writing own research grants vs. publication

[medstudentloading]

How common is it for an undergrad to write up his own grant to apply for funding? do lots of applicants who are undergrads do this?
is this basically how an undergrad ends up getting a publication? trying to figure out if writing a grant as an undergrad is even impressive or not...

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[Moko]

How common is it for an undergrad to write up his own grant to apply for funding? do lots of applicants who are undergrads do this?
is this basically how an undergrad ends up getting a publication? trying to figure out if writing a grant as an undergrad is even impressive or not...

It is very uncommon for an undergrad to write their own grants. More commonly, co-authorship is obtained through other contributions to a project. There is some degree of luck involved as some PI's are more generous than others when it comes to co-authorship. Just my thoughts.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Depends on the grant and/or the PI. For an undergrad research grant application, yes, you'll probably do some writing. For a big NIH training grant, usually not. No you don't need to write a grant or a section to be an author, but sometimes whatever you have written may be good enough to describe methods for a paper (which warrants an authorship to me).

Yes it would be impressive for other researchers (masters or doctorate programs, not really health professions schools).

I remember having an undergraduate student write a grant to fund research continuing from the summer. The grant was specifically for undergraduates, and she got it. It helped get her career started as a professor.

 

[HuckleberryEven]

How common is it for an undergrad to write up his own grant to apply for funding? do lots of applicants who are undergrads do this?
is this basically how an undergrad ends up getting a publication? trying to figure out if writing a grant as an undergrad is even impressive or not...

It depends, my university has fellowships that you have to write grants in order to get. That being said, it's kinda impressive considering like 15-25 percent of applications get some sort of funding which I'm sure is way higher than the success rate of NIH grants but idk. It probably depends on the university and how hard it is to get it.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

I had been involved with internal undergraduate research or creativity fellowships that students had to submit (with faculty support of course). It's not that uncommon; these were rather low-risk and fully dependent on how much funding was set aside for these fellowships.

(Random example.)

To answer the question originally: you should make sure you notate that your project was grant-funded and you had to write it. It is not something everyone with research experience notes.

 

[NickNaylor]

I've pretty much never come across students without extensive research experience - for example, a prior PhD or other longitudinal research experience - that have written their own grants. Some students will be awarded research fellowships at their institution and I suppose that counts, but grants from external funding sources are extremely rare. I don't think I've ever seen one.

By far the most common experience are students either participating in research that is already funded or doing research that doesn't require funding.