vdincale

wow amazing post! Scotia looks pretty good eh?

Accepted wGPA: 4.00 English, IP, OOO 3rd year ECs: Hospital volunteering, Work, NSERC Interview: Panel was very warm!

-clicked Businesses succeed by taking advantage of consumer's weaknesses. A businesses' success is usually measured by profits, which in turn are usually related to how much of their product or service they sell. Businesses can sometimes sell more of their products by exploiting a target audiences weakness. One weakness that stands out is impulsivity. For example, tabloid magazines exploit a costumers impulsivity by having their products placed near the cashier in a store, and by having large titles that grab the attention of the consumer. By using this combination to attract the consumer in and providing them with the means of buying the magazine in a short period of time they can get the consumer to forget that all the information present in the magazine could be found in other locations, like the internet, for free and instead purchase the magazine. This way they sell more magazines and, by the definition previously laid out, are successful. In contrast, some businesses can succeed without taking advantage of consumers' weaknesses. An example of this type of business would be a hospital. It provides services, like life saving surgery, that are essential to human life. Because these services are essential, they will always be in high demand. This ultimately translates to increased "sales" of their product and again, by the definition previously laid out, success. In conclusion the product the business is selling is what ultimately determines whether or not the business is taking advantage of a consumers' weaknesses to be successful. If the product is a necessity, like medical care, the business doesn't need to exploit a consumers weakness because their product will always be in demand. On the other hand, if the product is not really required, like a tabloid magazines, demand will be lower and therefore to succeed the business will need to exploit a consumers weakness to get more sales.

I was wondering if I should apply this year. I am currently going into 3rd year. 4.0 gap Writing mcat in 2 days (I've gotten 35-37 on the aamcs) ECs: nserc this summer, volunteering at a hospital for 200 hours and sporadic volunteering with canadian blood services. I'm looking to apply at Mac uottawa and u of t. I feel my ecs are lacking.

- clicked hopefully you get to this before september 10! Also I had one question, should we include indentations at the beginning of each paragraph? Prompt: Advancments in communication technology have reduced the quality of human interaction The quality of human interactions can be defined by many parameters and it is not always clear which parameter has the most importance. For example is the length of a conversation between two people more important then the frequency of communication? One might ultimately conclude that the content exchanged, i.e. the meaningfulness, of a communication is the ultimate determining factor. From this standpoint lets examine one of the most substantial advancements in technology in the past century, the cellphone and text messaging. The text messaging format allows for short interactions. This is because when sending a text message the recipient doesn't necessarily have to respond, or if they do they can respond with one letter answers that have no deeper meaning. This short type of conversation doesn't allowing for deeper meaning to the communication and thus the quality of the interaction is severely reduced. On the other hand another type of advancement, video calling, has allowed a higher quality of interaction. A perfect example is Skype. Now telephone conversations can be enhanced by adding live video so that particpants can see one another. This type of face-to-face interaction allows one to express emotions with facial cues and other actions that provide depth and meaning to communication. Prior to this that same type of intereaction could only occur in person. Ultimately what determines whether or not a advancement improves the quality of interaction is what type of advancement it is. If the advancement allows for more meaningful interaction, like skype, that it can improve the quality of interaction. On the other hand, if it limits the interaction , like text messaging, it can severely decrease the quality of the interaction.

-clicked again Education comes not from books but from practical experience Education is the learning and understanding of subject matter that can allow you to solve problems. Education from practical experience would be best when the subject being taught is not clearly defined. One example would be making your partner happy in a relationship. Even though many books might have been written on the subject, learning how to make your specific partner happy comes from interacting with them for a long time as opposed to reading these books. This is mainly because each person is unique and the books take a rather generalized approach at solving the problem of making them happy. Long term interaction will eventually lead to an understanding of what makes them happy, or not, and this will lead you make decisions that will result in them being happy as opposed to made. In opposition when subject matter is clearly defined, learning from books would be better than practical experience. One example would be solving energy conservation in physics. From a practical experience approach, you could theoretically go to various slides that have different heights and measure how much fast you are travelling when you reach the bottom. You could then use this knowledge to answer problems on a test because you have firsthand experience of the speed at the bottom. This approach would take a lot of time and effort. In contrast you could simply learn the equation of energy conservation from a book and apply it to each situation to find your speed at the bottom because you know that the law will hold constant for novel situations. In conclusion when the subject matter is not well defined, such that solving specific problems requires a unique approach in novel situations, a practical approach to education is best. In contrast if the subject matter is well defined, education from a book is better because it saves times and allows you to generalize your knowledge to novel situations.

