Updating Your Concours Application: How to Reapply Strategically

🥸 Reapplying is the norm, not the exception

Let’s face it, we all know that nobody ever gets hired at their first concours application. We all have to repeat the process at least once, but oftentimes many more times. That is simply the reality of the CNRS and CNAP concours in astronomy and astrophysics.

Reapplying does not mean that your previous application was weak or misguided. It means that the system is highly competitive and that committees expect candidates to mature over time. A new application cycle is therefore not about starting over, but about showing progression. In this article, we look at how you can update your application strategically, keeping coherence while clearly demonstrating growth from one year to the next.

1. Start With the Big Picture

✂️ Are you updating or starting over?

Before touching any document, you need to answer one fundamental question: are you updating an existing application, or are you proposing a fundamentally new project?

Everything that follows in this article assumes that your main scientific direction remains the same. You may refine it, clarify it, or strengthen it, but the backbone stays intact. If you are completely changing the core research project you propose, then you are effectively starting from scratch.

Being honest with yourself at this stage prevents incoherent updates later on. Committees are very good at spotting applications that hesitate between two identities.

2. Incorporate Last Year’s Feedback

What you should do when not being recruited is ask for feedback from the committee. Assuming you did that the previous year, how do you best deal with the feedback given?

The first step is obviously to think carefully about what you are told. If the feedback you get is something concrete about your project, think about how to adapt. However, not all feedback is actionable, and it is up to you to decide how to handle it. It can make sense to rewrite an application or change the audition presentation strategy if you feel like you can do so effectively. But if it feels like the feedback you obtained touches on things that are outside of your control or do not seem to fit your profile, it is usually better not to force changes into your application if it makes you loose cohesion.

We will write about how and when to ask for feedback in a future blog post, so stay tuned!

3. Your CV and Publications

Your CV and commented publication list are the most factual parts of the application, but that does not mean they are neutral. They are the first place where the committee will look for signs of activity and continuity.

The goal here is simple: show clearly that you have not stood still since your last application.

3.1 Updating the CV

📢 What to Add and What Actually Matters

Updating your CV should be almost mechanical. You should make sure that everything new since your last application appears clearly:

• Any change in position, contract, or institution
• Conferences and workshops you attended
• Talks and posters you presented
• Granted grants, allocated observations
• Teaching, supervision, or service, if relevant
• Outreach activities and any other work-related tasks, productions or achievements

Even if some of these items do not feel spectacular on their own, together they build a picture of steady engagement with the community. That cumulative effect matters.

3.2 The Commented List of Publications

🤔 Choosing what stays and what goes

For the CNRS application, remember that you do not submit a full publication list. Instead, you provide a commented list of your seven most impactful productions.

If you have published an important publication since your last application, you will likely want to include it. But that immediately raises another question: which of the previous publications are you willing to drop?

This constraint is not a nuisance, it is a feature. Each production on that list should justify its presence by contributing something essential to your scientific identity and by reinforcing the coherence between your past work and your proposed project. If a new publication represents your current direction better than an older one, it is perfectly reasonable to replace it.

Revisiting this list every year forces you to reassess what you consider your most meaningful contributions, and how you want the committee to understand your trajectory.

4. The Research Synthesis

📝 Integrating new work into a coherent story

When reapplying, everything you have done since the last application now belongs in your past research. The challenge is not adding content, but integrating it properly.

New results, projects, or responsibilities should not appear as an awkward appendix at the end of the document. They need to fit naturally into the existing narrative. This often means restructuring sections, merging themes, or rewriting transitions so that the story still flows.

A reapplication is also an excellent opportunity to clean up:

• Are there parts that no longer align with your main research question?
• Are some sections overly detailed compared to their importance?
• Can the overall structure be simplified now that your profile is more mature?

A strong research synthesis reads like a single, coherent trajectory, even if it spans many years and topics.

5. The Research Project

➡️ Refining Direction, Not Expanding Scope

The research project is usually the hardest document to update, because it combines ambition with long-term planning.

If you are keeping the same main direction, updates are expected:

• You can remove sub-projects that no longer fit your scientific narrative.
• You can clarify priorities and reduce dispersion.
• You can strengthen the logical links between different work packages.

