DAL application - applicant with international credentials

[pnarang]

Hello friends,

 

I will start off by saying that I have been browsing a few forums for the past few months, but this is definitely the one where I see most accurate and well laid out information being exchanged. Great job everyone!

 

Apologies in advance for the long post below, but I feel it's best to lay out everything in detail to help get best suggestions.

 

My background -

 

B.Sc in Zoology (Hons) from Panjab University, India

M.Sc in Zoology (Hons) from Panjan University, India

 

Research experience - I was the lead researcher on a project that tested the effectiveness of various doses of a particular drug. This project was done on a mice model i.e. the drug was fed to mice and the effects on them were noted over time.

 

Publications - As a result of the above project, I published the following paper. I was the 2nd author on this (Makkar P.), the 1st author being my principal guide on the above research project -

 

US National Library of Medicine link - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22961311

Springer database link - http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00436-012-3108-2

 

Additional work experience - After my M.Sc, I worked as a research fellow on another project in a big hospital (PGIMER, India) - Researching and attempting to quantify the relationship between onset of diabetes in a person and the effect of that on a person's vision. In other words, a deep dive into the world of "Diabetic Retinopathy".

 

Why Dalhousie? - I moved to Halifax as a permanent resident after my marriage, since my husband and his family live here.

 

Courses done in Canada -

I went through the admission requirements of Dal's pharmacy program, and determined that there were a few pre-requisites that I was missing - Calculus for health sciences, and a few electives here and there. I enrolled into SMU (Saint Mary's University, Halifax) and passed all the courses with an A+ in all of them.

 

Experience in Canada - I have been volunteering at a local pharmacy since November 2013, where I assist the pharmacist and the phamacy technicians in their work.

 

Dalhousie application journey -

I applied to the pharmacy program in January 2014, but was just sent a rejection letter a few weeks ago. It depresses me to see that I could not even make it to the initial interview stage. Hence, the below questions -

 

1) Have any of the members here completed their education outside Canada?

 

2) If yes, did Dalhousie have a "grade equivalency" matrix ready and updated for your university? By this matrix, I am referring to a sort of a "normalization" calculation that will help bring a certain mark achieved at one university to the same level that a student would get in DAL for a similar attempt. I realize this is vitually impossible to do for all universities in the world, but I am hoping that something like this exists for the major / well established / oldest universities around the globe.

 

3) How did you find your admissions process overall? Lots of red tape and rigid framework or were the admissions people able to apply some common sense when looking at your application? I bring up the point of common sense, because the registrar's office @ DAL looked at my detailed transcripts and course syllabi of prior education and I got a large number of credits - from level 2000 to level 4000 courses. However, as per the admissions lady @ Pharmacy office, even though I had demonstrated competencies in all higher level courses of a subject - say Biology - I wouldn't be able to apply since the registrar's office had not given me a transfer credit for the basic 1000 level course of the same subject!!!!!!

 

Thank You for your time and patience.

 

Regards,

Prerna

[DucksDucksDucks]

1. No

2. N/A

3. Good, although I had the pre-reqs.

when it comes to pre-reqs, it is what it is: you just have to have them.

In my opinion, especially now without pcat, pre reqs become much more important predictive criteria that allows relatively easy comparison between applicants.

Also, I don't think the competency at higher level necessarily represent the competency at lower level, especially in subjects such as biology (which can rely heavily on memorization compared to subjects like math that require application of basic concepts at higher levels).

 

If you fulfill the pre reqs and the atlantic residency status for next app cycle, I would expect you to get at least the interviews.