Funding Rate

I totalled all the grants I've applied for over the years to fund my dissertation. Between 2005 and 2007, I applied for $88,952 in dissertation research grants. My funding success rate is 26.5%. Man, academia is hard. Convincing granting agencies to fund social science research is also hard. If I add in the three diss completion fellowships that I also didn't get, my success rate falls to 15.8%. So in case the last post made you think I am under any illusion that I am awesome, you can rest assured that three-quarters of the time, granting agencies just laugh at me.