Will my creating and hosting a popular online educational website improve my odds of admission to grad school? I created a website 2 years ago; it's a non profit educational website, it's mostly like udemy but a tiny version. It's all free because where I come from they're really a low income community so I want to benefit them with what knowledge I have. I have uploaded many courses (only relevant to my field and area of expertise) and it has an exam; if you pass it you get a certificate of completion and it has a signature of my area of expertise syndicate to accredit it. I also used to do seminars on weekly basis and I have many many students who reviewed my course and put 5 stars on it and attended my seminars.
For some reasons I stopped and now I will apply to a master's degree in 10 months.. The unfortunate thing: where I come from there are no undergraduate research opportunities and I'm really afraid I won't get accepted due to lack of experience. However, I decided to do review articles to boost my abilities but the question is:
Should I really make a little bit of time and invest it to make my website grow and keep on doing this, because it positively influences and helps me in my application to add a bonus or make my CV look decent, or is it useless and a waste of money and time and should I leave it? I'm not even sure if this counts as teaching experience.
My field is pharmacy and my country is Canada.
First, I am neither Canadian nor a pharmacist, so take my advice for what it's worth.
From what I can tell, you website / seminar series is already well developed, has been used by many students, and is quite popular. I will not speculate what weight this will carry toward graduate admissions. But whatever this weight is, I suspect it will not change much if you put additional time/effort into further development. You already get credit for &quot;having built an impressive educational website&quot;, so there is not much room for improvement in this area.
On the other hand, I would hesitate to say that any further work would be &quot;a waste of money and time.&quot; It sounds like you are providing a great service to the community, learning a lot, and perhaps even having fun. It is unusual for &quot;outreach&quot; initiatives to be this successful, so I would not discourage you from continuing if you were inclined to do so.