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High Performance in Human Endeavor - leaving it blank?


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On 6/3/2017 at 4:35 PM, Jibrail said:

If it helps, I left it blank last year, got rejected, but found out my NAQ score was: 35.54. So you can definitely have a strong NAQ score without it.

That's an excellent score! Do you have any tips or resources that you used for writing your NAQ descriptors? I feel that my score was lower than expected (international volunteering, mental health advocacy, multiple publications, conferences, scholarships/awards, research coordination on multiple projects, student representative for program, and ended up with a 25..) so I think I'm missing something in how I'm writing the descriptions

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18 hours ago, casajayo said:

That's an excellent score! Do you have any tips or resources that you used for writing your NAQ descriptors? I feel that my score was lower than expected (international volunteering, mental health advocacy, multiple publications, conferences, scholarships/awards, research coordination on multiple projects, student representative for program, and ended up with a 25..) so I think I'm missing something in how I'm writing the descriptions

Some tips in case you haven't done some of this:

- make sure you highlight tangible outcomes based on your contributions to X activity
- speak in active voice..& as objectively + descriptively as possible // avoid passive //
- avoid general phrases about the organization/initiative -- this cuts out a lot of the fancy intros people add that just takes up space & doesn't really get you any points imo.
- try to frame your activity to highlight the category you placed it in (service ethic vs capacity to work w/ others vs leadership)
- Read the CanMed competencies & then read your NAQ description -- > try to have your descriptions highlight 1 or 2 CanMed competencies

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1 hour ago, Pterygoid said:

Some tips in case you haven't done some of this:

- make sure you highlight tangible outcomes based on your contributions to X activity
- speak in active voice..& as objectively + descriptively as possible // avoid passive //
- avoid general phrases about the organization/initiative -- this cuts out a lot of the fancy intros people add that just takes up space & doesn't really get you any points imo.
- try to frame your activity to highlight the category you placed it in (service ethic vs capacity to work w/ others vs leadership)
- Read the CanMed competencies & then read your NAQ description -- > try to have your descriptions highlight 1 or 2 CanMed competencies

Thanks, I appreciate the tips! I wrote mostly in passive voice so that will definitely be a big change, and will definitely go through to see if my write-ups are matching competencies or if they're spending too much time describing the place, etc. 

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My tips for NAQ:

1. I think it's easiest to make your own template and follow that. For example, I always started activity descriptions with the length of my commitment, and ended off with any awards I received for it.


2. Described the commitment / activity using a modified "CARS" approach (you can look it up, it's used for resumes):


C - challenge. Modified as description
A - action. My contributions
R - result. What my contributions led to, highlighting awards wherever possible

3. After doing all of this, I actually went back and deleted some activities that seemed like the commitment wasn't worthwhile / didn't fit with my overall "story". I ended up leaving some spots blank in the end (including entire high performance section).

 

Good luck!

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On 7/12/2017 at 1:48 PM, gogoup said:

My tips for NAQ:

1. I think it's easiest to make your own template and follow that. For example, I always started activity descriptions with the length of my commitment, and ended off with any awards I received for it.


2. Described the commitment / activity using a modified "CARS" approach (you can look it up, it's used for resumes):


C - challenge. Modified as description
A - action. My contributions
R - result. What my contributions led to, highlighting awards wherever possible

3. After doing all of this, I actually went back and deleted some activities that seemed like the commitment wasn't worthwhile / didn't fit with my overall "story". I ended up leaving some spots blank in the end (including entire high performance section).

 

Good luck!

Thank you!

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If you have too many things to put on your application you might as well throw your most impressive item on the high performance section to make space for others. After all, you won't be penalized for putting something in the wrong section, and it's a clever way to add more to your application, eh?

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3 hours ago, textbook88 said:

If you have too many things to put on your application you might as well throw your most impressive item on the high performance section to make space for others. After all, you won't be penalized for putting something in the wrong section, and it's a clever way to add more to your application, eh?

I don't expect you'll be able to get any extra points this way or that this would add more to your application. In fact, I think it could actually penalize you: the instructions about that section are pretty clear, so I don't know that you want to suggest to the people scoring your application that you couldn't be bothered to read the instructions carefully! Or they could just ignore anything you categorized in that section incorrectly, thus losing you valuable points. 

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20 hours ago, textbook88 said:

If you have too many things to put on your application you might as well throw your most impressive item on the high performance section to make space for others. After all, you won't be penalized for putting something in the wrong section, and it's a clever way to add more to your application, eh?

When they say that you won't be penalized for putting something in the 'wrong' section, I think they are referring to when one activity could genuinely belong to multiple categories. For example, an activity might be valid in both leadership and service ethic if you held a position of leadership in a non-profit organization, so you just have to pick one.

However, the criteria for high performance are much more straightforward than the criteria for other categories because they specifically mention that it often involves some kind of formal ranking or high profile competition/event. If you put down an activity that obviously doesn't belong, it's going to be blatant to adcom that you are trying to beat the system and include extra entries and I doubt they would look favourably on that.

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