Verifiers for Scholarships and Awards

[jul059]

Hello,

I have received several awards and scholarships throughout the years and I have documents for all of them. I remember seeing in the old OMSAS FAQs that it's ok to write "documents available upon request" as verifier if we have documentation. Unfortunately, I can't find this on the current website. Does anyone have official information on how to list awards and scholarships? Can we do it without having verifiers?

[HappyAndHopeful]

I'm not sure if this is helpful to you, but for my scholarships/awards, I used my university financial aid/awards office for ones that were administered through them. For ones that weren't, I emailed the organization to ask them to verify my award, and explained what a verifier was. All of them agreed and got back to me quite quickly. If neither of those are options for you, I'd contact omsas to ask whether it's sufficient to list that documentation is available upon request. 

[jul059]

9 minutes ago, HappyAndHopeful said:

I'm not sure if this is helpful to you, but for my scholarships/awards, I used my university financial aid/awards office for ones that were administered through them. For ones that weren't, I emailed the organization to ask them to verify my award, and explained what a verifier was. All of them agreed and got back to me quite quickly. If neither of those are options for you, I'd contact omsas to ask whether it's sufficient to list that documentation is available upon request. 

Actually, the following is specifically stated in the pop-up help on the verifiers page: 
 

Quote

Any activities that can be substantiated by academic transcripts (e.g., scholarships, special commendations) do not require verifiers. For these items, enter a zero in the "Verifier" field to save your information.

So I guess it's fine. I'll still ask them since they can't be substantiated by "academic transcripts".

[jul059]

So today I received a very unhelpful and generic reply along the lines of "you're old enough to decide what to do, we can't help you". Basically, OMSAS doesn't have a policy about this.

Best of luck everyone!

[Meridian]

OMSAS is a central collection agency for input for the Ontario Medical Schools.  They themselves do not look at or verify content. The Med schools however do if you are lucky enough to get to the interview stage.  I suggest you do put in the effort to list the verifier contact info for all significant awards.  You want to make it easy for the Adcoms to do their jobs.

When it says "substantiated by transcripts" -  they mean that the actual scholarship shows up on your transcript.  Most Canadian Universities list the awards they give out directly.