-clicked Prompt: Scientific inquiry is rooted in the desire to discover, but there is no discovery so important that in its pursuit a threat to human life can be tolerated. The main idea of the statement is that human life is precious and that preserving it should be put at the top of concerns in any scientific experiment. This notion is clearly held by the scientific community and can be seen by the implementation of various regulations in human testing of drugs and vaccines. In the United States of America before a new pharmaceutical may even be tested on living humans it must pass various hurdles implemented by the FDA. First they have to show that it doesn't cause death in animal tests. Next they have to implicitly show that its cost to benefit ratio is high enough in animals that if it worked similarly in humans it would increase the quality of life. These rigorous guidelines not only protect human test subject from dieing, but also ensure that drugs which are being manufactured actually help the people who are taking them. This long process can take years to go from new drug discovery, to administration to patients. In contrast, lets imagine a situation where a disease was wide spread and no current approved drug or vaccine could treat this illness. A example of a disease like this would be small pox. During the time when the disease was killing a lot of people one doctor had created a vaccine that could potentially prevent people from getting this disease. He had a strong belief that it could work but he didn't have time to do rigorous testing because some many people were dying as a result of the disease. He therefore skipped clinical trails and directly injected his son with the vaccine and then exposed him to the smallpox virus. This threat to human life was tolerated in his view because had the vaccine worked, a lot of lives could be saved. It did turn out to work and this eventually lead to the erradication of smallpox across the globe. In conclusion when a lot of time exists for the development of a drug or vaccine, preserving human life is the most important aspect in any clinical trail. However the small exception to this rule exists when the need for a drug is strong. In that situation human testing, which in itself is a threat to human life because of the potential side effects, should only be done with consent.

-Clicked! Prompt: Governments have a responsibility to regulate companies that provide necessary services to citizens. Governments have a responsibility to regulate companies that provide necessary services. This implies that in some capacity the government controls how the companies provides it services. A clear example of this would in the United States healthcare system. In this system the government requires that all patients, regardless of financial status, must receive emergency care upon admission to the emergency depart. The government has a responsibility to impose this guideline because if hospitals where allowed to function autonomously, they might instate a policy which requires payment first. This could lead to death in some cases where a patient does not have the means to pay. In contrast to the above service, one necessary service that has no death related consequences is telephone communication. This service is required because people need to be in-contact with each other for work or personal reasons. The government does not need to regulate the quality of the service because the free market conditions in which the company offers it services allows for competition. Therefore if one company offered poor voice quality, consumers could just switch to another. This health care system cannot offer the same type of competition because if you are injured and show up to a hospital emergency department, you cannot always go to another hospital in a timely manner. Overall governments have a responsibility to regulate a company if it provides services that are life saving, like a hospital, because poor business practices can lead to death. It does not need to regulate a company if there is competition because this competition will lead to best service possible being offered by the company.

Clicked again Prompt: Politicians too often base their decisions on what will please the voters, not on what is best for the country. Politicians will often make a decision in order please the voters which will ultimately lead to voter support. This voter support can be used to win elections. However, these decisions can be detrimental for a country. A clear example of this is the promise not to raise taxes. A lot of politicians, from Steven Harper to John McCain, have election platforms which revolve around keeping taxes low, or cutting taxes. This is very appealing to the voters because it means more money in their pockets. However this can be detrimental to the country since it needs money to operate things like schools and hospitals. In opposition to this, sometimes decisions need to have the good of the country at their core goal rather than voter approval. An example of this would be cutting government funded programs in order to reducing spending and help reduce deficit in a country. This was at the heart of recent debates in the USA house of commons because they needed to reduce the deficit. The cutting of the programs are not viewed favourably by the public because this means they have less access to services for free, however it help the country in the longer term because it has more free capital to pay debts. In conclusion, politicians should only make decisions that have voter support as their core goal only if the result of them getting the support of the voters will allow them to be elected and than use the power gained to do something that benefits the country. This could be promising lower taxes during their election campaign to get voter support, then eventually cutting social programs during their term to ensure the country will not have large amounts of debt.

