Detailed Project Proposal Guidelines
On this page
- What type of project do you envision?
- Guidelines for all grant proposals
- Additional Proposal Guidelines for Humanities Projects
- Additional Proposal Guidelines for Social Science Projects
- Additional Proposal Guidelines for Natural Science/Engineering Projects
- Additional Proposal Guidelines for Arts/Design Projects
- Additional Proposal Guidelines for Senior Synthesis Projects
- Turning your good proposal into a great one
What type of project do you envision?
The ideal content of your proposal will vary with the kind of project you envision and with the discipline in which your project is situated.
| Project Type | Humanities, SocSci, NatSci, Engineering | Arts/Design | Senior Synthesis |
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| Project Goals and Objectives |
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| Literature Review and Rationale |
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| Possible Final Products |
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Guidelines for all grant proposals
A good proposal describes
- What you hope to accomplish
- Why those objectives are important
- How you intend to achieve them
Your original project proposal is the core of your grant application. All good proposals will address the following questions concisely, in a manner clear to both specialists and non-specialists.
Goals and Objectives
What precisely are you hoping to accomplish?
Literature Review/Critical Dialogue
What kinds of previous work do you use to justify your goals and objectives? How will your proposed work build on or depart from other works? Demonstrate your knowledge of what’s already been done on the subject, and what new contribution this project will make to the field.
Project Plan
How will you accomplish these goals? How does your project design lead to the outcomes you envision (logically and logistically)? Will experts in your discipline agree that your plan is a good one? What final product(s) will result from your project? For Major Grant and Chappell Lougee proposals, include a 10-week timeline with milestones.
Preparation
What specific steps have you taken to prepare for this project? Where did you get the skills you will need (e.g., coursework) ? What other project requirements have you completed (e.g., human subjects approval, travel and safety plans)? If you were previously awarded a VPUE grant, include a reflection on your prior project experience.
Resources
How will you draw on your mentors’ expertise? Do you have letters of support from contacts (at field sites or other institutions) who will be critical to your project’s success? Are you seeking or do you have any other sources of funding? What additional sources of information, supplies, or equipment will you rely on from campus?
Budget
Reflecting on the resources you need to execute your proposed project, how much money do you need, and what will it be used for? Student stipends can include funds to support living expenses during projects, human subjects payments, travel expenses, or other miscellaneous project-related expenses.
Additional Proposal Guidelines for Humanities Research Projects
Goals and Objectives - Humanities Projects
State your general scholarly questions. You may frame exploratory research with open- ended questions, or make specific assertions that you intend to support through your methodology.
Literature Review - Humanities Projects
Discuss your project’s relationship to current thinking in your field. Select and critique relevant works that situate your planned scholarship, and demonstrate your knowledge of what has been done on this topic or in related areas. Show how your project will contribute to existing schools of thought.
Project Plan - Humanities Projects
Provide a detailed methodology that will enable you to achieve your project goals. What texts, observations, or other source materials will you need to answer your question? What analytical framework will you use to understand or interpret these sources? Provide a logistical plan, including your timeline and milestones for progress.
Additional Proposal Guidelines for Social Science Research Projects
Goals and Objectives - Social Science Projects
State the questions or hypotheses you will examine, making clear the scope of focus and the quantitative or qualitative nature of your goals.
Literature Review - Social Science Projects
Discuss how your research questions connect to current thinking in your field. Select and critique recent works that provide a foundation to the way you are stating your research questions, and show how your project will contribute to existing schools of thought.
Project Plan - Social Science Projects
Provide a detailed methodology that will enable you to achieve your project goals. What observations, datasets, or surveys/interviews will you need to answer your question? What analytical framework (quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods as appropriate) will let you draw sound conclusions? Provide a logistical plan, including your timeline and milestones for progress. If your project involves human subjects, state when you submitted your Human Subjects Protocol to Stanford IRB. If relevant, include a draft of your survey instrument or interview guide as an appendix to your proposal.
Additional Proposal Guidelines for Natural Science or Engineering Research Projects
Goals and Objectives - Science or Engineering Projects
State hypotheses or theoretical predictions that you will test. If your project is part of a larger collaborative research agenda within your mentor’s lab or group, describe both the overarching research goal and the particular component(s) that you are focusing on. What are your specific aims for this particular phase of the project?
Literature Review - Science or Engineering Projects
Critique the most relevant peer-reviewed papers that set the stage for your hypotheses. Are you challenging or refining current knowledge of the mechanisms, technologies, or phenomena of interest? Demonstrate your grasp of what has been done on this topic or in related areas, and show how your research builds on and contributes to this body of knowledge. Include works from a variety of research groups. Include works from a variety of research groups.
Project Plan - Science or Engineering Projects
What are the key steps in the experiment or modeling effort that will test your hypothesis? What quantitative analyses will enable you to interpret your observations or refine your model? Spell out your specific role and responsibilities, and your intellectual ownership of these responsibilities. Provide a logistical plan, including your timeline and milestones for progress. If your project involves animal subjects, submit an Animal Subjects Research Appendix.
Additional Proposal Guidelines for Arts/Design Projects
Goals and Objectives - Arts/Design Projects
What are the objectives of your project? Give your most focused vision for the finished project or production. Describe any key expressions, impressions, or insights that you intend, and the audience that you intend them for.
