Applicant from PhD program after 5 Nov, 2011 connect here to get status

[Sthind]

Yes, this is the truth. Dean will never write letter that not 100% accurate. You need to ask for real work that you did beyond your thesis work. Experience that is not related to your research of the PhD program. Many people here are killing their TA and RA to the sky. In my opinion, this is a fraud and should be stopped. Please ask what actually you are doing and don't get inspire by people trying to make up large number of hours and any job title that might considered by CIC regardless what they doing. Look to the post by Sthind, asking you to look for any job title and collect job duties from HR description and paste them in your letter. Is this truthful. I keep you with this thought.

I did not said any job title I said GRADUATE ASSISTANT which I am sure saeed is as he or she is a PhD student.

 

[S_Govind]

3. Helping me for the preparation of manuscripts to publish in scholarly conferences and journals.


Thanks.

Jubayer.

This makes sense since job duty number 3 matches with the action described in the lead statement for NOC 4012 (Assisting in research related activities such as publishing etc). Helping me is synonymous with assisting me. Interesting to know that they accepted synonyms atleast in your friends case !

 

[sia_kb8]

To salem10: Way to accuse people who work beyond what they can claim (all the while making minimum salary and paying international student tuition fees) of fraud and claiming the ability of knowing the "truth" about things you clearly have no clue about. If anything people are claiming lower work hours. I don't think your opinion matters to anyone here. You are simply not helping anyone. You are wasting your time. For us, it's just a couple more scrolls to get past your misinformed and incoherent posts. Please get a life.


To all forum members: I think the best course of action is ignoring this salem10 guy. Clearly he's sore about people in the PhD stream. He has trouble forming a coherent thought. Eventually he's gonna let go. By quoting him, you are simply feeding the troll.

 

[kaziahmmed]

Guys, wanted to share my RA experience letter with you. Please let me know from your experience whether its ok or not. My friend used the same letter and got passport request today (applied almost 8 months before me). I got PER on Feb 25 2013. Thanks.
----------------------------
This is to certify that Mr. xxxxxxxxxxxx, Student ID: xxxxxxxxxx, Faculty of Engineering Science, xxx University, was employed as a PhD Research Assistant (RA) under my supervision from the period of January, 2011 to December, 2012. The breakdown of his job status is as follows:
Time period Status of the job
January 2011 – April 2011 20 hours/week
May 2011 – August 2011 40 hours/week (Summer term)
September 2011 – December 2011 20 hours/week
January 2012 – April 2012 20 hours/week
May 2012 – August 2012 40 hours/week (Summer term)
September 2012 – December 2012 20 hours/week
Over these periods as a Research Assistant, his responsibilities were as follows:
1. Literature survey and conducting research on various research projects.
2. Compiling and analysis of the research results.
3. Helping me for the preparation of manuscripts to publish in scholarly conferences and journals.
4. Reviewing various journal and conference articles.
During his employment period as a Research Assistant, he was paid around $xxxxx annually.
------------------------------------------


Thanks.

Jubayer.

I would use assisting me instead of helping me, would not take any risk with synonyms, your frnd could be lucky but u might not. I have seen previously several ppls got accepted even without the exact lead statement but these days they r becoming more strict on lead statement and main duties. So be careful.

 

[Nadees]

Re: Canadian Educational Credential

Dear all,

I am preparing to apply under the PhD stream. I just completed my PhD last month. My official transcript now says that:

"Doctor of Philosophy Completed" Data:___
Thesis Tile:_______

Also, I have a letter from the department stating that I've fulfilled all the degree requirements and am waiting for the final degree parchment (convocation) to be granted in November. My question is as follows: Can I submit my official transcript as proof of my Canadian educational credential? Also, note that I do not have any other post-secondary degree from Canada other than the PhD.

