Five reasons proposals lose points on Excellence

Across the Pillar II, MSCA and EIC panels I have sat on since 2003, the Excellence comments repeat with remarkable regularity. Five patterns account for most lost points.

1. Objectives that cannot be checked

"To develop a novel framework for sustainable mobility" is a wish, not an objective. Evaluators look for objectives that are specific and measurable, because the work plan and the KPIs have to hang off them. Rewrite each objective so that someone could verify at month 36 whether it was achieved: what, how much, by when, measured how.

Fix: a table of objectives, each with a target value, a verification method and the work package that delivers it.

2. Ambition asserted, not demonstrated

The template asks you to describe the advance beyond the state of the art. Proposals that write "no existing solution addresses this" without showing that they know the existing solutions are marked down, because the evaluator usually does know them. Ambition is demonstrated by a precise account of where the field stands and a precise account of the gap.

Fix: a state-of-the-art table: approach, best current result, limitation, your target, how you get there.

3. Methodology that does not match the ambition

The most common Excellence comment in consensus is some version of "the methodology is not described in sufficient detail to assess its feasibility". A paragraph per work package is not a methodology. The evaluator needs to see the methods, the data, the models, the experiments, the standards, the interdependencies and the reasons you chose them.

Fix: for each scientific objective, a sub-section that names the method, justifies it against alternatives, describes the data and the expected output, and shows how it feeds the next step.

4. Interdisciplinarity, gender and open science treated as tick boxes

These are listed aspects under Excellence. A sentence saying "the consortium is interdisciplinary" or "gender aspects will be considered" scores nothing and signals that the applicant did not read the criterion. Where a dimension is genuinely relevant to the research content, explain how it changes the design; where it is not, say so and why.

Fix: one honest paragraph each, with concrete design decisions, or a reasoned statement that the dimension is not relevant.

5. The concept does not start from the topic

A proposal written for a different call and adapted overnight is visible on page two. The expected outcomes of the topic are the evaluator's checklist for relevance, and relevance to the Work Programme is assessed under Excellence. If your concept answers a different question, no amount of scientific quality will rescue the score.

Fix: a short table mapping every expected outcome of the topic to the objective and the work package that addresses it, placed early in section 1.

A note on page budgets

Proposals do not lose Excellence points for being too short. They lose them for spending pages on background the evaluator already knows and then running out of space for the methodology. Write the methodology first, then the state of the art, then the rest.