If you started a new collaboration or opened a new line of research over the past year, it may make sense to include it, provided it genuinely reinforces your core project. This is often a good moment to be ruthless and drop ideas that sounded interesting a year ago but no longer serve your main goal. Reapplying is often the moment when applicants become more comfortable being selective. Ideas that felt exciting a year ago may no longer serve your core goal, and it is perfectly fine to let them go. The aim is not to make the project bigger, but to make it sharper.

This stage is also a very good point to step back and think about something that often becomes clearer over time: the national structures within which your research actually sits.

One of the things that typically happens as people reapply is that they gradually develop a better understanding of how research is organised at the national level. You learn more about which communities exist, how different teams interact, and where your own work realistically fits within that landscape. A new application cycle is therefore a good moment to reflect on what you have learned in that regard.

When updating your project, ask yourself:

• In which national frameworks does my research naturally belong?
• Which scientific communities, networks, or working groups am I likely to embed in if I get hired?
• How does my proposed work contribute to, or benefit from, these existing structures?

Working this into your project strengthens its projection. It shows the committee that you are not proposing research in isolation, but that you have a realistic and informed view of how your work will integrate into the broader national ecosystem. This kind of maturity often only emerges after one or two application cycles, and it is absolutely worth making visible when you reapply.

The key, again, is coherence. Any reference to national structures should reinforce your main scientific direction, not distract from it.

6. Showing a Gradient Between Applications

💡 How committees recognize scientific growth

One of the most important expectations in a reapplication is the presence of a clear gradient. The committee is not only evaluating the absolute quality of an application in a given year, it is also looking for evolution over time.

This is where what many applicants informally call the memory of the committee comes into play. By this, we mean the literal memory of the people sitting on the jury. Committee members do not review applications in isolation. They often remember what an application looked like the previous year, or even several years back if a candidate has applied multiple times. They compare what is in front of them now with what they saw before.

From an idealized perspective of neutral evaluation, this can feel unsettling. We tend to think that applications should be judged only on their intrinsic quality in a given year, independently of past attempts. The idea that prior versions of your file influence the current evaluation has a slightly troubling taste to it.

And yet, this is a very real part of how the system works.

Because of this memory effect, showing progression becomes absolutely crucial. The committee wants to see that you have moved forward, that your ideas have matured, that your project has become clearer, and that your profile has strengthened. An application that looks identical to last year’s, even if it was already strong, is often perceived as stagnant.

One of the most straightforward ways to make this evolution visible is, you guessed it, through a new publication, ideally one that:

• Fits naturally within your main research line
• Strengthens the credibility of your proposed project
• Demonstrates concrete scientific output and independence in your research

A solid paper sends an unambiguous signal that your work is advancing. It refreshes the committee’s perception of your file and provides a clear marker of progress in their collective memory.

This does not mean that publishing is the only way to satisfy the committee’s expectations. But it does mean that, whether we like it or not, your application is almost always read in context, against the background of what the committee remembers from before.

❗ Showing a clear gradient is therefore not optional, it is central to how reapplications are evaluated.

This committee memory effect still holds even when the jury changes (like for CNRS in 2026, this year). While the effect is obviously less strong when the people forming the committee change, the last jury still passes along some information to the new jury members. Part of this information concerns the state of some applications, implying that the new jury will definitively be able to judge if an application has stalled compared to the previous years. Therefore, we recommend you to consider that the change of jury only has a small effect on how this “gradient” is seen.

7. What Counts as Progress (Beyond Papers)

Publishing is not always possible every year, and committees know that. Progress can also be demonstrated through:

• Conference presentations or invited talks
• Increased involvement in collaborations or consortia
• New responsibilities, coordination roles, or leadership
• Technical, methodological, or observational developments

What matters is that the committee can clearly see that your body of work is growing, both in depth and in visibility.

8. Conclusion

❔ Iteration as a bug or a feature of the concours system?

Reapplying is not a failure. It is a normal and expected part of the French academic recruitment system. We fully acknowledge that it might seem unfair at times, as we have felt this way ourselves at times. After all, an application should be evaluated after its academic merit as it sits in front of the reviewer. However, due to the highly competitive nature of the concours, the committees need to have extra levies on their choices.

So remember: A strong reapplication reads as the next chapter of the same story, not as a collection of disconnected updates. If your documents show coherence, development, and increasing clarity about who you are as a researcher, then you are doing exactly what the concours system is designed to evaluate.

Iteration is built into the concours. Your task is to make sure that each iteration clearly moves you forward.