Hi,
I am writing a proposal for +3 funding and I have put a timetable like this in it,

Timetable: The three years of the research will be structured as follows,

Year one: Literature review, demographic profiling, secure research participants.

Year two: Analysis of quantitative, conduction of semi-structured interviews, coding using Atlast.ti.

Year three: Complete data analysis, update literature review, write-up, disseminate findings.


I am now having to cut down the proposal to fit with my department's strict length limitations.
My supervisor has suggested ditching the timetable. However, I put a timetable on my 1+3 application last year (I had to pull this application so I have no idea if it would have been successful!) and the example of a successful +3 proposal that I have been given has a timetable on as well.

How important is the timetable to a proposal? Should I just ditch it? Or leave it in and cut down my word somewhere else?

Any advice is very much appreciated. Thanks

I have voted ditch it. I don't think that a timetable is necessary in a short proposal. The 1st = lit review, 2nd year = doing the research and 3rd year = writing up results model is fairly standard and I don't think it adds anything to the proposal spelling it out in an extended way. All this does is uses up words that could be describing the originality of your research which will be a lot more helpful in securing funding.

I'd say ditch it also. It's just too generic.

Thank you.

I did think it was somewhat unnecessary but timetables also seemed to be rather ubiqitous! However, I have now removed it once and for all.

Sometimes it's good to show that you've actually considered that what you plan is realistic in the time available. Your current timetable is a bit vague in this regard though, so I'd either ditch it, or make it more thorough!

If you replaced it with a Gantt chart, how would that affect your word count?

My timetable was much more detailed than the one I pasted into the original post, but I cut it down as far as I possibly could because of the word limitations.

A Gantt chart would take it over the limit. It can only be two pages of prose and one page for references. After having removed the timetable and jiggling around with a few heading etc. I have made it JUST fit on to two pages and I have now sent that off to my supervisor to have a look at before I submit next week.