[1st Authorship as an MSc. (Candidate)]

In my field authorship is determined by the authors' contributions, and according to the conventions there the one who contributed the most is first, and the PI is usually last. Another convention in a different corner of my field is to list everybody alphabetically, especially if everyone contributed equally. Whether or not the submission "will be taken seriously" because of who's first is never a consideration and anyway since review is blind I don't think it should matter. Not that it's hard to know who you are reviewing (it's a small field, I normally have a good idea of whose papers I'm reviewing and also of who reviewed mine) but that doesn't affect authorship decisions. 

 

Editors don't seem to care who is listed first and reviews are blind. If you did the analysis and wrote up the manuscript then you should be first author (unless there is some other reason that, despite this, your PI can still argue that they did more work on the project than you.)

 

Thank you for the helpful responses. My field is psychological research, and the Journal is an open access journal. I agree, the review process should be blind, so I don't see how reviewers would be impacted by authors credits. I'm going to write as best as I can, and get it edited by several other graduate students and professors in addition to my supervisors so it shouldn't reflect in the writing either. 

 

I do feel as if it will impact the supervisory relationship if I ask to be first author, but I should ask nonetheless and if he says no, then so be it. The other scenario is he reluctantly agrees and doesn't help push along the process. His contributions are that he generated the grant and designed the study, and was also central in the execution of it, so he's rightly going to be the last listed author. 

[1st Authorship as an MSc. (Candidate)]

Hey everyone,

 

I've spent the last semester doing a secondary analysis on a data set from a study I helped conduct last year, this is not my thesis, I'm just in my first year of my Master's. I've found significant results and am in the process of writing up a manuscript, but my supervisor is saying it's best if it's he that gets first authorship rather than I. The rationale is that reviewers are more likely to take it seriously if it's a PhD in front of the author list, than a BSc. 

 

I'm just wondering, from everybody's experience, whether this is the case. We're submitting to a 2.0+ impact journal, and we've recently been rejected by another journal for a paper that had another Master's student as senior author, so there's precedence. I just don't want to be passing up on a great opportunity to get a senior authored publication in my first year if it has as good a chance as any at getting accepted. 

 

So option A) I push ahead with publishing as first author and possibly risk getting rejected, and perhaps damaging my relationship with my supervisor option playing it safe and letting my supervisor take senior authorship, I get 2nd authorship, and probably earn some moral credit from my supervisor.

 

Thoughts?

[OISE PhD 2013 (University of Toronto)]

Thanks, just called and found out I wasn't accepted.

 

Good that's over with, and now I'm assured I'll be going on to do an MSc in Kine and Health Science at York :-)

 

Good luck to everyone else!

 

hcoach,

 

Here is the admissions officer for APHD

 

Lisa Chinchamie

Programs & Admissions Coordinator (AP&HD)
OISE/UT Room 9-296
Tel: (416) 978-0917 
Fax: (416) 926-4708
l.chinchamie@utoronto.ca

 

Call her and say that you have another offer from another school with a pressing response deadline and you were wondering if you could find out some info about the status of your application. If she is unable to help ask who the appropriate person in the department is and for their contact info. Good luck.

 

Good luck.

[OISE PhD 2013 (University of Toronto)]

Good to know there are wait lists, I did not recieve any letter this week. Off to next week....

 

I'm not sure what it means to "contact the department" anymore. When I emailed gradstudy.oise I was asked to contact the department directly and was given the email of the Programs & Admissions Coordinator (AP&HD), who did not respond and instead the CP Program Assistant/Liason responded to my inquiry and again said you can contact the dept. directly if no word by 2nd week of April. So yea...confusing.

 

Hey everyone,

I've been passively following for a couple days now. Congratulations to those who are in. I applied to CSTD and HSSSJE PhD 2013. I spoke to the department grad admission officer in CSTD who informed me that I have been recommended for the wait list (recommended to "OISE Graduate Admissions"), my odds right now are good, that the tides are changing quickly, and that I would be able to get a better sense of things early next week. I emailed grad admission officers in HSSSJE who also said that I am on the wait list but am in the middle of the pack so this seems less promising. However, HSSSJE informed me that I was recommended for the EdD program which is unfunded. The invitation for the EdD has also showed up in my ROSI account. All said and done, I recommend contacting the departments directly and asking since a lot of us have other decisions to be made based on other schools. As well, I spoke to "OISE Graduate Admissions" who said that letters can take 1-2 weeks as of today, meanwhile, both departments (CSTD and HSSSJE) have indicated that they are still grappling through the wait list into next week.

 

Hope this sheds some light on the process and system. All the best!

[OISE PhD 2013 (University of Toronto)]

They also said if you don't hear anything by the 2nd week of April then you should contact the department. I don't know what the protocol is for 'waiting lists', but I've heard they do have them, and I've also heard they hold interviews, which they denied when I inquired in an email.

[OISE PhD 2013 (University of Toronto)]

They've told me via email that acceptance letters start going out early this coming week. No "unofficial" communications go out other than these mails, which is confusing as I'm hearing about people getting phone calls about their acceptance. Maybe each department is different, and perhaps only PhD's get called. I've applied to MA Counseling Psychology for Psychology Specialists.

[Calculating GPA For Last 2 Years - Please Help]

This is a question I've been trying to get an answer to for a while, and the people who are supposed to answer it don't seem to understand what I'm asking.

I get that courses for the last 2 years of the undergrad program are what count towards the GPA calculation, or whatever the equivalent # of credits it takes to count for two years of study. So let's say the credit equivalent is 60 credits (I go to a uni where each course is worth either 3 or 6 credits, instead of the standard 1 and 0.5 credits, this is very important for the question I'm about to ask). Now these courses obviously span multiple academic sessions - fall/winter and summer sessions. Let's say for my very last session, a fall/winter session, I took 18 credits, so all of those are taken in the calculation. The session before that, a summer session, I took 24 credits, so all of those are taken, making for a total of 42 credits so far. We need 18 more from a previous session to get the 60 credits we need. But let's say in that previous session I took 24 credits, leaving 6 extra credits more than we need.

What I want to know is; which courses would be used from those last 24 credits? Do they take the courses with the highest marks, lowest marks, major-relevant courses, random?

I've tried to ask this question multiple times but the answer I keep getting is whatever the last 60 credits are will be used. Obviously there is no order set for the courses, as they are ordered according to which session they were taken in. So I'm having trouble understanding what the process is, and if anyone can she some light I would really appreciate it.

Thanks.