Mechanics of Fellowship Cover Letters
admin March 17th, 2008
Today I wrote a cover letter for a fellowship that I really want but probably won’t get because the topic is quite different from what I have spent the rest of my life doing. On the plus side I think my recommendations will be really strong, but on the minus side I really can’t prove to the reviewers that I will be able to accomplish what I propose.
Since I don’t have too much experience writing cover letters, I decided to see what kind of information Google would yield, and as expected I found plenty of information. I found cover letter tips, sample cover letters, cover letter templates, cover letters for high school students, college students, new professors, businessmen, physicians and managers. I did not, however, find tips specific to cover letters for fellowship applications. And while you may think that fellowship applications cannot be that different from any other academic cover letter, I think that this is a niche that needs to be filled. I had some questions that just were not answered by what I found online.
1. I know I should address the letter to the two PIs in charge of the fellowship. The address given on the application, however, is to an administrator. To further complicate issues, the two PIs have offices in different buildings. What address do I include in the header of my cover letter?
2. In corporate and academic cover letters you are hoping to land an interview. What do you say at the bottom instead of “I will contact you to set up an interview…” etc. ? I wrote something about how I would appreciate the opportunity that the fellowship would provide. I am guessing this is appropriate but would like some confirmation.
3. Do I spend most of my space outlining what I would like to do with the fellowship, or the experience that qualifies me to do it? Is it more important that I know what I want to do, or that I am someone who can do whatever it is they are most interested in? These things have limited real estate.
4. Talking about real estate, I decreased my font size to 11 pt font. Is this a bad idea? Do they even care for something like a fellowship?
Fortunately I have some people to review it for me before I send it out. With all this time I am spending working up this application (time not spent doing other research and thesis related activities) I wish I could better tell my chances. I think you should be able to send in just a cover letter and then have the reviewers contact you if they are interested and would like more information.