OwnerOfTheTARDIS

Anatomical Pathology: Queens (Feb 16), Calgary (Feb 16), McGill (Feb 16), McMaster (Feb 16), Western (Feb 17), Manitoba (Feb 19), Alberta (Feb 22), UBC (Feb 22), Dalhousie (Feb 24), Université de Montreal (Feb 23), Université de Laval (Feb 23), Ottawa (Feb 26), MUN (Feb 26) Anesthesiology: NOSM (Feb 22), UBC (Feb 22), Alberta (Feb 23), Usask (Feb 25), Laval (Feb 26), Queen’s (Feb 27) Cardiac Surgery: Toronto (Feb 16), Manitoba (Feb 22), Alberta (Feb 23), Montreal (Feb 24), Ottawa (Feb 24) Dermatology: ULaval (Feb 23), Calgary (Feb 23), UdeM Montreal (Feb 25), Ottawa (Feb 28) Diagnostic Radiology: Dalhousie (Feb 18), McGill (Feb 19), Queen’s (Feb 23), Saskatchewan (Feb 23), Manitoba (Feb 23), MUN (Feb 24), Calgary (Feb 24), Montreal (Feb 24), Laval (Feb 24), McMaster (Feb 25), UBC (Feb 25), Alberta (Feb 26) Emergency Medicine: Ottawa (Feb 22), Queen's (Feb 22), UBC (Feb 25 -Phone call @12pm EST), Manitoba (Feb 25), University of Alberta (Feb 26) Family Medicine: Joint Ontario IMG (feb15), Joint Quebec Francophone Schools (Feb 16), McGill Châteauguay (Feb 19), UBC Family Medicine (Feb 19th), McGill Gatineau (Feb 19), McGill Montreal Site (Feb 20) Dalhousie (Feb 23), Alberta (Feb 23), U of T (Feb 23), McMaster CMG (Feb 24) Dalhousie IMG ( feb24) Alberta IMG (Feb 24) Memorial (Feb 25) Manitoba (Feb 25), NOSM (Feb 26), Queens (Feb 26), Ottawa (Feb 26), Saskatchewan (Feb 26) General Pathology: Calgary (Feb 9), Alberta (Feb 22), McMaster (Feb 23) General Surgery: MUN (Feb 9), Sherbrooke (Feb 18), McMaster Niagara Campus (Feb 20), McGill (Feb 21), Saskatchewan (23 Feb), Manitoba (Feb 23), Western (Feb 24), Calgary (Feb 24), Laval (Feb 25), Alberta (Feb 26), Dal (Feb 26), Montreal (Feb 26), NOSM (Feb 26), UBC (Feb 26) Hematological Pathology: Internal Medicine: McGill (Mar 1), Sherbrooke (Mar 1), Memorial (Mar 1) Medical Genetics and Genomics: Calgary(Feb 10), Université de Montreal(19 Feb) Medical Microbiology: Manitoba (Feb 11), Calgary (Feb 18) Neurology: Toronto (Feb 19), Manitoba (Feb 22), Sherbrooke (Feb 23), Queen's (Feb 24), Dalhousie (Feb 24), Calgary (Feb 24), McGill (Feb 24), Alberta (Feb 25), Western IMG (Feb 26), Ottawa (Feb 26), Montréal (Feb 26) Neurology - Paediatric: Alberta (Feb 9), McMaster (Feb 16), McGill (Feb 22), UBC (Feb 23), Ottawa (Feb 26) Neuropathology: Calgary (Feb 16), Toronto (Feb 26) Neurosurgery: Saskatchewan (Feb 11), Manitoba (Feb 19), UBC (Feb 22), Sherbrooke (Feb 22), Toronto (Feb 23), Ottawa (Feb 23), Calgary (Feb 24), McGill (Feb 25), Alberta (Feb 25), Western (Feb 25), McMaster (Feb 26) Nuclear Medicine: Sherbrooke (Feb 18), McGill (Feb 22), Manitoba (Feb 24), Montreal (Feb 28) Obstetrics and Gynaecology: Ottawa IMG (Feb 12), Alberta CMG (Feb 22), McGill (Feb 25), Toronto CMG (Feb 25), Saskatoon CMG (Feb 25), Manitoba CMG (Feb 26), UBC (Feb 26), Regina (Feb 26), Queen's (Feb 26), Laval (Feb 26), Calgary (Feb 27) Ophthalmology: Dalhousie (Feb 25), Saskatchewan (Feb 25), UBC (Feb 25), Alberta (Feb 25), Laval (Feb 26) Orthopaedic Surgery: Dalhousie (Feb 19), UAlberta (Feb 22), Memorial (Feb 23), Sherbrooke (Feb 23), Toronto (Feb 24), Toronto IMG (Feb 24), McGill (Feb 24), Laval (Feb 25), UdeM/Montreal (Feb 25), McMaster (Feb 25), NOSM (Feb 25), Saskatchewan (Feb 26), Manitoba (Feb 28) Otolaryngology: Toronto (Feb 22), McGill (Feb 23), Western (Feb 26), Alberta (Feb 26), Calgary (Feb 26), Laval (Feb 28) Pediatrics: Western IMG (Feb 24), Manitoba IMG (Feb 24), UBC IMG (Feb.24), McMaster IMG (feb 24), UOttawa IMG (Feb 24), Montreal (Feb 25), Memorial CMG (Feb 26), Dalhousie (Mar 1) Plastic Surgery: Manitoba (Feb 16), Ottawa (Feb 24), Toronto (Feb 24), Dalhousie (Feb 26), Western (Feb 25) PM&R: Calgary (Feb 11), Manitoba (Feb 16), Dalhousie (Feb 18), Queen's (Feb 19), Ottawa (Feb 19), Western (Feb 22), Saskatchewan (Feb 23), McMaster (Feb 23), Alberta (Feb 24), Toronto (Feb 24), UBC (Feb 25) Psychiatry: Manitoba (Feb 12), Memorial (Feb 17), McGill (Feb 17), Calgary (Feb 17), Toronto (Feb 19), Saskatoon (Feb 22), Regina (Feb 22), Sherbrooke - Moncton (Feb 22), Sherbrooke (Feb 22), UBC (Feb 22), Western (Feb 23), McMaster (Feb 23), Laval (Feb 23), NOSM (Feb 24), Alberta (Feb 24), Manitoba Winnipeg (Feb 25), Dalhousie (Feb 25), Ottawa (Feb. 26), Montreal (Feb 26), Ottawa Montfort (Feb 28) Public Health and PreventiveMedicine: Saskatchewan (Feb 9), Ottawa (Feb 21), Toronto (Feb 23), UBC (Feb 24), Alberta (Feb 24), Manitoba (Feb 25), McMaster (Feb 25) Radiation Oncology: Calgary (Feb 9), Alberta (Feb 10), Montreal (Feb 10), McMaster(Feb 12), UBC (Feb 17), McGill (Feb 26), Laval (Feb 28), Toronto (Feb 28) Urology: Montreal (Feb 23), Alberta (Feb 24), McMaster (Feb 25), Western (Feb 26), Ottawa (Feb 26), Manitoba (Feb 26) Vascular Surgery: Manitoba (Feb 16th), Western (Feb 17th), Montreal (Feb 23)

