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Success Stories- Non Trad Style!


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Awesome story Michelle and good for you.

 

I hear you on the injuries - football, hockey and bodybuilding here and due to various injuries in the past year I've been in the same boat as you. It is very depressing when you can't do the things you used to be able to do at the level which you're used to doing it.

 

I agree with your comment about not being ready to do this 5 years ago. Life is an excellent teacher and you will just know when the time is right for certain things. I truly believe everything happens for a reason :)

 

Good luck to you!

 

Thank you! I'm sorry to hear about your injuries too :(

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Well, I got accepted to U of C med this morning.

 

Didn't want to be a doctor like my parents in high school so I never even took biology, I ended up dropping it for a mechanics course. I graduated high school with a < 80% average, went to SAIT and got a diploma in automotive service technology. Worked in the trade for about a year and a half before realizing it wasn't as rewarding as I hoped, while my parents both had very rewarding jobs in healthcare that provided well for our family sooo....

 

Over the course of 1 week I changed jobs to work at a shop that allowed me to go back to school, started upgrading courses since I never took biology in high school AND met my wife. One year later, I finished my apprenticeship in automotives, was engaged to my (now) wife and going to my first classes at U of C. Worked hard and got good grades, started providing automotive help to the ladies of a women's shelter did some other volunteer stuff, but most of it dropped off recently due to my wife getting pregnant and me wanting to spend more time with her.

 

As of right now I am 25, my wife is 19 weeks pregnant (ultrasound is today, on the same day as my acceptance!) and I can not wait until July 27 to meet the rest of my class!

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I finally got the acceptance letter from one of the med school yesterday. For me, it has been a long and ardous journey, 10 yrs to be exact since the first time that I applied to a med school. Along the way, I am blessed with encouragements from friends, colleagues, people from this forum, for that, I can't thank them enough. I want to take this opportunity to share my story and to encourage those who has been trying for the past several years to not giving up your dream.

 

First time I applied to med school was back in 2000, when most of the "traditional" applicants were still in either elementary school / Juniour high. I didn't get any interview invites from any of the schools that I applied to; however, it wasn't much a surprise, given my marks weren't competitive enough. I applied once again in 2001 with similar result. Then I decided to do a MSc. degree, hoping that this would help to strenghten my application in the future. After 2 yrs hiatus from the application cycle, I applied to both med and dent in 2003. I only got as far as receiving interviews from UWO and UT dentistry that year. I went back to Taiwan to work as a research assistant for a while. At that time, I started to really worry about my future.

I was lucky enough to be accepted into UBC Dent the next year. At that time, I was just happy to land a career with good income and a rather prestigeous title, irregardless whether it would be a career that I would truly enjoy in doing. Naive at that point, it took me 2 years to come to realization that something is not right. At 2007, I found that dentistry and I were just not compatible. The combined curriculum offered at UBC further strengthened my desire in wanting to pursue medicine.

 

Dropping out from dentistry wasn't an easy choice, especially when your asian parents considered to disown you and wanted to choke you to death for exchanging a great career with more uncertainty. Or when some of your friends started doubting you and think you are being unrealistic about the whole medical school thing. Strains on the relationship with the love one was also significant. At that point, life seems to spiralling downward out of control faster than I can handle. However, thanks for the support from my dentistry friends and other long-time friends, I was able to gather myself up and focus on what I have to do.

 

I applied to med again in 2007 while working as a research assistant, that year, I received my first ever medical school interview. Having high hope for myself that year, I was devastated when I was rejected post-interview. However, since I have always wanted to work in healthcare-related field, that same year, I also applied to pharmacy, and was fortunate enough to be accepted into the pharmacy program in Toronto. I came to acceptance at that point, if I can never get accepted into medicine, at least, I would be happy to work as a pharmacist as a career. I continued to apply to med while studying in pharmacy; however, I kept receiving the same rejections letters year after year. It just seemed that I am not the right fit for any of the medical school that I interviewed with. This past year was supposedly my very last year in applying for medical school admission. It just comes to the point that I lost all the hope of ever getting into medicine, and getting tired from the whole application process. The whole motivation and desire are just not here anymore. But fortunately, I am finally able to accomplish what I set out to do 10 years ago.

 

I know it is never easy in getting rejection letters, I have all sorts from different medical schools across Canada. However, you just cant lose hope and lose sight on what you want to accomplish when you first started on this journey. If you think medicine is right for you and you will be a great physician, then you just have to work hard and make yourself a better candidate for people to see. Most importantly, you have to believe in yourself. There will always be naysayers out there who try to sway your confidence; however, be grateful for the comments they make, and use those as the motivations to reach your goal. Best of luck to those who are in the same boat as I once was. Dont ever lose hope. Keep the faith.

