Grants (more detailed)

Submitting applications for grants/fellowships/etc may possibly be the most insane process I have ever gone through. I submitted 2 in 2 days. I do not recommend this.

Most have switched to an online submission and this odd pdf form. The instructions for one of these grants is 166 pages long, of which 75 explain how to fill out the form. My application was a total of about 30 pages with everything included. Its not surprising that the instructions were longer than the application but twice the length? Come on people! Something is wrong with this. Also it took me an entire evening to figure out how to use the form. You have to fill in a box with your application number. Then the pdf gives you names of forms on one side of the form (the form selection side). You then have to click on each one of the forms and individually move them to the other side of the form (the side to fill out the forms). At this point the forms load at the end of the original form and you can fill them out. The form is then quite neat and makes sense. You can then upload files onto the form for other people to read and is straight forward.

Getting to that part wasted about 6 hours of my life. Perhaps this makes me dumb but I am pretty sure that the form is not easy to figure out.

Also, grants.gov is possibly the worst website I have encountered in a long time.