Graduate School & Fellowship Application Resources: Writing Resources

This UNLV Writing Center offers focused handouts on writing tips for a variety of topics. Browse the options to find the ones that best fit your need.

This KU Writing Center Writing Guide focuses on writing for funding applications. It contains specific resources for research proposals and fellowships.

This resource is from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. It is focused on applying for grants from Nation Institutes of Health (NIH), but provides relevant information for any grant application. Really look at the section titled: "Preparing a strong grant application." It has some helpful diagrams, question prompts, and tips from the perspective of a reviewer.

This is a webpage is useful to organize your papers and reports into the most common journal article sections (introduction, research question, methods, discussion, and conclusion).

This link shares tips on grant writing and specifically has a section on grant writing in the sciences.

Nathan Sheffield of the Institute of Genome Science and Policy at Duke University collaborated with the Duke Writing Studio to create three short lessons for effective scientific writing. There is a ton of good information in here. The lessons each present the reader with principles, examples, and then an exercises to practice the new scientific writing skills you are learning.

"The CommKit is a collection of guides to successful communication in the biological sciences, written by the BRCL Fellows (MIT Communication Lab, 2019)." Check out the modules under the Professional heading for information to amp up your curriculum vitae (cv) and cover letter. In addition, use the modules under the Application heading for information to rock your NSF personal statement, fellowship proposal, or graduate school personal statement.

This website by Michael Alley provides video writing lessons, model documents, professional templates, and exercises to help scientist and engineers improve their writing skills.

Joe Schall, the Giles Writer-in-Residence for the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at The Pennsylvania State University from 1988 to 2008, provides a manual for writing personal statements. The manual contains five chapters that range from realities of graduate study to personal statements and application essays fro national scholarships. Joe also includes the postscript, "10 commandments for writing personal statements."

This is a quick grammar and composition reference source by William Strunk, Jr.

Jane Curlin gives some advice on establishing a good practice of writing to help you start the writing process and combat emotional labor that can accompany writing.

Kurt Vonnegut uses humor to provide some quick tips on writing. Check out his advice in this short two page read.

This link provides tips on writing graduate school applications. Make sure to check out the research programs and statements of purpose tabs.

These tips come from the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation. Although these scholarship programs are within the realm of civic service, this page offers some good insights into writing a personal statement. Especially, check out the General Guidelines and the Dos and Don'ts sections.