Is it true that everybody’s proposal is picked apart and I’m going to look stupid?
Well those are two different things. Of course a committee of three well-trained scientists who have been writing grant proposals for years can find cracks in a grant written by a second year graduate student on a topic they have only been reading about for six months. If that weren’t true then either you should have a faculty position or your committee members shouldn’t have theirs. But keep in mind that there are holes is every grant; only about 10%-30% of grants sent to most study sections are ever funded, and most of those have been re-submitted after a committee has reviewed it and has found faults the first time around. But every proposal can serve as a platform for exploring how someone thinks about problems. That is what is important.
