Quiz — Chapter 17: NSF Grants
Answer from memory, then check. These test the NSF's two-criteria system, format, review, broader impacts, and mechanisms.
1. The NSF's two merit-review criteria are: a) Significance and Approach b) Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts c) Innovation and Feasibility d) Rigor and Reproducibility
Answer
(b) Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts — the two co-equal criteria every NSF reviewer must address. (Significance/Approach/Innovation are NIH criteria; Rigor and Reproducibility is an NIH component.)
2. True or false: Broader Impacts is a minor, optional consideration at the NSF.
Answer
False. It is co-equal with Intellectual Merit and required. A weak, generic broader-impacts plan is a clear weakness on one of the two graded criteria — the chapter's threshold concept.
3. What is the PAPPG, and why does it matter before you write?
Answer
The Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide — the NSF's authoritative rulebook for format and required components. Violations can mean return without review, so you read the current PAPPG (and the specific solicitation) before writing.
4. The NSF Project Summary must contain which three explicitly labeled elements?
Answer
Overview, Intellectual Merit, and Broader Impacts. Omitting the labeled criteria can get the proposal returned without review — a pure compliance failure.
5. NSF reviewers rate proposals on what scale (and how does it differ from the NIH)?
Answer
A descriptive scale: Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, Poor — not the NIH's numeric 1–9 impact score. The panel also writes a panel summary addressing both criteria.
6. Who makes the NSF funding recommendation, and what besides the reviews do they weigh?
Answer
The program officer, with real discretion — weighing the reviews and panel summary plus the program's portfolio (balance across subfields, institutions, geography, risk, priorities) and the available budget. There is no rigid payline.
7. Name three features of a genuine (non-checkbox) Broader Impacts plan.
Answer
Any three: specific and activity-based; genuinely connected to the project and investigator; resourced (budget) and scheduled (timeline); and evaluated (you say how you'll know it worked). Often it addresses broadening participation authentically.
8. What is the defining feature of the CAREER award?
Answer
It is the NSF's prestigious early-career (pre-tenure) award that requires the integration of research and education into a single coherent plan where each reinforces the other — not two stapled-together plans.
9. How does the NSF GRFP differ from the NIH F31?
Answer
The GRFP is awarded to the student and is portable (it follows the fellow across institutions and projects), judged on the person's potential and broader-impacts trajectory. The F31 funds a specific training project under a specific mentor. NIH funds a training project; NSF funds a promising person.
10. Why are NSF program officers especially important to contact before submitting?
Answer
Because they run the panel, make the funding recommendation with real discretion, and manage a portfolio — and many are rotators whose program's priorities shift. A brief, focused pre-submission contact confirms fit, surfaces a better-fitting program, and learns current priorities before you invest weeks writing.
11. A proposal's science earns "Excellent" but its three-sentence broader-impacts plan is generic. Can it be declined? Why?
Answer
Yes. Broader Impacts is co-equal; a generic, unplanned, unevaluated plan is a real weakness, and in a competitive program where many proposals have strong science, broader impacts is often where proposals are differentiated. The program officer can decline strong-science/weak-broader-impacts proposals.
12. Name two NSF mechanisms besides the standard research grant, and what each is for.
Answer
Any two: CAREER (early-career, research+education integrated); EAGER (high-risk exploratory); RAPID (urgent, time-sensitive research, expedited); conference/workshop grants; GRFP (graduate students); postdoctoral fellowships.
13. (Synthesis) State the chapter's threshold concept and why crossing it is a competitive advantage.
Answer
Threshold: Broader Impacts is co-equal with Intellectual Merit — the NSF funds discovery and societal benefit together, not discovery alone. Crossing it is an advantage because most research-trained competitors never do; they under-invest in broader impacts, so an applicant who plans it as carefully as the science stands out on one of the two graded criteria.