Persephone

Hey Manitoba folks, does anyone know if there is a specific rep or reps in Winnipeg that handle LoC for medical students and residents at Scotiabank? I am having a hard time finding this information.

If you want to delay doing this for a bit, you can request interest only payments for 6 months on your gov't student loans. While the interest is paused until March 2023, this means very low payments (b/c neither portion of my gov't loans are accruing interest right now, being from BC, I am paying $10/month, this will vary depending on your provincial loan origin). After that you get a reduced monthly repayment amount for 2 years. Mine reduced by about 40%/month. After the 6 months of interest only payments it may make more sense to consolidate. I don't have the room on my LoC to do that unfortunately, but if it makes sense for you I cannot see why not. Just do your math well or talk to a financial advisor!

My goal for the first few years at least of residency is to pay the interest monthly on the LoC. My gov't loans are currently not racking up interest (federal portion is paused on interest till Mar 2023 and I am with BC who has permanently stopped student loan interest for my provincial portion).

Oh wow, that's a huge change. I would guess they had too many requests last year then.

One other thing I would do, if you haven't already, is request your reference letters from CaRMS. They have to send them to you. Then you can see if those were at all a part of not matching and you can get new references if needed for 2nd cycle or next year. I would do it today, as many other unmatched applicants will be doing the same. You send an email request to their help @ carms dot ca email address to request them. You can also request CASPer scores this way if those were a part of any of your applications.

Anecdotally, all of my friends matched to their top FM sites. Can't say what the odds are though. Good chances of matching to one of your top 3 however.

I have heard of new psychiatry staff paying off their maxed out LoCs ($300k) plus government student loans in ~5 years after becoming staff. $62k really is nothing. You'll be in a great position post residency

According to CaRMS' own website, you should absolutely rank programs that you applied to but didn't rank you. You should also rank them in your true preference, regardless of whether they interviewed you or not. If a school does not rank you, you will simply have your next choice that you were ranked by a program for considered your 1st choice. There is no downside in doing this, the way the algorithm works.

Good luck with this cycle!

I don't have a lot to add other than as someone who loves psychiatry, I found being an observing medical student on zoom calls with patients felt like torture, especially when my preceptor made it difficult to meaningfully participate. I now have a psychotherapy patient I see over zoom and I find it a lot better than in medical school. But in residency most things are in person, especially inpatient units. I find most aspects of psychiatry energizing, while I found only a few aspects of FM energizing, and not enough to win me over to that side. As a FM doc you can bill for GP psychotherapy (at least in Ontario) and run a practice that is largely psychotherapy based if you wish. I know of a FM doc in Ontario who does that as his practice in combination with addictions medicine. So it's totally possible. He spent a small proportion of his time doing general medicine. Does every IMG placement have a ROS attached to it? I was under the impression only some did, but I do not know the ins and outs of that at all!

But generally, no, they don't reach out after interviews. I did not experience this and no one else I know experienced this.

I am not sure if it breaches any rules to reach out to an individual applicants per se, but if they were to ask the applicant how they were ranking their program that would be a clear rule violation.

All the programs I interviewed at were explicit about not using them to evaluate us. However, if you do anything red flaggy that might get you ranked lower. Just be professional during them. I found some more useful than others, but I did like to show my face and ask at least one question if I had one so that I was maybe more memorable.

There's no harm in not doing it post-interview. I know none of my friends who matched to their top FM program choices emailed to say thank you afterwards. I didn't either for psych. It's not an expected practice in Canada.

Asynchronous means you are being recorded and someone will review your responses later. There won't be an interviewer present with you while you are answering interview questions. My assumption is the questions will typically not be individualized in nature. I have not done one personally, only heard about them from others from last year.