Exercises — Chapter 22: The Resubmission

Work these with a real or planned proposal in mind — ideally your progressive project. The resubmission skill is best learned by practicing the response before you ever receive a real rejection, so that when one comes, you already know the moves.

How to use these: Part A checks recall; Part B applies the chapter to concrete resubmission decisions; Part C asks you to create at a real applicant's level (read feedback, triage critiques, write a response); Part M interleaves earlier chapters. Answers to selected exercises (★) are in the back matter.

Part A — Recall and Understand

A1. ★ State the chapter's threshold concept in your own words. Why is rejection described as "the middle of an application, not the end"?

A2. Why should you read a summary statement twice, and what is the purpose of each reading?

A3. Name the three ways to respond to a critique (the triage), and describe when each is appropriate.

A4. ★ What is the introduction-to-resubmission, and what three things should you do under each concern?

A5. Explain the central psychology of re-review: what are reviewers (often the same ones) really asking when they read a resubmission?

A6. Define: summary statement, A1, triage / not discussed, responsiveness, redirection.

A7. When should you resubmit to the same funder, and when should you redirect to a different one?

Part B — Apply

B1. ★ Triage the critiques. For each, decide agree-and-fix, clarify, or defend, and justify: - (a) "The recruitment plan relies on a single site and seems infeasible." (Your plan does rely on one site.) - (b) "The authors provide no evaluation plan." (You have one, in a subsection the reviewer apparently missed.) - (c) "The 12-month endpoint is too short; use 36 months." (A 36-month endpoint would exceed your budget and isn't needed for your primary aim.) - (d) "The significance is unclear." (Two of three reviewers said this.)

B2. Resubmit or redirect? For each outcome, recommend resubmitting or redirecting, and say why: - (a) A discussed NIH application, 18th percentile against a 15th payline, with one fixable concern. - (b) A triaged application whose critiques say the panel didn't see why the work matters. - (c) A foundation "not this cycle" from a well-matched funder where you have a warming relationship. - (d) A federal application declined at a funder whose priorities, the reviews reveal, never really fit your work.

B3. ★ Fix the defensive response. Rewrite this into a responsive one: "Reviewer 2 clearly did not read our methods section, where the evaluation plan is plainly described. We see no need to change anything."

B4. Read for signal. A set of critiques is entirely about execution (thin recruitment, underspecified analysis, buried significance). What does this pattern tell you about resubmit-vs-redirect, and why?

B5. The emotional rule. Your strong proposal is declined today. Describe exactly what you will and won't do in the first 24 hours, and why that discipline protects your resubmission.

Part C — Analyze and Create

C1. ★ Read a real summary statement (or simulate one). Using real feedback on your work — or critiques you or a colleague generate honestly — do the analytical second reading: list the reviewers' actual concerns, mark which drove the decision, and sort each into agree-and-fix / clarify / defend.

C2. Write the introduction-to-resubmission. Draft a one-page response using the Section 22.4 template: brief responsive opening; each major concern named, answered specifically, and pointed to a change; gracious close. Make every response specific and evidence-pointing.

C3. ★ Strengthen the proposal, not just the response. For your top agree-and-fix critique, actually revise the relevant section of your proposal so the weakness is fixed — then write the response sentence that points the reviewer to the change.

C4. Resubmit-or-redirect memo. For a real or hypothetical rejection, write a one-page decision memo: what the feedback signals (execution vs. fit), the funder's rules, the relationship status, and your recommendation with reasoning.

C5. The two registers. Take one rejection scenario and write two responses to it: a formal introduction-to-resubmission (NIH-style) and a relationship-based reapplication plan (foundation-style). Show that the underlying skill is the same across registers.

Part M — Mixed and Interleaved Review

M1. ★ (Ch 16 + 22) Walk through Hernandez's full A1: the summary statement, the dominant concern, the triage, the substantive fix, the introduction-to-resubmission, and why the same study section re-reviewing helped her.

M2. (Ch 18 + 22) How does RYCC's declined-then-funded foundation arc express the same resubmission skill as Hernandez's A1 in a different register? What replaces the formal response document?

M3. ★ (Ch 3 + 22) How can a rejection's feedback reveal a Chapter 3 alignment problem, and why does that point toward redirection rather than resubmission?

M4. (Ch 2 + 22) How does the program-officer relationship (Chapter 2) help you interpret a rejection and plan a resubmission, at both the NIH and a foundation?

M5. (Ch 9 + 22) Many resubmissions hinge on strengthening the Approach. Connect the pitfalls-and-alternatives and strategic-detail craft of Chapter 9 to fixing the single most common resubmission concern.

M6. (Ch 21 + 22) A declined international consortium proposal comes back with feedback about the partnership (too top-down, weak local leadership). How does the resubmission skill apply to partnership critiques?

🪞 Metacognitive check-in. Notice how you felt working through these exercises about rejection. If practicing the response made rejection feel more manageable — more like a problem to solve than a verdict to fear — that's exactly the point. The grant writers who thrive aren't those who avoid rejection; they're those who've rehearsed the response until it's routine. You've just rehearsed it. The next real "no" will be a little less frightening because of it.