Thanks,
Nadees

Thanks all for your replies and the interesting debate on how PhDs can contribute to Canada's economy and society. As most of you have already pointed out, Canada is much better off in retaining the intellectual minds than letting them go

Regards,
Nadees

 

[Houra]

Salem10, this is not for you. You don't need to repeat your "valuable opinions" on every post. Leave this forum.

Hey everyone else: One of my friends got a comment on the RA letter that "the letter does not distinguish her PhD research and her RA". So, I suggest you to make that explicit in your letters. We can claim only 20 hours/week for RA, whereas we easily work over 60 hours a week on average... You can easily argue that 40 hours per week is you working on your thesis, and 20 hours per week is RA.

By the way, I got a one-line confirmation email today saying "Your updated employment letter from XX was printed and attached to your file on the 15th of July, 2013". I had asked them if I needed to send the hard copy as well, which they didn't reply.But I guess the fact that it "was printed" means that they don't need me to send a hard copy. Any thoughts?

 

[anjuku]

Salem10, this is not for you. You don't need to repeat your "valuable opinions" on every post. Leave this forum.

Hey everyone else: One of my friends got a comment on the RA letter that "the letter does not distinguish her PhD research and her RA". So, I suggest you to make that explicit in your letters. We can claim only 20 hours/week for RA, whereas we easily work over 60 hours a week on average... You can easily argue that 40 hours per week is you working on your thesis, and 20 hours per week is RA.

By the way, I got a one-line confirmation email today saying "Your updated employment letter from XX was printed and attached to your file on the 15th of July, 2013". I had asked them if I needed to send the hard copy as well, which they didn't reply.But I guess the fact that it "was printed" means that they don't need me to send a hard copy. Any thoughts?

I believe someone else (don't remember who it was or even if it was on this forum) got a similar remark from CIC..the only difference was that they were asked to clarify how many hrs they worked as a Ph.D student to distinguish it from the hrs you worked as an RA...of course being a Ph.D student means course work too which can easily take a substantial amount of time away from your RA/TA, preparing for your comprehensives can also be the same...
Like you said, it's always best to claim less hours as your RA experience since technically a full time Ph.D student is expected to put in 15hrs/week of study..also if you just need the one year of work experience to qualify for this stream and you have overseas work experience to show it's best to claim less hrs as your RA experience...in my case i have only 6 months teaching experience back home since i came here for my Ph.D right after my masters...and i applied through this stream 2 years and 4months into my Ph.D program...so i really didn't want to risk it because though i had more than enough points , i needed that 1 year experience to qualify...luckily when i approached my department they said that they have a rule that Ph.D students are expected to work 40hrs a week split between RA/TA duties...for each university i guess it's different...so i thought that was great and told them to give me that in writing so that i can put it along with my supervisors letter..like i said the more documentation you provide to back up your claims, the more easier it is to convince CIC..but again, please note that i claimed the full 40hrs/week RA only those terms when i didn't TA at all...the rest of the terms i split the 40hrs between RA and TA hrs..

And regarding your e-mail from CIC, i don't think you need to send in your hardcopy now since they acknowledged receipt of your documents...you can always show this e-mail as proof if they don't consider your updated reference letter in their assessment..also most e-mails you send can be seen in your CAIPS in the notes section..i saw in my latest caips the exact e-mail i had sent when i submitted my bank statements...so you should be fine!..also they do say don't send in the same stuff through multiple means..

 

[anjuku]

I would use assisting me instead of helping me, would not take any risk with synonyms, your frnd could be lucky but u might not. I have seen previously several ppls got accepted even without the exact lead statement but these days they r becoming more strict on lead statement and main duties. So be careful.

Kazi is absolutely right...i for example didn't have the word ASSIST in my lead statement but had it in one of my duties...asbereth's letter i believe also didn't explicitely say ASSIST in the lead statement either...but now CIC is really getting picky and it looks like they are not satisfied with this wording anymore either..but we have to get information from a few more applicants to confirm that and what the problem with reference letters is now ???

 

[aililia]

Hello every one,

The thing is, I faced a challenging problem in asking my supervisor for issuing a reference letter for the RA experience I have had in his lab in the past 2 years, However he did not mention the working hours in my reference letter as a Research Assistant :'( which is quite mandatory to be eligible for work experience under PhD stream.
The reason for not including is that the university hires employees as a research assistant and there is no record of me as a research assistant in HR and As he is the dean of the faculty he is so conservative and would not issue something that there is no record of it.
It would be appreciated if seniors in this forum would guide me about what are other alternatives !
Also, If it is possible to ask for a reference letter with different title like graduate assistant or sth with the same duties as Research Assistant.

Regards,
Saeed

According to our experience in this forum, if you work on a project which is already your PhD project and you don't have any contract with the department/supervisor as a "research assistant", you wont be eligible to receive any work experience letter as "research assistant" no matter how many hours you work at the lab.

Even if someone got such a letter from his/her supervisor while the project is the same as his/her PhD project, it would be kind of misrepresentation.

So be careful with that, if you are not really a research assistant, go with other possible options and don't waste your time and money. Many people in this forum simply got rejected after almost one year for this RA letter.

 

[Houra]

I believe someone else (don't remember who it was or even if it was on this forum) got a similar remark from CIC..the only difference was that they were asked to clarify how many hrs they worked as a Ph.D student to distinguish it from the hrs you worked as an RA...of course being a Ph.D student means course work too which can easily take a substantial amount of time away from your RA/TA, preparing for your comprehensives can also be the same...
Like you said, it's always best to claim less hours as your RA experience since technically a full time Ph.D student is expected to put in 15hrs/week of study..also if you just need the one year of work experience to qualify for this stream and you have overseas work experience to show it's best to claim less hrs as your RA experience...in my case i have only 6 months teaching experience back home since i came here for my Ph.D right after my masters...and i applied through this stream 2 years and 4months into my Ph.D program...so i really didn't want to risk it because though i had more than enough points , i needed that 1 year experience to qualify...luckily when i approached my department they said that they have a rule that Ph.D students are expected to work 40hrs a week split between RA/TA duties...for each university i guess it's different...so i thought that was great and told them to give me that in writing so that i can put it along with my supervisors letter..like i said the more documentation you provide to back up your claims, the more easier it is to convince CIC..but again, please note that i claimed the full 40hrs/week RA only those terms when i didn't TA at all...the rest of the terms i split the 40hrs between RA and TA hrs..

In my department it is the opposite. They say that because we are on a study permit, we are only allowed to work 20 hours/week on-campus. That is, TA and RA combined, we can work 20 hours a week. The rest of the hours that we put in is towards our full-time PhD studies. Overall, it means that we are full-time PhD students, and part-time RA/TA on top of that.

 

[asbereth]

In my department it is the opposite. They say that because we are on a study permit, we are only allowed to work 20 hours/week on-campus. That is, TA and RA combined, we can work 20 hours a week. The rest of the hours that we put in is towards our full-time PhD studies. Overall, it means that we are full-time PhD students, and part-time RA/TA on top of that.

One thing that you have to note though, full-time study is usually defined as having 15 hours of 'instructions' per week. And if you check, there is no limit on how many hours per week international students can work on campus. The 20 hour limit is only explicitly there for off-campus work permit

According to our experience in this forum, if you work on a project which is already your PhD project and you don't have any contract with the department/supervisor as a "research assistant", you wont be eligible to receive any work experience letter as "research assistant" no matter how many hours you work at the lab.

I don't think there is a requirement that your RA work experience cannot be related to your PhD work. I invite you to re-read the (in)famous lead statement of NOC 4012 more carefully

Post-secondary teaching and research assistants assist university professors, community college and CEGEP teachers and other faculty members in teaching and research activities at universities and colleges.

Your supervisors usually are the principal investigators. You work based on the very high-level main ideas that they laid out in the beginning. They may be assistant professors who are trying to get tenure, and your work performance will directly correlate to their success in attaining permanent professorship. Their names will show up on most of the papers you are publishing, adding to THEIR (not only yours) credentials. Sometimes, they even assume first authorship. How is that not considered 'assisting' them in their research activities?

http://www5.hrsdc.gc.ca/NOC/English/NOC/2011/Profile.aspx?val=4&val1=4012

If you come across the rule that explicitly (or even implicitly) states that your work experience cannot be related to your study at all, then you're welcomed to share it with all of us (with references too obviously).

In fact, for work experience to be considered valid for immigration purposes, it needs to
1. be paid
2. match the lead statement of the corresponding NOC code
3. match a substantial number of main duties prescribed for the corresponding NOC code.

If you 'assist' your professors in their research activities, and perform the majority of the main duties of NOC 4012, and you legally get paid for performing these activities, then your work experience should be qualified to be considered for immigration purposes.

EDIT: I'm considering retiring the handle 'asbereth' once I hit 888 posts

 

[pari_p]

Hello everyone,

I am a September 2012 applicant. I applied under NOC 4012 but in Canadian Experience Class.

I got my ATIP/GCMS notes last week and looks like I will be rejected. Here is what VO has to say (he reviewed the file on 10th May 2013):

"Letter provided from the PA's supervisor confirms the work of research assistant. However, the letter explains that the research conducted by the PA is directly in support of her studies and thus does not qualify as work."

Since I have still not been rejected, its under review at this point, I went to local MP to find out whats going on with my file and here's what they came back with:

"I have spoken to CIC who advised there is no decision yet on your file. I am told that research for studies does not qualify as work experience.
If you feel the work experience is not part of your studies, and should qualify, I suggest you write CIC directly ASAP, before a decision is made on your file, and advise all the work hours you have and why they should be included."

Any ideas on what I should write in the email? I need to differentiate RA work from project/thesis! Would an updated letter from supervisor help??

Thanks,
Pari

 

[kaziahmmed]

EDIT: I'm considering retiring the handle 'asbereth' once I hit 888 posts

Plz don't be. Try to stay as much as possible, u r here as the most reliable guideline. If it is really necessary to quiet then I have nothing to say. All of us r really really grateful for all of ur effort, time and contribution into this forum. I personally got helped and encouraged from u in many occasions and really appreciate for all those.

PLEASE STAY

 

[beh467]

According to our experience in this forum, if you work on a project which is already your PhD project and you don't have any contract with the department/supervisor as a "research assistant", you wont be eligible to receive any work experience letter as "research assistant" no matter how many hours you work at the lab.

Even if someone got such a letter from his/her supervisor while the project is the same as his/her PhD project, it would be kind of misrepresentation.

So be careful with that, if you are not really a research assistant, go with other possible options and don't waste your time and money. Many people in this forum simply got rejected after almost one year for this RA letter.

There is no experience like this in this forum before. Please do not mislead people.

The Ottawa has rejected RA letters mostly because of two reasons:

1) The duties in the letter did not match the duties in NOC 4012.
2) The letter missed the NOC 4012 lead statement.

 

[beh467]

Salem10, this is not for you. You don't need to repeat your "valuable opinions" on every post. Leave this forum.

Hey everyone else: One of my friends got a comment on the RA letter that "the letter does not distinguish her PhD research and her RA". So, I suggest you to make that explicit in your letters. We can claim only 20 hours/week for RA, whereas we easily work over 60 hours a week on average... You can easily argue that 40 hours per week is you working on your thesis, and 20 hours per week is RA.

By the way, I got a one-line confirmation email today saying "Your updated employment letter from XX was printed and attached to your file on the 15th of July, 2013". I had asked them if I needed to send the hard copy as well, which they didn't reply.But I guess the fact that it "was printed" means that they don't need me to send a hard copy. Any thoughts?

Your friend got this comment on the RA letter from Sydney or Ottawa?