If you are planning to apply for this competition, please let me know by August 4th, so I can plan how to best facilitate the process. If you want me to read over and give you any suggestions on your application, you need to send the application to me by August 24th.
AND PLEASE READ ELIGIBILITY RULES CAREFULLY TO ENSURE YOU ARE ELIGIBLE TO APPLY.
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Dear graduate program faculty and staff,
Please note below some important changes to the Vanier competition this year.
1. Due to where Labour Day falls in 2015, and because of a change in the procedure for nomination letters, the deadline for students will fall earlier than in recent competitions.
· Deadline for applicants to submit to ResearchNet: 11:59pm on 31 August, 2015
· Deadline for graduate programs to submit nominations to G+PS: 4:00 pm on 18 September, 2015
2. In previous years, G+PS has been responsible for producing the final nomination letters to accompany each of the 60+ Vanier applications forwarded to the Tri-Agencies. This letter is given a great deal of consideration by the national adjudication committees as part of the application package, and was composed from the material submitted by graduate programs on the G+PS nomination form. Editing and supplementing this material to produce a letter of the quality suitable for applications to the most prestigious doctoral competition in Canada has represented more than 90 hours of work at G+PS in the two weeks leading up to the national competition deadline (frankly, in part because the content for the letters has not always arrived at G+PS in Vanier shape).
This year, the Tri-Agencies are requiring that this nomination letter be composed/signed by Department Heads for each applicant, in an attempt to improve the quality of nomination letters that have arrived at the national competition in very different shape from different universities. Because we are interested in ensuring that this important application element continues to be of the highest quality for UBC applicants, we will offer several kinds of support to facilitate this transition of responsibility:
· G+PS will create and post a letter template that includes several headings with question prompts to ensure that your letter addresses the items the Vanier committee is looking for
· G+PS will post some of the most excellent examples of successful applicants’ letters from each agency
· G+PS will schedule workshops for letter writers in late August and early September; we strongly encourage at least one representative from your program with letter-writing responsibility to attend one of these workshops
· G+PS may require revisions to letters following university-level adjudication (late October)
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