system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What's the point of ultra-competitive grants?

Yesterday I received the review for a marie curie grant we submitted. We didn't win it, which wouldn't be a problem by itself. But the problem was the review. We were wonderful. We got an overall score of 88/100! Top of the list!! The individual points of the review all got extremely high scores with extremely few and almost irrelevant "weaknesses" identified in the text. 

We even used a consulting company to write the grant, that took care of pimping the grant up using all the buzzword that the EU wants to hear. Which, BTW, were the same that the national contact point for MSCA said that we *must* use.

So, what's the point anyway of a grant that you can't win even when the review is perfect? Apparently less than 8% of the submissions are selected. I mean... it implies that winning is just pure luck, if just one of the reviewers is in doubt whether to give you 4 or 5 in a single one of the points it's going to make the difference between passing or not.
gpt
The point is simply that there isn't enough money to go around. Provide more money and the success rates improve.

And yes, the problem now is that even top-rated grants are getting rejected, which means that it is somewhat luck of the draw as to who is on the panel and how they feel that day.