How to complete the application?

In this section, you will find 10 tips to make your application better.

1. Be specific

In the application, most of the fields have a limit of 5,000 characters including spaces. The use of all characters is not additionally scored. Try to describe exactly what the questions are about. Be brief, stick to facts and details, and where possible provide figures and data to support your theses.

2. Present the story

It’s good if you can see that you know what you want to do and why – show that you have a consistent, well-thought-out idea. Where possible, present the broader context and history behind the idea. Literary language is not required, but write your answers in full sentences. Make sure that individual paragraphs and entire sections form a single whole.

3. Write exhaustively

The application form is the only way for employees of the National Agency to get to know your project. If you’ve been working on a project with your team for several weeks or months, some things will seem obvious to you. Meanwhile, for an outsider, they may not be like that. Therefore, try to describe all the issues in as much detail as possible (not forgetting the first point). Finally, ask someone unfamiliar with the application to read it in full and suggest corrections.

4. Plan what you want to convey

For each of the questions, it is worth starting by thinking about the structure of the answers and asking yourself what is really most important in a given field. As the number of characters is limited, you may not always be able to describe everything as accurately as you would like. So let’s focus on what’s most important then. Listing the points you want to mention may help you – thanks to this, when writing, you will not forget about anything, and you will develop individual issues to a similar degree.

5. People are also sitting on the other side

When writing an application, you should always remember about the person who will read and evaluate it. Therefore, take care not only of the spelling and grammar correctness of your text, but also of the logic and legibility of the layout. Even the best idea described in an incomprehensible or incomplete manner may not receive funding.

You cannot influence the formatting of the text in the application form, but for readability you can always use headings and break the responses into points, sections, etc.

6. Get the participants involved

Absolutely and under no circumstances should you write the application yourself! At each stage, the project should be a joint effort of its participants. As a group leader, your task is to hand over the initiative to the participants at such an early stage – after all, they will create the meeting and it is their needs that you are preparing to respond to.

It is noteworthy that you should, if you have such an opportunity, prepare an application together with the participants. For example, you could brainstorm and work out together the issues that will be covered in each answer. Later, you can share the responsibility for writing the text, and finally check each other and complete the statements. Thanks to this, you will save time and come up with many more good ideas. Two heads are better than one! And imagine there are even more of them…

7. The project also means partners

All partner organizations and participants from different countries should be equally involved in the design of the project. If you describe the participants’ needs related to the planned project, they should be relevant to all groups. At the application stage, it is worth giving the floor not only to the participants from your group, but also to your partners. Use online tools to jointly develop and consult the concept of the project and the answers provided.

The form also includes questions about the experience and history of each participating organization. These responses should be prepared by the partners.

8. Check all the fields

We know from experience that the Erasmus form can be deceptive. Some fields appear only after completing the previous ones. Therefore, it will be a good practice to fill in the form with random characters and generate a PDF file with all the questions before starting work. Thanks to this, you will avoid a surprise when filling in “clean”, which is especially important if you send the application a few hours or minutes before the deadline.

By the way, we don’t recommend doing the latter. In the vicinity of the deadline, the system is heavily loaded, which often results in temporary unavailability of the platform. While there is an alternative application procedure in these cases, it does damage your nerves and you risk your project being not submitted. A safer solution is to submit the project at least one day before the deadline.

9. Use an external platform

Working on the application requires energy and time. We do not want this effort to be wasted by external factors. That is why we always recommend working on the preparation of the form as part of an external, trustworthy platform, and only when everything is ready, transfer the answers to the application. We use Google Docs because they allow easy real-time remote collaboration and automatically save changes, but any similar tool will do just fine. Just remember not to miss any questions!

10. Take your time

When preparing the application, you will have to write a lot of words. This isn’t a job that can be done well in a few hours, especially if you’re doing it for the first time. If you want to write a high-quality project, it’s not worth leaving this challenge until the last minute – one day or even one week is definitely not enough! Break down the work with your team and partners: first, spend enough time planning and preparing the concept, and then successively write the application. It is also always worth having time to put the text aside and read it “fresh” after some time. This allows you to look at it from a distance and spot any errors or inaccuracies. It is also worth collecting the required documents and statements in advance.