Your videos have been very helpful I do have a question about the order you decided to enter your activities. The order we upload presents what we think is most important and I'm having a hard time deciding where my awards should be listed in comparison to my experiences.
Thanks so much for this awesome video 🥰🥰👏. I just wanted to clarify; so for research activities, you only put it under the research category if it was a published paper or presentation? What if you were a research assistant on a project that is still in progress (there's no paper/presentation)? Would that go under volunteer or extracurricular instead? Also one more question, if you did an undergraduate research paper (so published in an undergraduate journal which does not require a faculty supervisor), would it make sense to include it under research or extracurricular (I also presented the review in an undergrad research conference)? Thank you for all your help!!
Hi, Melissa here! Glad this was helpful! As for your questions: For if research activities have to be published/presentation - it depends! If you or your research team is working on a manuscript, you can likely still do a research entry saying a manuscript is "in preparation". Back when I applied (many years ago!!), OMSAS rules used to kind of frown at this but everyone still did it. Last I checked, recent rules say you can write "in preparation" no problem. But regardless of whether you do a research entry formatted like this or not, you should definitely have an employment/volunteer/extracurricular entry for your research assistant position. If you do a research entry and an employment/volunteer/extracurricular entry, it's basically like a permitted "double dipping" that is mentioned in the Part 1 video 🙂 Just make sure your descriptions are different enough. I forgot to mention this possibility in the video now that you bring it up. One approach could be: the employment/volunteer/extracurricular entry would probably include more of the experiments/skills/tasks you did and then the research entry would talk about project objectives and research impact. For the undergraduate journal, it could also depend! 😋 What was the content of the paper (a literature review vs more reflective piece without diving into published research? or original research?) Was it a peer reviewed student journal? If the piece has some scholarly aspect to it (original research or a lit review/well-cited or well-informed commentary) and was peer reviewed, I think you can safely put it as a research entry. Your presentation alone would also be an independent research entry - and that also makes me think the published paper would qualify for research as well. The only thing you need to watch out for is who would be your verifier. It's easier if you had a faculty supervisor, but in this case you might have to touch base with the journal's editors-in-chief and have them agree to your ABS entry (unless you had a co-author and want to go that route). My answers are also very research-leaning because that's an area students tend to not have a lot of entries on. So I always encourage to try and think of reasonable experiences that can be put in research. But if you feel like your volunteer or extracurricular fields need more entries and your research experience is otherwise strong, feel free to tailor the entry more for those former categories. Hope this helps and definitely feel free to ask additional things if something isn't clear!
@@melissaphuong426 Thank you so much for your thorough response; definitely clears things up! So to reiterate, the research section is for actual "products" of the research (papers/presentations) including those in progress (so working on the "product"), but the actual position (so day-to-day tasks, position duration, etc.) Is in work/volunteer/extracurricular. As an example, if you volunteered at a university lab to help out with tasks on a big long term project but were not involved in any poster/presentation/paper, it would not go in the research category. Regarding the undergraduate research, yes it was a speed literature review & the student journal was peer-reviewed (we had editors & we had to edit our work before publishing). I think I'll add it to research since I don't have too much there. Thank you so much!!!
@@katherine6206 Yup, I tend to view the Research category as the research products like you said, based on the things you would need to fill out for that category, especially "Title" and "Type of publication". But the position role itself would probably fit better under the Volunteer category. There could be flexibility and perhaps people moved their experiences around and it worked out well for them, but you then need to make sure your phrasing properly answers the things OMSAS asks of you. Depending on the tasks you helped out with, if it was experiments or analysis, ideally you're getting authorship down the road! It may not be the first 3 authorship spots but regardless, it could be something worthwhile to put in the app unless your research section happens to be oversaturated. Again, it's situation-specific, but something to keep in mind.
@@melissaphuong426 this is so helpful! Thanks so much 🥰🥰 One more question if you don't mind, a bit unrelated but for the top 3 activities uoft essays, I have two positions (volunteer + work) in the same organization that kind of build off on each other. Would it be ok to talk about both positions as one of my top activities for one of the essays or would I have to pick one? Both of them have some responsibilities unique to the position but they're in the same org and I got the work position because of my volunteering. What do you think? Again thank you so much, this video series has been the most helpful things I've found for the OMSAS ABS!! ❤❤❤
@@katherine6206 Yeah, good question! There's different ways to approach it and I don't think mentioning both positions would be breaking any rules per se. But the only thing to be cautious of is because you only get 250 words, it may be that focusing on one position and exploring different ideas under that role in-depth and with good examples may be a stronger essay than having to balance describing 2 roles at a more surface level. Again, it depends how you go about writing it though! For full disclosure when I wrote those essays, I happened to write in brackets what # ABS I was referring to. Looking back, this wasn't a requirement so I was probably just being paranoid and "extra", but if you decide to do the same, then you may also try to focus on 1 position for the essay. Another way you can hint at both but still focus on mostly 1 is: 1. If you focus on the volunteer, at the end briefly say how your volunteer position led to your employment (showcasing commitment, evolving in roles, etc.) 2. If you focus on employment, set up the context in the beginning that you came across this position through your volunteer work. Happy to hear this is helpful!
