The school will include an introduction to how proposals are reviewed by Time Allocation Committees (TACs), unconscious bias in proposal review and the (double-)blind proposal review system. The students will take part in group work that involves forming mini-TACs to review a set of professionally written proposals to gain experience on the process. There will also be sessions on building a science and technical case for their own proposals, with expert advice from tutors on what to do and avoid when writing an observing proposal. The students will take the information obtained from attending the school to write their own observing proposal, which will receive feedback from the expert tutors on how it could be improved.

The school is primarily meant for PhD students in astronomy, who want to gain more experience in writing observing time proposals. However, students/astronomers at any stage of the career are very welcome to apply to the school.

If you are interested in the whole proposal writing process, and learning how TACs work and how to write your own proposals, this school is perfect for you.