Clicked! Prompt: An understanding of the past if necessary for solving the problems of the present This statement represents one of the fundamental principles of learning which is learning by example. This type of learning has its benefits and its fall backs. One clear benefit is that if a new problem arises that has the same elements as a problem that has arose in the past less time has to be spent thinking of a solution because a well established one already exists. A clear example would be mathematics, if you wanted to find the length of the hypotenuse of a right angle triangle while knowing the adjacent and opposite side length you would use the hypotenuse theorem. This is an example of a problem with clear elements that can be "plugged" into a strategy to get a solution. If you did not know this theorem it could take a long time to derive it from other principles, or you might not be able to solve it all. A situation where an understanding of the past is not needed to solve a problem would be when a problem arises that have novel elements which have not been accounted for before. A good example would be during WWI. This was the first war fought with tanks and artillery, thus generals were unsure of how to lead soldiers into battle. At first they attempted to revert to the old ways of fighting trench warfare where soldiers would just run out and attack the opposing trench. However this lead to many deaths because the automatic gun fire could easily eliminate the threat. This example amplifies the fact that not only was a knowledge of the past not required but rather it seriously harmed the ability for generals to solve the problem of winning. One could theorize that if they had not fought in that manner in previous wars the generals would have developed more appropriate means to attack and many lives would have been save. In conclusion, the need for past knowledge in solving problems of today depends entire on the novelty of the problem. If the problem is a clear cut replication of something that has happened in the past that is easily fit into a formula, like a math problem, then prior knowledge greatly accelerates problem solving. However if a novel problem arises that has novel elements, prior knowledge of a similar problem doesn't really help solve it and might even be detrimental.

Mama Kitchen What colour are your socks

- clicked- Thanks So much! The success of a business depends on its ability to compete. Describe a specific situation in which the success of a business might not depend on its ability to compete. Discuss what you think determines whether or not the success of a business depends on its ability to compete In our free market society competition is the basis for most business. This means having a product at a lower price than the competition and bringing it to the market place faster. These two factors can allow a company to sell their products in a higher volume then the competition which hopefully results in greater profits and long term viability. One example is the mobile phone industry, when apple brought the iphone to market it was the first mainstream phone to use a capacitive touch screen. This new technology allowed for a novel way for consumers to interact with their phone, this enticed consumer to purchase their product and thus resulted in massive sales. This was apple’s first venture into the mobile phone industry and one could argue that if they didn’t have this novel technology that was far better than existing resistive touchscreens they would have not out competed well-established phone manufacturers like Nokia or Samsung to take market dominance in the mobile phone industry. Therefore one can see that competition, by having new and innovative products, can lead a business to success. In opposition to an industry like the mobile handset manufacturers that is dynamic and constantly creating new technologies, industries like telecom service providers have slower innovation because they do not need to compete to be successful. Telecoms like Rogers do need to compete by introducing new services or competitively prices because the hold a monopoly over the industry in Canada. They hold this monopoly because they at one point either, out competed rival companies or acquired them. This put them in a position to be the sole owners of infrastructure for internet and other services. Therefore their current success stems from the sole reason that they do not currently have to compete with other companies so they can set their prices as high as they want and consumers have no other options . A new business’s success initially only depends on its ability to compete in the market place when there are a lot of companies selling the same product to the same audience. However if the company competes well, like in apples case, and rises to the top of their niche the requirement to compete dwindles and mediocrity sets in. This allows the company to costs off of previous innovations for a while because they hold so much of the market share. However this utopia does not last forever and eventually new companies will rise and competition will thrive again, therefore ultimately a company’s success depends on its ability to assess when it needs to be competitive and when it can coast and just make profit.

Im going into 3rd year and I was wondering what my chances are. GPA 4.0 (I swear I'm not a troll). My EC are, 150+ hours volunteering at local hospital (not very meaningful work IMO) about 40 hours with Canadian blood services talking to donors after they donate blood (I'm the cookie guy lol). I won an NSERC USRA grant this summer and I also have worked a part time job for the last 4 years. I feel like my EC are below average after reading some of the posts on this board. I plan to write the MCAT this summer and apply to all possible schools in Ontario. Any suggestions on making myself a more compeditive candidate?