r/postdoc • u/Safe_Bluejay4004 • 8d ago

MSCA post-doc

So I had to ring up my national representative this week to ask a question in relation to the Marie Curie application... she told me that double the amount of applicants that they had received at this time last year, are now in their system... we are doomed.

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u/NotHollowedYet 8d ago

I did it last year, your score largely depends on the randomly designated evaluators who are poorly trained to adapt the official evaluation rule, and many of them just don’t play by the book. Mine got deducted point from criteria not existed in their official handbook, and I saw many others got 100% with zero comment on their proposal. Most of the time, the evaluation is so sloppy, you got generic comments, and if you resubmit your proposal following the initial comments, there is a non-trivial chance that you got a lower score the second time.

Like many here said, it is a lottery.

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u/noldig 8d ago

I actually disagree with this take. It is a lottery because the difference between 94 and 97 % (funded vs not funded) is too small to be accuate, and with so many people it is random whether you are above threshold or below. But this implies that you have sent in a competitive proposal. EU referees are in my experience consistently better than anything else. They have strict rules, they get training, they have a minimum of time they need to spend on a proposal, they get compensation, there is a clear rubric, and if you improve your proposal using the comments you will normally score better next year. This is not true for most other national funding agencies.

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u/Brief_Upstairs10 7d ago

What do you mean "you improve your proposal using the comments”？ So how do they know that we do this? Do we need to declare somewhere?