Critical Dialogue - Arts/Design Projects
Discuss sources of artistic/design inspiration for the project. What is the relationship between your proposed project and past or current work by other artists/designers? In light of the current dialogue across related media, how is your vision unique, interesting, or original? Make a case that there is a community of artists and critics that will be interested in your work.
Project Plan - Arts/Design Projects
What techniques will you use? Why and how will you use them? What area/media will you be working in? What is your conceptual approach to this project? What concerns do you address? How do you envision your final product? For productions or exhibitions, provide a detailed timeline with the projected start date, including: pre-production research; production schedule, allocating time & delegation for tasks; post-production plans, if applicable. How will the final work/production you envision enhance your interests, skills, opportunities for further work? How will your plans for presenting this work affect your audience?
Preparation and Mentoring - Arts/Design Projects
What formal or informal training and mentoring have you had, or will you need? How do your past experiences inform this project? Link to online samples of your previous work if possible. Why are your mentors and their expertise a good fit for this project? Creative arts projects should draw on multiple mentors as necessary, i.e., one mentor specializing in the medium and another specializing in the topical area.
Additional Proposal Guidelines for Senior Synthesis Projects
A "Senior Synthesis Project" refers to a senior capstone project that does not readily fall within the category of a research or creative arts project. A senior synthesis project draws on your undergraduate experiences, focusing on your academic work but perhaps integrating other co-curricular interests, to complement, build upon, or react to those recent experiences. Consult your department for specific capstone project requirements.
Goals and Objectives - Senior Synthesis
What do you hope to accomplish? Be clear about your aims for this phase of your project, and how those aims will help further your broader intellectual aspirations.
Significance - Senior Synthesis
Why have you chosen this intellectual goal? Describe the different intellectual aspects of your undergraduate academic and extra-curricular experiences and how your proposed project will allow you to integrate these components. Fundable proposals will reflect on the first 8+ quarters of your undergraduate work to illustrate what informs the way you are integrating these ideas. What is the relationship between your project idea and what others have done/discussed (a literature review may also be relevant here)? Why will your mentors, peers, etc be interested in what you are doing?
Project Plan - Senior Synthesis
What will you do? What are the steps that will allow you to complete the reflective synthesis you’ve described above? What form will your final product take, and how will it be shared with the Stanford community? Will you earn academic credit for any part of your project?
Preparation and Mentoring - Senior Synthesis
What skills (from the classroom or from somewhere else) will you bring to bear on this project? What courses provided you with the most important intellectual background? Do you have hands-on experience that will be valuable? Why are your mentors and their expertise a good fit for this project? How have they helped you so far, and how will they continue to mentor you as your project unfolds?
Turning your good proposal into a great one
Paying attention to these details can only improve your chances of getting funded.
Clearly present the focus and scale of your project objectives
- Open your proposal with a crystal clear 1-2 sentence statement of your objective. This helps reviewers orient themselves, and prepares them to read the rest of your proposal more effectively. By carefully articulating specific, well-honed goals, you reassure reviewers that your project is executable, and that your final product will exhibit real depth and sophistication.
Include a robust discussion with existing works in the field
- The single most common deficiency in student proposals is inadequate rationale for doing the project at hand. A critique of published scholarship or of recent creative work does not mean a list or a cursory description. Rather, select from a broad range of scholarly/creative influences with which you are familiar, and critically analyze these key works to show how these have shaped your proposed project and how you will contribute to the field.
Demonstrate the scholarly significance of your project
- Students sometimes focus on why their project is important to them personally. Many projects are indeed inspired by personal experiences, and your grant proposal may include a brief account of personal significance. However, in a research proposal, we seek to understand the project’s intellectual significance to scholars in your discipline. Demonstrating the scholarly significance of your project is best done through a robust literature review (see above).
Use active voice and “I” statements
- Demonstrate independence and ownership of your project by writing your project plan in the first person (“I” statements) to. Delineate what you will take responsibility for, and what you will be doing with the assistance of others. If you write that “... the data will be gathered and analyzed using a statistical model”, you are providing much less information than if you had written “... I will gather the data and analyze them using a statistical model devised by a PhD student in our research group”.
Show how you are prepared
- Give a concise outline of specific courses and other experiences that directly shaped your approach to your topic, and are foundational to your project’s success; or state when you will complete such courses before the start of your project. If your project involves human or animal subjects, note that you have fulfilled the necessary requirements.
Discuss your mentorship plans
- Describe how your mentor’s area of expertise will support your work. Provide your plan for interactions with your mentor throughout your project, e.g., meeting biweekly over Zoom, sending weekly memos for feedback, etc. Your proposal and the mentor’s letter of recommendation should make clear the balance between independence and assistance you can expect from your mentor.
Clearly define your independent project (vs an internship)
- If your project involves interacting with non-profit organizations, government agencies, clinical facilities, etc., it is critical that your proposal draw a clear line between your project and your other responsibilities in the organization. A volunteer internship hastily married to a thin research question is not likely to be funded; a carefully designed, intellectually rigorous study that leverages your contacts in a particular organization is much more compelling. Reviewers will look closely at how you distinguish between these two kinds of projects.