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Wow, Chubby, you must have such awesome dentistry friends... :P

 

I just realized it was my first time hearing the entire story.

 

I finally got the acceptance letter from one of the med school yesterday. For me, it has been a long and ardous journey, 10 yrs to be exact since the first time that I applied to a med school. Along the way, I am blessed with encouragements from friends, colleagues, people from this forum, for that, I can't thank them enough. I want to take this opportunity to share my story and to encourage those who has been trying for the past several years to not giving up your dream.

 

First time I applied to med school was back in 2000, when most of the "traditional" applicants were still in either elementary school / Juniour high. I didn't get any interview invites from any of the schools that I applied to; however, it wasn't much a surprise, given my marks weren't competitive enough. I applied once again in 2001 with similar result. Then I decided to do a MSc. degree, hoping that this would help to strenghten my application in the future. After 2 yrs hiatus from the application cycle, I applied to both med and dent in 2003. I only got as far as receiving interviews from UWO and UT dentistry that year. I went back to Taiwan to work as a research assistant for a while. At that time, I started to really worry about my future.

I was lucky enough to be accepted into UBC Dent the next year. At that time, I was just happy to land a career with good income and a rather prestigeous title, irregardless whether it would be a career that I would truly enjoy in doing. Naive at that point, it took me 2 years to come to realization that something is not right. At 2007, I found that dentistry and I were just not compatible. The combined curriculum offered at UBC further strengthened my desire in wanting to pursue medicine.

 

Dropping out from dentistry wasn't an easy choice, especially when your asian parents considered to disown you and wanted to choke you to death for exchanging a great career with more uncertainty. Or when some of your friends started doubting you and think you are being unrealistic about the whole medical school thing. Strains on the relationship with the love one was also significant. At that point, life seems to spiralling downward out of control faster than I can handle. However, thanks for the support from my dentistry friends and other long-time friends, I was able to gather myself up and focus on what I have to do.

 

I applied to med again in 2007 while working as a research assistant, that year, I received my first ever medical school interview. Having high hope for myself that year, I was devastated when I was rejected post-interview. However, since I have always wanted to work in healthcare-related field, that same year, I also applied to pharmacy, and was fortunate enough to be accepted into the pharmacy program in Toronto. I came to acceptance at that point, if I can never get accepted into medicine, at least, I would be happy to work as a pharmacist as a career. I continued to apply to med while studying in pharmacy; however, I kept receiving the same rejections letters year after year. It just seemed that I am not the right fit for any of the medical school that I interviewed with. This past year was supposedly my very last year in applying for medical school admission. It just comes to the point that I lost all the hope of ever getting into medicine, and getting tired from the whole application process. The whole motivation and desire are just not here anymore. But fortunately, I am finally able to accomplish what I set out to do 10 years ago.

 

I know it is never easy in getting rejection letters, I have all sorts from different medical schools across Canada. However, you just cant lose hope and lose sight on what you want to accomplish when you first started on this journey. If you think medicine is right for you and you will be a great physician, then you just have to work hard and make yourself a better candidate for people to see. Most importantly, you have to believe in yourself. There will always be naysayers out there who try to sway your confidence; however, be grateful for the comments they make, and use those as the motivations to reach your goal. Best of luck to those who are in the same boat as I once was. Dont ever lose hope. Keep the faith.

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It's probably time to add my story to the list.

 

Started school in 2000. I majored in physics/astronomy and ended up minoring in math. I was considering medicine when I first started, along with many other things (I wasn't one of those people who knew I wanted to be a doctor when I was 4 years old and there were a lot of different things I was interested in). My first year I ended up with a 2.1 GPA. The biggest reason for that is that I started getting sick all the time. It turned out that I had celiac disease, although I didn't find that out until 8 years later. I eventually figured out how to function and do better in school despite being sick all the time (and now that I'm not sick all the time, I'm amazed at how much easier it is to do stuff!), but I figured I could probably cross medicine, law, etc off my list of possibilities. Plus the crazy competitive pre-meds kind of freaked me out.

 

So I started to get really into astronomy research and my profs told me I should go to grad school, so I did. I didn't obsess too much about grades because people told me my grades were good enough and that I should spend my time on research. I had about a 3.0 GPA when I finished undergrad (which took 5 years, including 4 summers, and I worked 20 hours a week the entire time). There are quite a few Ds and Fs and Cs on my transcript. I did take a brief detour into double majoring in math for a while when I decided I was going to be a cryptographer and work for some top secret government agency, but after getting a C- in one especially horrible math class when I needed at least a C+ for it to count for the major ended that idea. The idea of retaking that class made me want die.