As a 4th year UBC Med student, I don’t think there is any chance that this will actually happen for one reason: it makes no sense. It would take minimum 8-10 years to produce a single independent doctor if they started developing a new medical school today, compared to 2 years if they increased the number of residency seats and accepted more highly qualified IMGs. Secondly, there are barely enough residencies for current graduates and believe me, you don’t want to be >100k in debt in 4th year and scared you won’t match. Thirdly, UBC is already poised to fill the need for increased seats in Med school. In addition to having the IMP, SMP, and NMP, they are already in negotiations with Fraser Health to create a Fraser program, in which students in VFMP would be split and a subset complete their core clerkship (3rd year) based entirely out of the Fraser (expanding the number of sites that can be utilized within a reasonable commute). Finally, in 4th year there are already barely enough electives, especially in certain specialties likefamily practice. During covid, the faculty has been extremely active working with divisions of family practice, hospitals and specialists to increase elective capacity but there still aren’t enough electives in many disciplines. Even in 1st and 2nd year, they struggle to find enough preceptors. As much as it is difficult to hear for pre-meds, BC just lacks capacity to start a new med school without reciprocally reducing capacity at UBC. This is why I think it was just an election promise full of buzz words that won’t turn in to anything in the near future. Maybe more residency seats, hopefully.

