topomax

I agree that you shouldn't choose the school just based on money and most of us were not just thinking about debt or tuition when recommending McGill to OP. If McGill only offered half the clinical experience compared to uoft or Western for half the price then I wouldn't really recommend McGill as strongly but from what I am learning about McGill from these senior students it seems that they get the same if not more clincal exp in some areas than UofT for 1/2 the price ... and I was talking to a Western friend and it seems like their clinical exp is pretty similar to UofT. I asked one of my Western friend and he said that in 1st year, all you are doing is assisting the upper years which is something you do in UofT as well. While it is a great experience to see the upper years do dental work and assist them, in the grand scheme of things you get most of your clinical skills from your own patients and the pre-clinical mannequin practice you do. At Western and UofT in 2nd year, you get to have your own patients (~4-6) the whole year and you do some scaling and probing. I guess this may be some sort of head start to clinic compared to McGill but do those 4-6 scaling patients make UofT and Western students much better than McGill students - not really and is that worth the extra money you spend at Western and UofT - not really imo. You can easily get that exp later as its only scaling. The last two years of clinic for any dental school is going to feel rushed because that's when you have to finish all your credits to graduate and the transition into 3rd year clinic is not that pretty in any school I imagine - it wasn't for UofT. Can't speak for how rough it is in McGill though, but it seems from previous posts from actual Mcgill students they are getting really good clinical experience. The clinical experience that you get in 3rd and 4th years are what really matters not what you start in 1st or 2nd year - they aren't missing out on much. Also, the fact that they accept a lot of McGill students to do residency is amazing - I would love to do residency to get more experience after school but it's so competitive in toronto that i'm forced to apply to the states as well.

Ohh i thought you meant you have to do 12 root canal treatments (like 12 teeth) as a minimum haha. ya 12 canals sounds more reasonable.

dam minimum 12 root canals.. UofT minimum is 5 teeth (only one of them has to be a molar) and even then people have a hard time finishing our endo credits.

Hello 3rd year student at UofT. If you can get a similar clinical and didactic experience for almost half the cost and live in an amazing city like montreal then I feel like that's a pretty good choice. I went to UofT mainly because my family and friends were in Toronto, but I think I would have went to McGill back then if I knew how cheap it was... Didactic wise: I feel like dental school is pretty heavy didactically anywhere you go but a pass/fail would have been amazing because one of the largest sources of stress for me in school was the letter grade system. Being in a competitive place like UofT, everyone, whether you want to specialize or not, can't help but feel stressed out unnecessarily when one of your friends ask you how you did or you see on your transcript that you are like 2 -3letter grades below the class avg. However, there are some benefits though. I felt more motivated to study harder so that I won't get shit on in class. I doubt I would have been motivated to study as hard if it was just pass/fail. At some point (around 3rd year) I stopped caring too much about grades anyways ... too much anxiety for me. Clinically: This is just a luck of the draw. At uoft, from what I see, most people can get the minimum credits required to graduate on time but its gonna be way harder for some than others depending on what kind of patients you get. Our pediatric clinics this year has been pretty dead - most people in my session only saw 1-2 kids and when we do we have to share them. Imagine as a kid having 4 students take turn putting 1 sealant on each of your molars - luckily the kid was pretty chill. Maybe other students from other schools can comment but they say this is mainly due to the fact that private dentists are now offering healthy smiles program to their pediatric patients so their services are covered. I don't blame the parents for choosing to go to private dentists tbh but it really does cut into our pediatric clinical experience (other students on other days saw way more kids though). Instructor quality varies a lot too and this is luck of the draw as well. Some instructors i avoided like the plague.. and others are amazing at what they do and they will teach you a lot. One of huge benefits of being at UofT is that if you get a really complex patient then there will be grad programs to help you out or take care of your patient. Overall, UofT is a mixed bag of happiness (mainly from the amazing friends I met), tears, some blood (a lot of times not yours hopefully), and at the end of the day I feel like most students will come out of any dental school saying the same thing. However, what is NOT the same is the amount of debt you will will come out of so if being in a lot of debt scares you then I would just go to Mcgill (of course assuming you are okay with moving away from fam, and you like the city itself) if you are offered admissions there since didactic and clinical is pretty similar wherever you go and you have to be lucky a lot of times in dental school. Also you do most of your learning outside of dental school anyways, just need to get that foundation in school first.

Now that Queen's uses purely letter grades A+ (90-100) A (85-89) A- (80-84) - would our conversion chart just follow the first chart " five or more passing grades with +/-" ?? Thanks

Hey guys, So the new cutoffs for UofT is 125 for each section I believe - and my MCAT2015 score is: 513 (89%) - 129(93%)/124(44%)/129(93%)/131(98%). I guess I am one of those unbalanced and unfortunate Canadian school appliers but I was wondering if UofT would automatically reject my application due to my CARS score... Also I am a Master's student and was wondering if they lowered the cutoff for those with a Masters degree - I think I heard that somewhere. I am now looking towards applying to the states and if anyone knows of any schools that places more emphasis on overall and not so much on verbal I would very much appreciate the heads up. Thank you,