 

So I did a master's degree, which was pretty fun. Then I started my PhD at a new school, which was not so fun. Pretty bad at first, actually. I just graduated on Friday, I defended on March 31, and up until about April 21 while I was working on revisions, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to finish. Even after I passed my defense I thought the revisions would never end. It was really kind of awful, and it made me think the whole astronomy as a career idea. About 2 years ago, I started looking into alternatives like library science or teaching high school. Then one day I was talking to my mom on the phone and telling her about all of this and she was like, "Why don't you apply to med school? You used to talk about applying to med school." And I was like, "You don't know anything about med school! I can't get in! I never took organic chemistry or any of those classes, and my GPA is too low!" Thinking about it actually used to make me kind of angry, because I've taught a lot of physics labs that pre-meds take and seen some pretty lazy and awful people get in to med school (but if someone who had me as a lab instructor is reading this, I'm not talking about you! Trust me on that. If you're on here, you're one of the good ones). I used to work in a home for disabled adults doing patient care stuff, and I really loved that job which made me wish I could apply to med school, and it made me mad that people that took nothing but bird courses and cheated their way through got in when I didn't even have a chance (or so I thought).

 

So anyway, after that conversation with my mom, I decided to go online and just find out about applying to med school. Much to my surprise, I discovered that I might actually have a chance at some places, like UofC. And all of a sudden the idea just made sense. I went to lunch with some people from my department and I was like, "Hey, guess what? I'm going to apply to med school when I finish this stupid PhD!" And they had been hearing a new career plan from me every day for about a month, so they didn't think I was serious. But I was. And much to my surprise, I got in.

 

These were my stats when I applied:

-In-province for Alberta

-3.0 undergrad GPA (several failed courses)

-35N MCAT

-Master's degree (3.7 GPA)

-3/4 through a PhD (3.7 GPA)

-5 conference presentations

-2 publications (not first author)

-A bunch of work experience, some healthcare related

-A bunch of random volunteer work, some healthcare related (but no typical hospital volunteering)

-Did not get a letter of recommendation from my PhD supervisor because I felt like other people would write better ones

-Did not use my illness during undergrad as an extenuating circumstance to explain my low GPA because I felt like that would be drawing too much attention to the fact that I had a low GPA.

 

So don't give up even if you think you'll never get in. The only way you'll never get in is if you don't apply. You have nothing to lose by trying.

 

Edit: Just realized that this was my 666th post! Awesome!

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Thanks for sharing that! I'm very interested in this idea of not using your supervisor for a reference letter... I'm in the midst of a master's degree and not sure I want to ask my supervisor to write one :confused: I've heard he's given poor references in the past.

 

Well, what I ended up doing was using three profs who I felt knew me a lot better and would be able to write better letters (and who had actually written me letters to get into that PhD program). One of them had been my master's supervisor, the others were just profs I had TAed for for several years and done other stuff with. I think it's better to not have a letter from your supervisor than to have a bad one. One thing that might work for you is to get one of your other committee members to write one of your letters, if you think you can get a good letter from one of them.

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Guess I'll contribute as well. I guess I'm non-traditional but not as non-traditional as some :-)

 

When finishing up high school I was considering careers in international development. While I was accepted to schools like UoT, York and Waterloo, I decided to take 2 years off and taught English in China. After that I felt the push to go back to school (even though I wasn't really mentally prepared for it). I decided to pursue kinesiology even though I had never taken high school biology (I took low level university bio classes via correspondence to get in). As I pursued my hk undergrad I realized I was really fascinated with not only anatomy and physiology but the science behind everything so I decided to pursue a biochemistry degree as well.

 

I had never taken high school calculus nor senior level high school physics or chemistry. Fortunately, by doing the 2 degrees concurrently I was able to spread out the classes I anticipated to have more difficulty with.

 

In the mean time I was also working as a personal trainer/ group fitness instructor/ cardiac rehab trainer thinking of pursuing exercise physiology. I also considered medicine off and on for a few years but I was very naive to the process. It wasn't until I spent more time working with seniors with chronic diseases that I realized that medicine was my true calling.

 

Fortunately Im the type of person who, if I like something, I'll work hard at it. Unfortunately, that also meant that if I didn't like a class, I didn't work at it at all. So in my first 3 years I had a lot of A/A+ but also Bs and Cs.

 

Even in my 4th year of university (at which point I decided I was going to pursue medicine), I got a C in physics, mainly because I had yet to master the study and organizational skills to do well in a full course load and/or overload (I took overloads to finish my 2 degrees sooner). Ended up with a 3.68 that year :-( while finishing up my hk degree requirements. I ALSO REALIZED THAT IF THERE'S A CLASS YOU THINK YOU MAY STRUGGLE IN , TAKE IT IN THE SUMMER!!