I don't think this is completely accurate. Winter break is usually only 2 weeks from my understanding. It's actually extremely stressful for students moving to distributed sites. It was only 3 weeks this year because of the way the holidays landed - we would have either been in class until Dec. 21st or had to start class on Dec 30th (a Wednesday), so they gave us 3 weeks at December but took one week away from summer. There's a possibility that there will always be 3 weeks going forward (I was part of submitting a complaint that 2 weeks was not enough time for distributees to move, unpack, and relax a bit for the holidays), but last I heard from faculty, 2 weeks was still standard. No reading break. Sometimes exams will be on weekends. We only get official government holidays off, but then they make you come in early Tuesday morning when you're supposed to have study time. The Iron Bank always gets its due.

It doesn't differentiate, but often OOP are more likely to get in because 1) a higher percentage of accepted OOP people decline their offer, freeing up space within the 10% available OOP seats and 2) the OOP people on the waitlist tend to have stronger overall applications, otherwise they wouldn't have made the interview stage.

I was honestly shocked by how much people drank in med school and how many social activities revolved around drinking/partying. I enjoy a good beer or cider, but generally dislike getting drunk and at times felt a bit awkward - not really ostracized because people were nice and there wasn't too much pressure for me to join in drinking, but it was a bit awkward at our first midterm after party when the majority of people were pretty drunk by 9pm and I was still sober. No judgement, just not my scene. There can also be some pressure to spend money, since a lot of social activity can revolve around eating out. HOWEVER!!! Once you get to know people, people are really nice and I had lots of fun in other ways. Even if you want to ski/hike and haven't made friends yet who want to go with you, just send a message to the facebook group and you'll find lots of offers to join other people who are into the same stuff. I think if you don't reach out to people, the class can seem clique because people do naturally form friend groups, but whenever I have asked to join something even with people I didn't know well, I've been welcomed really openly (and I consider myself moderately introverted).

The semester I spent in Vancouver I didn't get a car (really needed one once I got to the IMP, but that's a different story). I strongly recommend not buying a car. Sign up for either Evo/Car2Go AND either Modo/Zipcar. I'll explain why: Evo/Car2Go are one way car shares. You can pick it up and then leave it anywhere within the "home zone" (most of Vancouver, part of North Van, and part of New West - check the online map) and it's ~$15 an hour. Modo/Zipcar are return car shares - you have to put the car back exactly where you picked it up, but it's only $8 per hour. So if you want to drive from UBC to downtown and then stay all day, it's way cheaper to take Evo/Car2Go. If you are just going to pick up something from the store or go to an appointment and then return home, it's cheaper to take Modo/Zipcar. I personally used Evo and Modo and highly vouch for both of them. I almost never took the bus and always took an Evo to clin skills/family practice, went downtown ~once a week, and twice took a modo to get to medical appointments all the way in Maple Ridge - it basically felt like having my own car. I spent less than $300 over the semester, which as I recall was about the price of a parking pass at UBC. Keep in mind that you don't have to pay for insurance or gas or the upfront cost of a car. I also highly recommend getting groceries online. Save-On has online shopping - I usually just place my order and pick it up next day after class (free) or during exam season pay for delivery ($4-10, depending on the time of day I want it delivered). It saves so much time and has changed my life.

