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U Of Alberta Interview Invites/regrets 2017


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Honestly, I think half of it is what  you say and the other half how  you said it. For example stating what you did is fine but it's just a description, I think people get more out of the 300 characters( or whatever it is now), if you talk about the impact, what you learned, how you did it. Say you volunteered at X club. There is a difference when you say I was the VP of Y, responsible for a, b, and c. VERSUS In this role I learned to plan, organize and execute a, b, and c by using skills 1, 2, 3, etc.

 

I know it can generally be assumed that if you were the Captain of a sports team let's say, you had some level of leadership. Otherwise you might not be the leader, right? But if you included the things you did, that showed you were a good leader( helped resolve conflict between team members, liaison between coaching staff and team, motivation of team), I think that can be very helpful to an application and also to the reviewer because then it is very obvious to them what you have done and they don't have to infer. To use someone else earlier example of Olympic athlete. It's not enough to just say that, the level at which you competed is actually not important, it's the dedication, time management , etc. that you explain on the app, that showcases the skills the file reviewer is looking for. 

 

I think a med school app is less like a CV or list and more like a narrative of all the skills and traits you have acquired.

 

I agree that how you write about the experiences is incredibly important, and I have always tried to connect mine with the CanMEDS competencies. Ultimately though, given the weight of the extracurricular sections, it would be nice to see U of A giving applicants a better chance to describe their experiences. With only 300 characters (or whatever the number is) it would be easy to overlook many of the intricacies of your roles or accomplishments.

 

Authorship of a scientific paper is a good example of this. In order for a file reviewer to fully comprehend the value of your contribution/accomplishment, they will need to know what field it was in (i.e. some fields are more labor intensive- I know epidemiologists who publish 3+ papers a year as first author, but nobody in a wet lab setting would be able to achieve that with similar levels of time/effort), whether you were first author or a contributing author (and they must understand that distinction, as author ordering norms are discipline specific), and the name and impact factor of the journal you published in (not a perfect measure of value, but separates a respectable journal from an obscure one). Once you parse out all the information which is necessary for them to evaluate the publication quality, you have very little room to describe anything else. Sure, you can leave some details out in favor of including the typical "I learned X,Y,Z", but that won't really help the admissions file reviewer assess the true value of your contribution. Moreover, I think we need to be more honest about how much of "I learned X,Y,Z" is sensationalized BS we put in because it makes us sound good. More space is needed to give the reviewers an indication of the value (i.e. deliverables and outcomes of your efforts, not just buzzwords regarding what you supposedly learned) when ECs are the primary determinant for who gets an interview.

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