Independent decision-making with somewhat significant potential consequences

[little rock]

oh hai gaiz

 

Anyhow, I'd like some clarification on one of my most favourite questions from the UBC application:

 

Have you experienced instances of independent decision-making with somewhat significant potential consequences, e.g. research, etc.?

 

It seems a bit much to re-iterate all of the research I have done, which is already included in the non-academic activities/employment history sections. Anyhow, isn't most research usually supervised unless you're a Masters/PhD student/Lab Tech?

 

And what is considered a significant potential consequence? Something like, I had to make a decision as to whether to sacrifice the rabbits, wherein if you made the wrong decision you would set your project back and have to wait to order more bunnnies? Or, I only had 5 samples and had to make an executive decision about whether to analyze them in this or that manner with this or that experiment? Because neither of these cases seem to have significant consequences to me.

 

Discuss.

[D-Rock]

Holy crap! UBC's application system gets dumber year after year. Here, I have a hoop for you: proceed.

[blaaaax]

Well I can't speak for all grad students, but I don't see my supervisor for weeks at a time so I pretty much plan all my experiments, prioritize, etc. Bad experimental design = huge waste of time and money.

 

Might not be lives in the balance but that seems like a fairly significant consequence...

[medisforme]

you only need to worry about that question/section if you are serious about doing rural medicine. If you are not, than it doesn't really matter what you put. that section of the application has nothing to do with whether you are invited to an interview, it is only for evaluation purposes of accepted applicants to see who would be appropriate for the northern medical program.

[little rock]

you only need to worry about that question/section if you are serious about doing rural medicine. If you are not, than it doesn't really matter what you put. that section of the application has nothing to do with whether you are invited to an interview, it is only for evaluation purposes of accepted applicants to see who would be appropriate for the northern medical program.

 

This is very true, but I kinda heart the idea of going to PG. Thus, am stressing about this section. What are your suggestions?

[medisforme]

This is very true, but I kinda heart the idea of going to PG. Thus, am stressing about this section. What are your suggestions?

 

i kinda liked the idea too (though only because i cherish small class sizes not because i have any real rural connections except for my parents farm, so likely this will never come about for me) so i emailed them about the vagueness of the questions and they replied that the questions are somewhat vague for a reason. They said that you can put whatever you feel is relevant to each question, nothing you put will hurt your application in any way. They just want examples from personal experience that apply to the question.

 

ps.

i personally repeated a lot of stuff i had mentioned earlier in my application, just that i tried to apply them to the specific questions.

[astropark]

Is it true that the "Independent decisions-making" section is only used to evaluate suitability for the rural programme? It seems illogical to put this under the activities section when answers will be duplicated in the optional rural section. Would it be best to put an activity that demonstrates both independent decision-making as well as leadership experience under the later category, if I only want to be in the Vancouver programme? Or is there something to be said for having a number of activities distributed under each category?