I’m not sure supportive/helpful vs mean is a useful framing. It’s not reasonable for a grant-maker or recruiter to have much knowledge about your costs, let alone to weight them equal to the large value (though small probability) of a successful application.
I think the responsibility is always going to fall on the applicant to make these choices. Grantmakers and recruiters SHOULD be as clear as possible about the criteria for acceptance, in order to make the value side (chance of success) easier to predict, but the cost side isn’t something they are going to understand well.
Note that there is an adversarial/competitive aspect to such matches, so the application-evaluator can’t be as transparent as they might like, in order to reduce Goodhart or fraud in the applications they get.
I’m not sure supportive/helpful vs mean is a useful framing. It’s not reasonable for a grant-maker or recruiter to have much knowledge about your costs, let alone to weight them equal to the large value (though small probability) of a successful application.
I think the responsibility is always going to fall on the applicant to make these choices. Grantmakers and recruiters SHOULD be as clear as possible about the criteria for acceptance, in order to make the value side (chance of success) easier to predict, but the cost side isn’t something they are going to understand well.
Note that there is an adversarial/competitive aspect to such matches, so the application-evaluator can’t be as transparent as they might like, in order to reduce Goodhart or fraud in the applications they get.