Uofa Ot Chances

[OTtime17]

Hi everyone, just wondering if you all can give me some objective feedback on my chances for UofA OT this year. It's intimidating reading the forums and seeing people with amazing GPA and prereqs not getting in. Looking for a little encouragement and a lot of critique if possible.

 

I have a 3.8 GPA right now, but that will change a little depending on this final exam season. I'm an in-province applicant.

 

For experience and extracurriculars, I have 8yrs of childcare experience and worked at a well-known summer camp program for 2yrs which involved lesson planning, project testing, travel, and (of course) teaching. I've been an exec of my program student association for 3 yrs, and am the current president. I am also an exec of an autism awareness group that partners with outside autism support and awareness organizations. For clinical experience, I volunteer at a hospital, providing social interaction to long-term and complex care patients. I also recently did a job shadow with an OT on my regular hospital ward.

 

This past summer I did research in a biology-focused vision loss lab and have continued my position through the school year as an independent study project. I am also doing research on a volunteer basis with another lab that is more OT-related. They work with children with cerebral palsy, but my volunteering focuses on literature review and helping with preliminary trials on adult subjects.

 

I guess I'm worried I don't have enough directly OT-related experience. Is that something I should be concerned about? I read posts about people with hundred of hours of shadowing experience and that's just not feasible for me right now.

 

Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

[OTea]

You have a great GPA and experience!! I think you have a really good chance of getting in.

 

I don't think you need to worry about OT specific experience. Any volunteer/work experience can be relevant to OT because it comprises of a wide variety of skills and values. I'm sure at your hospital volunteering you had to be on team settings so you had to work collaboratively with others, you had to be empathetic to patients, be professional, etc. When you write you personal statement just show what you've learned at your volunteering and how it can help you be a good OT in the future.

 

Any research experience, no matter what field or setting is valuable. It shows you understand the work that goes behind research and that can help you. As future OT practitioners, we have to make sure we are intelligent consumers (or creators) of research to be sure our practice is evidence-based. 

 

Good luck

[OTtime17]

Thank you, that's really helpful feedback! You've made me feel a lot better I will definitely focus more on what each of my experiences has taught me when writing my statements.