Research publicity?

[Curious P]

I was wondering whether anyone could comment on how the admissions committee views research publicity (interest from news agencies in your research)?

 

While working on my masters I published two papers (first author). I presented the first paper at an int'l conference and from there it was picked up by a rather prestigious (but not terribly well known outside of my research area) journal. One thing led to another, and soon my prof and I were being interviewed by a number of news sources including the local paper, CBC radio, Canadian Business magazine, the NY Times, and a number of national papers. This past week the Toronto Star contacted my prof for an interview as well (note that the paper was first published almost 2 years ago!).

 

Would UofT view this as favourable? Should I mention the Star interview to the Ad Comm?

 

Any input would be appreciated!

[Kirsteen]

Hi there,

 

I don't think there's any harm at all in mentioning the publicity, however, the impact that it may have on your application may be varied and can be largely unknown. It really depends on who's looking at your application. Minimally, if you do make some media appearances then you can include these in a separate heading within your CV. I'm speaking a bit from experience here, as I was also in the situation where one of my papers caught the attention of a number of newspapers afterwhich I was contacted by the producer of a Learning Channel show. She gave a brief screening interview over the phone then invited me to appear on one of the show's episodes to chat about the research. Since the show was taped and has aired a number of times, I included it in my CV. (I chose not to include any details in my CV re: the newspaper articles, however.) That was a couple of years ago, and since then, although I've had plenty of comments on publications and presentations, the media appearance hasn't caused too many folks to blink an eye. One theory is that it might be because it's not unusual for some folks in the medical community to engage the press regarding their latest research findings.

 

In any case, the short of it is, if you have a research-related media appearance under your belt, it won't hurt to include that in your CV.

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen