Research Proposal Guide for Successful Admission/Scholarship applications

Writing a Research Proposal

One major and essential requirement that you must provide when applying to Universities to study abroad, especially Australia is a Research Proposal. This is mostly common especially if you are applying for research degree program. Be aware, as a research student, this is the most captivating and competitive piece of document/ requirement that you must provide if you are to secure a studentship position for yourself or win a scholarship to get free tuition fee and stipends to fully support your studies and yourself while living abroad.

Don't freak out yet !It is an easy task to accomplish .In this post, we will make it get easier for you. We will provide you with some of the essential guides you need to come up with your own research projects and build up a proposal for your admission and scholarship application

Let's start by answering this question, you must be wondering already about What is a Research Proposal actually? and how does that impact your admission or scholarship application? Especially if you are new to research. A Research Proposal is the principal document that attracts a potential supervisor. It is that document that will enable you win the mind of the potential supervisors, the university and faculty you are applying to. In another word, a research proposal is a document just like the name implies ,that proposes a research project, generally in the sciences or academia. Research proposals generally constitutes a request for sponsorship of that research.

Research Proposal is a comprehensive and carefully planned work that need some fundamental research skills. It aims to present your idea or question in the discipline area clearly. The document must establish why your idea is relevant and the identified gaps in your field and how your research intends to fill those gaps. It must equally include how you plan to go about with the research to achieve goals and objectives: What approach, methods etc will be using in your research.

The main reason you are writing a research proposal is generally because you intend to get a sponsorship which can be through acceptance, and a recommendation for an admission into that program or a scholarship by a potential supervisor. In this case before writing a research proposal,

its good to go through:

The profiles of your potential supervisor/supervisors
Make sure to have same area of interest and expertise with them
Check if they already have relevant on-going projects that might be of interest to you
Contact them with a well-addressed responsive email. Refer to this free guide on how to contact potential supervisors asking for studentship position

Research proposals in most cases are generally provided together with the other admission requirement documents during application submission. In some cases you might have to give a hint about any project you have mind to your supervisor during your first email exchange. Generally in Australia, the school or the supervisor will provide you with an Expression of Interest (EoI) form attached with a research proposal template for your research. It is a template, with a format, so all you need to do will be to fill in the information about your research projects.

Weather you are to come up with a research project yourself or to write up a comprehensive and well captivating research proposal when applying for your admissions or scholarship program, the following questions must be considered first to serve as guide to choose and write up a project:

How are research proposals evaluated? Refer to our previous post here to view the response to this question please
What is the purpose of a research proposal? What is purpose of your research ?refer to our previous post here to view the response to this question please
What are the fundamental skills required to write a good research proposal?
What are the main components of a good research proposal ?The structure of a research proposal

Answering the above questions is the ultimate solution from choosing the perfect subject/topic for your research projects to writing up the whole proposal. This will provide you with all the guide you need to write to up a well captivating research proposal for admission/scholarship application. You can not do this all by yourself, we usually recommend students to get assistance from their previous supervisors, mentors, tutors etc. and make use of the available resources by your side such as textbooks on research proposal guides. If you don't have one, no worries, you can find the best selling research proposal guides on amazon ship to you at very low cost.

Lots of them available, we recommend you try the followings below.

Most common used Research Proposal Guides & tools by students

Most useful research proposal guides (Textbooks) for admissions and scholarship applications

Amazon is famous for providing the cheapest textbooks to help students around the world achieve better education at almost no cost. For this reason, some of the best selling books on the market, you can find them on amazon for a very cheap cost. Below are some of the best selling and cheap research proposal guides i can recommend to any student seeking for an assistance in writing up a good research proposal for his/her admissions and scholarship applications. The good thing is that, amazon is available in almost all countries around the world now and it can also be shipped from neighboring countries at no cost.

Research Proposals: A Practical Guide (Open Up Study Skills) :This is a helpful step-by-step document that guides the student through each stage of doing a research proposal. Its starts by assisting you to choose a perfect subject for your research project right through to writing it up .A perfect recommended book for early career researchers

A Short Guide to Writing a Research Proposal :This guide focuses on the main principles and of a research proposal which involves three broad steps :How to plan the research and write the research proposal, how to conduct the research by gathering and analyzing data and the third step which is how to write the research paper. This book gives a complete summary on how to start your research project, the whole process, methods etc..

A Step-by-Step Guide to Complete a Proposal: Using a Quantitative Research Methodology :This guide is more involved in the methodological and analytical approaches to a good research proposal. A perfect guide for any student with no analytical or methodological skills.

Developing Effective Research Proposals: This guide provides the student with all the information they need to make their research proposal interesting and impressive to any reader.
As a last recommendation, try Amazon Kindle ebooks to get wonderful usage experience of reading books online

Research Proposal/writing tools

Finally, as s a popular recommendation use proofreading, grammar and plagiarism checkers/software when writing a research proposal or any other piece of academic writing work. Weather English is your native language or not, we are all opened to little English mistakes. These mistakes are not however little when it comes to academic writing. This is one of the downfalls for many students applying for university admissions and scholarships. There are so many of these grammar or plagiarism software programs out there. I usually recommend Grammarly for proofreading, spelling mistakes, paragraphing as it is the most popularly used these days and its free etc..

This tool offers an online spell and grammar checking application that helps users find and correct English writing issues. You have never used Grammarly before ? You are not left behind yet!!

Grammarly is the world's leading software suite for perfecting written English.
It checks for more than 250 types of spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors, enhances vocabulary usage, and suggests citations.
And above all, its free !

People who use Grammarly are amazed at how easy it is to use, and they rave about the precision of mistake detection. This explains why the number of registered users for this award winning tool has rose in the past years to millions around the world and in every sector (academic, professional career, English language learners to improve their written English etc.. ). It is used by more than 600 educational and corporate clients, including Princeton University, University of South Florida, University of Virginia, and many others. Find out more here about Grammarly and try the tool as from today in every process of your application; research proposals, admission essays, emails to professor, resumes etc..