• Understand funding agency expectations and requirements
• Highlight students' qualities and abilities to parallel the needs of NCA organization
• Frame students' research, professional, and/or career interests to align with the program mission
• Present a compelling case for their proposed research or project
• Integrate relevant details about students' lives and experiences to develop an application that stands out and gets noticed
• Address the specific requirements of applications, such as targeted (short-answer) questions and length limits
• Emphasize their strengths as a candidate; re-frame their limitations and weaknesses in a positive light
• Communicate with mentors and others in their network to arrange for letters of recommendation and other support materials

Cross-disciplinary genre expectations

• Understand how competitive applicants develop content or subject matter in ways that meet the expectations of the funding review committee
• Outline, organize, and coordinate their application materials
• Articulate the significance of research topics to the field
• Describe research methods in a clear and credible way
• Frame, position, and weigh propositions in a coherent discussion
• Articulate the value and contribution of their education, research, and career goals to the field
• Critically evaluate and refine their application writing according to academic expectations
• Understand the organization, communicative goals, and writing strategies of funding application genres (e.g., scholarships, fellowships, and grants)

Scholarly communication conventions

• Differentiate between writing for scholarship and fellowship applications and research or project grant applications (e.g., scholarship and fellowship applications focus on the applicant and their interests, academic/professional development, and short- and long-term goals)
• Understand the scope, aims, audience, and quality of awards and identify appropriate funding opportunities
• Understand ethical issues in scholarly writing
• Understand application requirements and the selection process

Academic and professional development

• Identify academic writing conventions using scholarly resources
• Locate literature relevant to students’ research focus using library search engines and resources
• Effectively use writing technologies (e.g., electronic collections of texts, search engines for linguistic data)