Confused About 5 Year Rule (Grad Applicants)

[yeescience]

Hey everyone, I'm really confused about this statement and I have some questions, if a previous applicant or med student at Dal could answer this, I'd highly appreciate it!

"Only activities completed during your undergraduate and graduate studies and/or within the last 5 years will be used in the assessment of your detailed submission"

1) I am a graduate student that just finished third year MSc and my undergrad was during 2011-2016... so I am unsure if this means I can use my experiences as long as they were done during undergrad/grad school... Or if they must also have been done within 5 years? (e.g. I had a summer volunteer experience in 2013 after my second undergrad year so that's 6 years ago but was very meaningful... Can I use it?)

2) I initially assumed the experiences have to be within 5 years in addition to being during undergrad/grad studies (although as stated above, now I am unsure). If this is so, then 5 years ago would be 2014 so I included experiences from early 2014 (e.g. summer research student May-Aug 2014)... Only to realize they might be more stringent and want experiences from Sept 3rd, 2014 and onwards (5y ago exactly from app deadline)? Could anyone shed light on this at all?

 

Thank you!

[medicineandchill]

I have no idea if this is correct, but I interpreted it to mean that everything done in undergrad/grad school can be included, regardless of how far ago it was. And then in addition, you can include anything that has been done in the past five years - and I think this is for people who have been out of school for the past five years? So in your situation, you could use anything from 2011 up until September 3rd 2019! I'm not sure if this is correct but just thought I'd give my opinion!

[MDancer]

Hmm. I read it as it has to be within the past 5 years. I'm totally not sure if this is correct  Cause I had good activities to put down from 2011 too but I started from 2014.

[Chels1267]

I was also in the same boat (grad) and included things from my undergrad that were within the last 5 years, unless there was something started earlier in my undergrad that continued into that 5 year period. I did drop all of the scholarships I got for the first 2 years of undergrad from the Awards section, not sure if they would have counted those? I did the same thing when I applied last cycle and scored above the average for the Supplemental section so I would assume they counted what I had put on, otherwise I wouldn't likely have scored so high.