.
 
The funding meeting for the NIEHS is this wednesday. I am keeping my fingers VERY crossed between now and then. I hope I have the same luck as gstrub.
 
gstrub said:
Just an update...as far as NINDS is concerned, my F30 was approved this time around with a score of 153 :). I have a feeling the cutoff was 150...my PO contacted me and asked for updates on how my progress was going so he could tell the committee. The deadline I applied for was December 5th.
Click to expand...

Do they ask you to submit anything?
 
No. Basically I called the PO when I got my 2nd score (1st had been 172, 2nd 153). He first told me no decisions were being made until the meeting (not the science meeting but the funding meeting). During this time another deadline for resubmission came up, so I revised my application for the third resubmission and sent it in, just in case. This automatically "withdrew" my second revision (the 153), so in a panic I called the PO again. He explained that my second resubmission would still be considered on this round, and also asked me to summarize, via email, the progress I had made since the second submission and what I had done to respond to the reviewers' concerns. I did this, then emailed him the day after the meeting and he said it would be funded.

My advisor is a political genius when it comes to science. Knowing that the last cutoff score had been 150, she figured my 153 would be insufficient if left alone. I only had the summary statement from the second revision for like 2 days, not much time to get in my third (and final allowable) resubmission, and I resisted wanting to wait for the next round so I could actually address the reviewers' concerns. She told me to work over the weekend and get it in. Later she would tell me that when a score is that close to the cutoff, and you have a resubmission already on file for the next round, they know your third resubmission will get funded on the next round anyway. So instead of bothering to push it back to the next round they just funded my 2nd submission.

Good luck with your F30's...the NIH actually called me today to ask if I wanted the grant!
 
gstrub said:
No. Basically I called the PO when I got my 2nd score (1st had been 172, 2nd 153). He first told me no decisions were being made until the meeting (not the science meeting but the funding meeting). During this time another deadline for resubmission came up, so I revised my application for the third resubmission and sent it in, just in case. This automatically "withdrew" my second revision (the 153), so in a panic I called the PO again. He explained that my second resubmission would still be considered on this round, and also asked me to summarize, via email, the progress I had made since the second submission and what I had done to respond to the reviewers' concerns. I did this, then emailed him the day after the meeting and he said it would be funded.

My advisor is a political genius when it comes to science. Knowing that the last cutoff score had been 150, she figured my 153 would be insufficient if left alone. I only had the summary statement from the second revision for like 2 days, not much time to get in my third (and final allowable) resubmission, and I resisted wanting to wait for the next round so I could actually address the reviewers' concerns. She told me to work over the weekend and get it in. Later she would tell me that when a score is that close to the cutoff, and you have a resubmission already on file for the next round, they know your third resubmission will get funded on the next round anyway. So instead of bothering to push it back to the next round they just funded my 2nd submission.

Good luck with your F30's...the NIH actually called me today to ask if I wanted the grant!
Click to expand...


Congratulations:)
I actually applied for F31 and I just got my score which is 163 (1st submission). I don't know if I will get the grant.
 
I would expect a score that low to be funded by the 3rd submission at the latest. I've heard F31 cutoff scores around 130-140. Your second submission, especially if your reviewers don't have major issues (which seems like they don't), will score much better. Good luck.
 
I just received unofficial word that I will receive funding for my F30 application from the NIEHS. I submitted in December of last year and will receive the official letter in the next few weeks. I had a score of 150 but didn't find out the cutoff.
 
I just got my score back too (168) - how do you know that a 150 will be funded? which section did you apply to? I applied F 30 NINDS. Just wonderign - i'd like to know if i can celebrate too :)
 
As discussed elsewhere in this thread, the cutoff score varies by cycle and funding agency. So, there's no way to know if you stand a chance of getting funded. The better predictor is your percentile. My score of 150 was at the 15.6th percentile. When I talked with the F30 PA from NIEHS, he said that percentile was very good and had frequently gotten funded in the past. So, if your summary statement didn't have a percentile, contact your agency's PA to see if you can get a percentile.
 
The NINDS does not give percentiles on their F series grants. The program official should be listed in your eRA commons where you saw your score. If you contact him about the payline, let me know what he says so I don't bother him too :laugh:. The last cycle I submitted a NINDS F30 and the cutoff was 180, but this fluctuates from cycle to cycle. I just got my revised application score and it's alot lower than a 180 so I'm optimistic.
 
I hope that the cutoff is close to 180 this time. :D My PI doesn't want me to contact the PA, so if any of you happen to find out what the NINDS F30 cut off score is for this cycle and care to post it, I would greatly appreciate! Thanks!
 
kapMD/PhD said:
I hope that the cutoff is close to 180 this time. :D My PI doesn't want me to contact the PA, so if any of you happen to find out what the NINDS F30 cut off score is for this cycle and care to post it, I would greatly appreciate! Thanks!
Click to expand...

Just curious, but why doesn't your PI want you to contact your PA? I'm applying to NIMH but have been in contact with my PA several times and she's always been more than helpful.
 
i'm not sure- she usually applies to heart,lung and blood; so we don't know many people at the NINDS, but i'm interested in neurology/stroke issues so this is more appropriate for me. i think that her thinking is that we don't want to bug them and cause them to put us on the 'unfavorable' list. i can practice patience, i'm just a little anxious over it. Thanks!
 
I am fairly certain for this round of NINDS the cutoff was 150. The reason I say this is because my score was a 153, and my PO contacted me and asked what new data I had that he could mention in the meeting to "push" my score into the fundable range. Also my first submission of 178 was not funded and the cutoff that time was 150.

Sorry if this is bad news but keep trying!
 
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