My experience is in biology&#x2F;medical research not the social sciences, and I worked with a well known PI, so grain of salt and all that, but I have rarely found the operational specifics of the grant application to matter because the people at the NSF&#x2F;NIH are rarely qualified to evaluate experiments and their scientific calidity on that level. Assuming we&#x27;re not talking absurd cost differences (like a $200 thousand exploratory experiment vs a $10 million pre-clinical trial), then being able to hype the potential benefits of your research, having good political standing in your university&#x2F;field, and having a well known name involved is far more important.<p>Grants are sort of like college admissions at Harvard or Yale. There are about five to ten times too many qualified applicants than there are available opportunities and as a result the &quot;best of the best&quot; group, whose members are practically indistinguishable from each other, essentially becomes a random lottery pool for the available spots.