 

Luckily I was able to do well my subsequent 2 years: 3.9 and a 3.95 this past year and pretty well on the MCAT(37Q). I got an interview to Western (with the potential for a conditional offer), which I was counting on. I also applied to Queen's and UoT just for fun and unexpectedly got in to Queen's (my first choice school because I can live with my brother in Kingston).

 

Looking back I really should have applied to more schools, I expected to be a shoe in to UWO because I had SWOMEN status, but ended up only being normal WL there.

 

maybe this can help some of you out for comparison purposes:

cGPA = 3.6 (I've taken 70 undergraduate classes!! lol) I don't think I qualified for UoT weighing

2 year Queen's = 3.79

1 year UWO = 3.9 (I'm assuming UWO only looked at this one year considering that they state they will only look at the second degree and my 4th year of hk was only a 3.68)

MCAT = 11/11/15 Q

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It's probably time to add my story to the list.

 

Started school in 2000. I majored in physics/astronomy and ended up minoring in math. I was considering medicine when I first started, along with many other things (I wasn't one of those people who knew I wanted to be a doctor when I was 4 years old and there were a lot of different things I was interested in). My first year I ended up with a 2.1 GPA. The biggest reason for that is that I started getting sick all the time. It turned out that I had celiac disease, although I didn't find that out until 8 years later. I eventually figured out how to function and do better in school despite being sick all the time (and now that I'm not sick all the time, I'm amazed at how much easier it is to do stuff!), but I figured I could probably cross medicine, law, etc off my list of possibilities. Plus the crazy competitive pre-meds kind of freaked me out.

 

So I started to get really into astronomy research and my profs told me I should go to grad school, so I did. I didn't obsess too much about grades because people told me my grades were good enough and that I should spend my time on research. I had about a 3.0 GPA when I finished undergrad (which took 5 years, including 4 summers, and I worked 20 hours a week the entire time). There are quite a few Ds and Fs and Cs on my transcript. I did take a brief detour into double majoring in math for a while when I decided I was going to be a cryptographer and work for some top secret government agency, but after getting a C- in one especially horrible math class when I needed at least a C+ for it to count for the major ended that idea. The idea of retaking that class made me want die.

 

So I did a master's degree, which was pretty fun. Then I started my PhD at a new school, which was not so fun. Pretty bad at first, actually. I just graduated on Friday, I defended on March 31, and up until about April 21 while I was working on revisions, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to finish. Even after I passed my defense I thought the revisions would never end. It was really kind of awful, and it made me think the whole astronomy as a career idea. About 2 years ago, I started looking into alternatives like library science or teaching high school. Then one day I was talking to my mom on the phone and telling her about all of this and she was like, "Why don't you apply to med school? You used to talk about applying to med school." And I was like, "You don't know anything about med school! I can't get in! I never took organic chemistry or any of those classes, and my GPA is too low!" Thinking about it actually used to make me kind of angry, because I've taught a lot of physics labs that pre-meds take and seen some pretty lazy and awful people get in to med school (but if someone who had me as a lab instructor is reading this, I'm not talking about you! Trust me on that. If you're on here, you're one of the good ones). I used to work in a home for disabled adults doing patient care stuff, and I really loved that job which made me wish I could apply to med school, and it made me mad that people that took nothing but bird courses and cheated their way through got in when I didn't even have a chance (or so I thought).

 

So anyway, after that conversation with my mom, I decided to go online and just find out about applying to med school. Much to my surprise, I discovered that I might actually have a chance at some places, like UofC. And all of a sudden the idea just made sense. I went to lunch with some people from my department and I was like, "Hey, guess what? I'm going to apply to med school when I finish this stupid PhD!" And they had been hearing a new career plan from me every day for about a month, so they didn't think I was serious. But I was. And much to my surprise, I got in.

 

These were my stats when I applied:

-In-province for Alberta

-3.0 undergrad GPA (several failed courses)

-35N MCAT

-Master's degree (3.7 GPA)

-3/4 through a PhD (3.7 GPA)

-5 conference presentations

-2 publications (not first author)

-A bunch of work experience, some healthcare related

-A bunch of random volunteer work, some healthcare related (but no typical hospital volunteering)

-Did not get a letter of recommendation from my PhD supervisor because I felt like other people would write better ones

-Did not use my illness during undergrad as an extenuating circumstance to explain my low GPA because I felt like that would be drawing too much attention to the fact that I had a low GPA.

