MrWesting

Maybe you should take a moment yourself to reflect on why you feel the need to lash out against a fellow classmate like this on an anonymous message board. Yes - many of us are on edge about getting less interviews than we had hoped for, but direct your frustration towards this shitty system rather than those that were fortunate enough to have more luck. You're making a lot of assumptions about the intent behind certain posts, when the reality is that this is a stressful situation for everyone involved.

Although I totally agree that the Vancouver market is brutal, I just want to jump in here to provide a bit of perspective. How much rent you pay is really going to depend on where you want to live and how nice/new of a building you want to live in. There are a good number of older units in Fairview and Mt. Pleasant (close to VGH) that range from $1300-1600. You can also likely find a good place for under the average in Kitsilano and the West End if you hunt around a bit. Just did a quick Craigslist search, and found a large 1-br basement suite for $1300, literally one block away from VGH. If you want to live in Yaletown though - yeah you're going to have to pay for it. But a lot of the neighborhoods I listed above have lots of great character themselves.

Are there reliable stats available for the average number of interviews CMGs actually attended on CaRMS tours in years past? With everything being virtual, there is very little disincentive to attend every interview that you receive an invitation for, so long as the scheduling lines up. I personally know of a couple classmates who applied quite broadly, and will probably attend 13+ interviews during the interview period. I can imagine that number may seem excessive for some people, particularly those who are feeling the disappointment of not receiving interviews today. But the process and outcomes seem so opaque and uncertain, especially this year. I know that our school explicitly choose not to comment on how many interviews could be considered "enough", leaving it up to the personal choice of each student. During the American match, there was talk about the problem of "interview hoarding". I wonder to what extent this may be a factor at play this year for CaRMS.

I would add that this would be the exception, not the rule though. Word from the top is that we will likely be included in BC's "second wave" of HCW vaccinations, hopefully happening in Feb/March of this year. We are allowed to accept a vaccination if offered though, whether that is because of a momentary vaccine surplus, or different site-specific policies.

First and foremost I would consider where you could see yourself happy for the next three+ years. My impression has definitely been that all of the different programs offer a very comparable education, aside from slight differences. What the distributed programs possibly lose out slightly with access to highly subspecialized clinical/research experiences, you can easily argue that they make up for it with smaller group teaching and more opportunities intrinsic to the smaller class and medical community at their site. The distributed sites generally seem to have a more cohesive and connected culture than the larger amorphous VFMP program (barring some exceptions), but I would argue that in VFMP you also have great opportunities to "find your people" within the larger class, and a wider range of in-person extracurricular opportunities. Everyone has the opportunity to do the same fourth year electives, which is where one gets most of their references letters and a significant amount of networking opportunities. To be honest, I remember stressing the choice between these sites years ago when I was in the same position. If you do a little introspection and rank according to what feels like a best fit with your personality, you can't go wrong. No choice alone is guaranteed to substantially impact your career prospects one way or another. I ultimately chose VFMP, but I could have easily been happy at a distributed site.

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