what is considered being academically productive in a thesis based MSc?

[osmosis]

i was just wondering how school's view being academically productive in grad school? is it just based on publications? heres' a bit of a rundown of what i have done so far...

 

-i'm in a thesis based MSc

-i have done well in my required grad school courses

-i have secured funding from one academic source (competitive)

-have attended a conference

-proctored 3 exams for my faculty

-have been a student ambassador twice as a grad student for my faculty

-have successfully defended my project proposal and have received ethics approval (not easy tasks)

 

i also want to emphasize that my PI is very new, with no primary author publications. it has been very hard for me to secure funding as a result of this (CIHR, NSERC...). my MSc is clinical, so i have been in my PI's clinics for over a year meeting patients and attempting to recruit them into my study. i probably won't get anything published until after i have collected all my data. i was just wondering how school's that look at grad school (queen's, u of t, u of c) would evaluate this portion of my file?

 

i do have one first author publication, but that was in undergrad on an entirely unrelated project with a different supervisor.

 

what do you guys think? what else should i be doing? would my grad school file be competitive?

 

thank you. i appreciate all your advice.

[janny_jan]

Proctoring and doing well in your grad courses is not considered academically productive. This means publications and presenting at conferences. You say you attended a conference...did you present at it? (was your abstract published in the conference edition of a journal?) Publications are huge but you dont always have to be first author. If you can, help others with their projects in an authorship-deserving way and get some 2nd, 3rd authorships out of it. I'll be finished my thesis based masters in april and have 2 1st author publications and 1 2nd author publication. I have presented at 4 conferences (2 international)...no idea if thats academically productive med school wise but it was for the lab I'm in (very publication heavy). GL with your project!!! Happy St Paddys

[osmosis]

thank you.

 

i was just wondering how i help with other projects when i am the first and only grad student of my PI? my PI is a physician with very little research background. i am the only grad student who frequents my PI's clinics to recruit patients.

 

i was just wondering if counseling and recruiting patients who have a chronic condition would count for anything?

[Starling]

Yep, being academically productive means publishing and presenting at conferences. That being said, it'll still look good on your application that your grades are good, you have an award and you deal with people.

 

I wouldn't bother mentioning proctoring exams or that you attended a conference (unless you presented a poster or gave a talk at it). Defending your project proposal and getting ethics approval, while no small tasks, are probably not worth mentioning by themselves, although if you're writing up your duties as a grad student you could include them.

 

Does you PI collaborate with anyone? Doing a bit of work with/for them can be a good way of getting your name on a paper or two.

[osmosis]

thanks for all that info. it is much appreciated. i am glad to see that my clinical work will count for something. i'll def. be looking into some of those suggestions.

 

thanks very much.

[Satsuma]

thank you.

 

i was just wondering how i help with other projects when i am the first and only grad student of my PI? my PI is a physician with very little research background. i am the only grad student who frequents my PI's clinics to recruit patients.

 

i was just wondering if counseling and recruiting patients who have a chronic condition would count for anything?

 

This would have raised flags for me when I was choosing a supervisor.

Nonetheless, you are in with this supervisor now, so gotta make the most of it. If you like the project, and you want to stick with it, and as you say, your supervisor has little research experience and no 1st author publications if his own (which begs the question of how he was allowed to be supervising a grad student in the first place), then if I were you, I would be making full use of my thesis committee!! Make sure you have meetings and consult frequently to make sure you are on track and get criticisms about your project before it is too late.

[osmosis]

i am starting to worry about this moreso. but i have spoken with many other of my colleagues who are also doing human based studies, and they have reassured me that they are in the same boat as me (even though their respective PI's have many 1st author publications). my reasons for picking my supervisor was b/c he was a physician and he teaches at the med school i would hopefully like to one day attend. so, i am hoping that a strong LOR from him will increases my chances for interview. also, having one first author pub. at the undergraduate level, i was not as concerned about getting another publication right away. i know that with the nature of my study, and the project being in a unique field, it will eventually get published.

[sparkles3288]

I'm a little over half a year in my MSc, and I have one first author paper, three second/third/fourth author papers, and 3 published abstracts (did my undergrad projects in the same lab). Is that considered fairly productive? I haven't presented anything yet at conferences, but will be attending two in the coming few months.

 

Thanks for the opinions!!