Committee Questions

It’s application season in the Scholars’ Lab, which means that the DH Fellows program has a CFP live and waiting for new students to send in their work in. We’re also evaluating applications for our Praxis Program Fellowship, and we always have one student representative on the committee to read these applications. Students are closer to the program than we are, even as instructors, so they can help the staff see who will excel in the program. The students thankfully find it useful to be a part of the application committee. Students consistently say they learn a lot from seeing how application committees work, as it’s not a perspective that they often are able to get in their day-to-day graduate training.

I’ve written in the past a post called “questions to ask when applying” about what I wish applicants would ask themselves such that they produce the best applications possible. Questions like…

• Do I know what the fellowship is?
• Have I made a clear plan that matches the requirements?

Our student representative told me they have also found it illuminating to hear those questions that experienced application readers ask ourselves, as a committee. So, without too much elaboration, here are some questions that I always ask myself when reading an application for the first time.

• How does this match the rubric? What’s left out?
• How might the rubric be insufficient?
• Who is a bad applicant that put together a good application?
• Who is a good applicant who wrote a bad application?
• To what degree are we willing to stretch our imaginations beyond what’s in front of us?
• How much should we limit ourselves to the materials we have on the page?
• Who might not yet know who they are?
• Can we see something in an applicant that they don’t yet see in themselves?
• Who will get something out of this opportunity they can’t possibly get elsewhere?
• Who already has the resources to excel?
• How can we build on the experiences of those who already have a lot of experience?
• How can we balance the needs of the program with the needs of the applicants?

I’ll leave these hanging as questions, because the answers are things that any particular committee will have to find for itself. But hopefully enumerating them here give future applicants a resource that they can look to while also giving students a peek behind the curtain. The next time you’re putting together an application, think about what questions the evaluating committee might be asking themselves.