I hope it's ok if I hop on @casajayo's post. Each week is CBL Monday Wednesday Friday from 8-10. Lectures M, W, F morning. FoS on M afternoon (until it becomes FLEX in spring). Either lecture or lab W/F afternoons. Either clinical skills or family practice T/Th afternoons (half the class will have FP on Tuesday with clin skills on Th and half the class will be the opposite). T/Th mornings are generally free for personal/study time, but sometimes there are interprofessional or indigenous cultural sensitivity sessions during that time. After a long weekend, they almost always make you come in on Tuesday morning. The topic of the week is fairly random - you can go from pregnancy to immunology to GI, but sometimes you'll get 2 or 3 weeks in a row on a related topic. CBL scenarios are specific to the week theme. I honestly think the most challenging part of med school is self-motivating. It is generally easy to pass - you only need a cumulative 60% on exams (only ~5 people fail each semester and have to do a make up exam) - but now that I'm heading into clerkship, I'm brushing up on a lot of stuff I breezed over in year 1. My studying approach has also changed a lot - I used to go to every lecture and now I hardly ever go. A lot of lectures are recorded, but even if they are not, the slides are posted and I could study way more efficiently from just slides or watching recordings on 1.6x speed. It helped me stay focused (I get so bored/distracted at regular lecture speed) and I was more efficient so I didn't need to study at all outside normal school hours and only ~ 3-4 hours on the weekend, depending on how close to exams we were. I personally recommend setting aside either Saturday or Sunday to be a school-free day. It's easy to get very wrapped up in med school and I found that I got a better mental break from having a full day off, rather than splitting my weekend work onto both days. Exams include: Fall Year 1: midterm around October that covers the first 6-8 weeks. Roughly 100 questions, MCQ. Finals: an MCQ that covers the second half of the semester a lab exam (radiology, histology, anatomy) a FoS (foundations of scholarship) MCQ a formative (not for marks) OSCE Spring Year 1: a midterm Finals: an MCQ that covers the second half of the semester a lab exam (radiology, histology, anatomy) a summative (for marks) OSCE FoS exam (thanks to @casjayo for correcting me on the updated schedule!) Year 2 is pretty similar with midterms and final MCQ and lab exams and a summative OSCE in spring, but there is no FoS or formative OSCE. My apologies for this massive wall of text, hope some of it is helpful, and I'm sure @casajayo may have more recent insight, given that they change the curriculum year to year.

Probably plan to write at the end of Year 2. UWorld and First Aid are amazing (haven't used Pathoma), but most importantly start studying early. If you did just a half hour a day starting beginning of year 2, and then buckled down pretty intensely for 1 month or so at the end of year 2 before writing it, you'd probably be in a decent position if you're not too worried about score. I gave myself approximately one month to study total and I want to die. If you want to aim for a better score, I think going through First Aid once between 1st and 2nd year, and then working through UWorld, First Aid (again), and maybe Pathoma during 2nd year we be a decent approach.

No, it means that their scores are ineligible for admission to a ‘regular’ seat. The committee that oversees rural admissions can basically do whatever they want, so if someone has an amazing rural application but their scores are just below the regular cutoff, the committee can choose to interview them anyway. Even if you didn’t get an email, you’re still hypothetically in the running for an NMP seat, if that’s what you want. My hypothesis (unconfirmed) is that it is their method of filling the NMP with good quality rural candidates, since NMP is by far the least popular site and the rural seats in SMP and IMP are pretty easy to fill.

I don’t know exactly how the process works, but I’ve literally seen the email a current classmate got that said they were only being considered for NMP. So there’s at least one person in my class who was accepted after receiving the same email good luck @bluewhale!

NMP is entirely designated rural, SMP has about 10/32 seats designated rural. The 510 guy was waitlisted on his first app and then rejected from the wait list with a below average interview, but presumably wouldn’t have been waitlisted at all if they didn’t consider him admissible. No idea whether he improved or how the other’s interviews went. Keep in mind that I’m IMP and generally got to know other distributies far better than any VFMP people. I haven’t mentioned any VFMP scores because I don’t know any - not because they were all super high. The 508 SMP might have been.

My friend had a 510 (124 cars) and another had a 512 and both got into NMP. A first semester roommate got into SMP with a 508. Definitely not an ideal score, but not unreasonable.

Beyond meeting the cutoffs, MCAT is only evaluated post-interview so if you don’t get an interview, it’s not looked at.

A laptop and OneNote worked perfectly for my first year. I personally feel that there is way too much info and way too many slides to effectively take notes by hand, at least at UBC which has a large lecture component. But it probably depends on the person and school.

I am definitely no expert, but did a couple research review papers in undergrad (just coursework, not published). My impression were: that there is fairly strong evidence that cannabis can significantly improve patients ability to cope with pain and nausea while receiving chemotherapy, but any other claims about its usefulness are anecdotal and poorly supported in the primary literature. Smoking cannabis is carcinogenic and a lot of research strongly supports associations between cannabis use and various mental health disorders (particularly depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder). Some causal evidence exists, but there really needs to be more longitudinal research done to truly support causation as opposed to correlation. Finally, I recall some evidence that cannabis stunts development of the prefrontal cortex and executive function in users under ~age 25. If you're at university, try using the libraries research center to look for peer reviewed articles - systematic review and meta-analysis are a good place to start. If you're not in university, Google Scholar can help you find some peer reviewed open access journals.