Ten simple rules for turning your qualifying exam into an NIH-style fellowship proposal: A guide for graduate students

Courtney Peña-Lima, Cameron S Bader, Brendan K Ball, Troy C Dildine, Mekhala V Dissanayake, Iris van ‘t Erve, Albina Ibrayeva, Amy Nippert, Quinn Mk, Chelse Spinner, Samuel Thompson, Antonio Tomasso and Crystal M Botham

PLOS Computational Biology, 2026, vol. 22, issue 6, 1-10

Abstract: Qualifying exams, often referred to as “quals” or candidacy exams, are an important milestone in doctoral programs. Although the style of quals varies greatly by program and institution, it is usually a proposal that requires students to develop research ideas as well as their scientific writing skills. Many quals are modeled after funding mechanisms that graduate students can apply to and on a topic that the student will pursue in their dissertation. This paper offers graduate students a step-by-step guide on how to turn their quals into a fellowship-style research proposal, using National Institutes of Health (NIH) mechanisms as a benchmark, as this is the norm within US research institutions. This paper will be most useful for students who have completed or are in the process of completing proposal-based qualifying exams, usually in the second year of a doctoral program.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1014420 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/fil ... 14420&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pcbi00:1014420

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1014420

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS Computational Biology from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ploscompbiol ().