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OMSAS Autobiographical Sketch: Research


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If anyone's going to actually care about the including/excluding submitted/in preparation bit, they should really make it more clear.

 

"Indicate the type of publications: paper, abstract and presentation at a scientific meeting etc., accepted or published with a reference, but not submitted or in preparation."

 

Seriously, terrible syntax. I read that thing like three time and still didn't get what exactly it was trying to say, especially since Ottawa definitely seemed to specify that submitted/in prep should go under research. I do a lot of reading and scored pretty decent on VR too, so it's not like I'm just stupid. Does it mean we can specify that it's being written as a paper and say, a presentation's been done, but the paper's not submitted? Or that research can be included, but for instance shouldn't be specified as a paper if an abstract's been published but the paper's only been submitted. Or, if this is what they meant, why not just include a line plain a simple, saying "Do not include research that's only submitted or in preparation."

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Guest levski21
If anyone's going to actually care about the including/excluding submitted/in preparation bit, they should really make it more clear.

 

"Indicate the type of publications: paper, abstract and presentation at a scientific meeting etc., accepted or published with a reference, but not submitted or in preparation."

 

Seriously, terrible syntax. I read that thing like three time and still didn't get what exactly it was trying to say, especially since Ottawa definitely seemed to specify that submitted/in prep should go under research. I do a lot of reading and scored pretty decent on VR too, so it's not like I'm just stupid. Does it mean we can specify that it's being written as a paper and say, a presentation's been done, but the paper's not submitted? Or that research can be included, but for instance shouldn't be specified as a paper if an abstract's been published but the paper's only been submitted. Or, if this is what they meant, why not just include a line plain a simple, saying "Do not include research that's only submitted or in preparation."

 

I completely agree. I'm also getting nervous now that they might disregard the those activities, and I could miss out on potential points if I had wrote them under ECs or volunteering

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No offence but I think it's rather clear. I guess you'll just have to wait till January/February/March to find out.

 

Clearly not, by how many people have questioned it and how many people got in doing it either way.

 

"I'm glad I'm a man, and so is Lola"

 

Clearly, Lola is a man.

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  • 1 month later...
Guest levski21

Any sort of consensus on this? I know that UBC specifically mentioned that points won't be taken off if you enter something in the wrong section. I would imagine Ontario universities would feel the same way. It's even more ambiguous because you have one application with 6 schools having different criteria. I really hope adcom is intuitive in evaluating our apps.

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  • 7 months later...
Hey, I feel like this is asked every year but I have a couple questions about research on your OMSAS application.

 

Should honours research be included on your application?

 

Also, can an in preparation or submitted publication be included?

 

It says to not include if it's in preparation or in submission.

 

Sure, put the honours research on your application.

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It says to not include if it's in preparation or in submission.

 

Sure, put the honours research on your application.

 

Ottawa says TO include submitted so I would and let UofT ignore it. I think they realize it is a centralized application and will only look at what they want.

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I have a question about research and my OMSAS application, maybe someone can answer this!

 

I am doing a course-based masters which will finish next year in June, and I am heading 1 project and helping out with two other major projects.

 

However, I have only started the first project this past April and the other two will start in September.

 

Should I list these 3 experiences under research or under volunteer? I am not getting paid to do this research, and it is not technically part of my Masters program as it is a course-based masters.

 

I do not want it to look like padding, but it would be nice to list these experiences under research if it's possible to let them know what I've been working on this year.

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The actual wording on OMSAS about in prep or not submitted research alludes to excluding it, but is unclearly worded/kind of ambiguous. However Ottawa is pretty clear that you should include it.

 

OMSAS has had that same wording for years and plenty of people have included it; if OMSAS wanted to they could have easily put a sentence saying "Do not include unsubmitted/unpublished research", but they didn't, so I say just include it because people get interviews at UofT etc. either way regardless.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

When you say to include "NSERC research projects" what would you write under the heading "Type of Publication"?

 

I would do something like:

 

Title of the Project (60 char): Title: Science is cool and stuff.

*Type of Publication (100 char): NSERC research project.

*My Role (150 char): Describe your role here. Ran tests, wrote stuff, drew graphs.

 

Assuming you didn't publish anything from your NSERC.

 

Few Questions - If we did multiple poster presentation in the same conference different years, how do we use the time stamp - just put form (200X) to (200X+1) and explain its 2 different years or put them as separate entries?

 

Separate entries for each poster (assuming the content of the posters are different between years).

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So if our research project didn't lead to any publications or is still in process of collecting data, can we just express that the project is in progress or are we not allowed to include it unless it has publications?Also, are you allowed to include publications in which you aren't an author but contributed to? Thanks!

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So if our research project didn't lead to any publications or is still in process of collecting data, can we just express that the project is in progress or are we not allowed to include it unless it has publications?Also, are you allowed to include publications in which you aren't an author but contributed to? Thanks!

 

 

For your first question I had a year long project that still hasn't been published but might be in the next few months: I wrote research is contributing to future publication in a cell biology journal

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  • 3 weeks later...

Just a quick question about how people are entering dates for research publications or abstracts. Are you simply putting the same date for "from" and "to" for the month it was published or presented, or the entire time frame you were working on said project. I am sure this is the least important part of these entries but I am interested to hear what others are doing. Thanks!

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For research projects that produced multiple posters, would it be bad if I put down the same description for each of the posters? Or should I try to word things differently even though I pretty much did the same things for the posters?

If you did multiple posters that contain the same stuff, then you should either group them together or mention the poster that was most recent or presented in the more prestigious conference. Otherwise it would look like padding. 

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If you did multiple posters that contain the same stuff, then you should either group them together or mention the poster that was most recent or presented in the more prestigious conference. Otherwise it would look like padding. 

 

I included all peer-reviewed posters and orals containing similar research, but did not include similar posters that were done locally without formal abstract submission. Now that I think about it, I may add one more category for local presentations and include the remaining 3 or 4 in that one category.

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A bit of a last minute question: The OMSAS Sketch research details page says, "Please note that projects done as part of a university course do not qualify as research." If I did a research project course, and the project resulted in a conference presentation and publication in a journal (not just the report and presentation that was marked for the course), can I still include this project under Research? If not, where should I include it? Thanks in advance!

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  • 6 months later...
  • 2 months later...

Does anyone know how to appropriately include work completed on a quality assurance review? I completed a quality assurance review at a local hospital that involved a chart review, analysis, some posters/oral presentations, and a low impact publication. But we were always careful to make sure we didn't use the word research, mostly because the review was specifically waived by the hospital REB as non-research (because all of the data was already available in the patient charts; patient contact to collect data was not necessary). In fact, while I was working on the review and disseminating the results to local clinicians and researchers, it seemed almost taboo for me to utter the word 'research' when I was discussing this work. This makes me leery of including this as 'research' on my ABS... although for the publication and presentations it seems like the best place to list this would be under the research heading. Any thoughts? 

Much appreciated  :)

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