 

So don't give up even if you think you'll never get in. The only way you'll never get in is if you don't apply. You have nothing to lose by trying.

 

Edit: Just realized that this was my 666th post! Awesome!

 

Congratulations, Astrogirl!

 

That is quite the compelling story!

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Had this in another thread and thought I'd throw it in here as well..... I received my first and only acceptance to a Canadian Med School (Mac) on May 5.

 

Did my undergrad, did a lot of nothing for the first bit except not study and play rugby, finished with 3.44 in undergrad. This was my third time applying, and most likely the last before I either gave up, or shipped off to Oz. I had a M.Sc. in progress during the app (so it didn't affect my score), have a few presentations in peer-review confs, and a few manuscripts in the works but no pubs.

 

My VR was 10, so just below average for last year (10.8 or something?). I neither liked nor disliked casper, and although I didn't think the interview went badly, I did not leave feeling like I killed it. One thing I did come away with from the interview was that I didn't feel like I bombed a station, I thought I was pretty consistent the whole way through (which wasn't hard since I just said the first thing that popped into my head....)

 

Also, I received an interview off the interview waitlist (I was stoked to find out there was such a thing), and got my first choice on May 5.

 

So keep trying, there's hope for us yet!

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Had this in another thread and thought I'd throw it in here as well..... I received my first and only acceptance to a Canadian Med School (Mac) on May 5.

 

Did my undergrad, did a lot of nothing for the first bit except not study and play rugby, finished with 3.44 in undergrad. This was my third time applying, and most likely the last before I either gave up, or shipped off to Oz. I had a M.Sc. in progress during the app (so it didn't affect my score), have a few presentations in peer-review confs, and a few manuscripts in the works but no pubs.

 

My VR was 10, so just below average for last year (10.8 or something?). I neither liked nor disliked casper, and although I didn't think the interview went badly, I did not leave feeling like I killed it. One thing I did come away with from the interview was that I didn't feel like I bombed a station, I thought I was pretty consistent the whole way through (which wasn't hard since I just said the first thing that popped into my head....)

 

Also, I received an interview off the interview waitlist (I was stoked to find out there was such a thing), and got my first choice on May 5.

 

So keep trying, there's hope for us yet!

 

congrats dblu!!:P

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I'm also a successful non-trad applicant!

 

I did my undergrad, BA (Hons), starting out in Film Production at York University for the first year and finishing the rest of the degree at Northumbria University in England for Film and Television Studies. During all this time, I was very focused on cultural studies and academia.

 

Following that year, I went to U of T to do an MA in Cinema Studies. One month into grad school, I realised I couldn't stand being a part of academia and did not want to pursue it as a career.

 

I wound up sneaking into my graduate housing roommate's classes at U of T medicine, and I loved it. I finally figured out how I could meaningfully help other people and contribute to their lives. It was too late for that application cycle, but I started preparing for the next.

 

I wrote my MA thesis on Disney World to try to get the most fun out of it possible, and started volunteering and even went back to adult high school to get the high school science courses I never had. That was an experience - my lab partner brought beer to class in a water bottle! The following year, thesis finished, I headed back to undergrad part time at U of T, doing bio and chem. I worked part time at Indigo to support myself and also did more volunteer work.

 

I applied to Mac and got in! As they say - you only need one school.

 

Is Mac = McMaster University Med school?

What age were you when you finally got into med school?

 

I guess I would be a non-trad prospective. I finished in the arts, got a general BA. Went out into the world, got bruised and beat up pretty badly..lol...

 

anyways, I am applying to do nursing (4 yrs). Now after that 4 yrs, should I then apply right away for med schools or should i work a year or two in nursing and in the hospital setting?

 

If I get in to nursing (still waiting on acceptance [is that a bad sign?]), I would be 34 when i finish. So i would enter med school at 34 or worst case at 36 years old. Is that too old to apply for med school?

 

any non-trads got into Ottawa U med school? Are they looking at stellar marks or more?

 

Also, should I do nursing (4yrs) , work the required 2yrs then apply and do MScn/NP , complete that and then apply for med school? some of the posts I have read seems to suggest, with the exception of a very good first degree, a graduate degree rather than a second degree betters one's chances of being accepted into med. I would then be at best 40 years old when I apply to enter med school. Is that too old to enter med school? doesnt it get hardr for med schools to accept you at that point because then you would not have enough years to practice. (read: enough years to be alive before retiring)

 

My first degree was in arts, not stellar. It never occured to me to apply for med school. I have applied for nursing. Should I do that, then go onto MsCN/NP (masters with nurse practitioner) then apply for med school under that, while practicing/working as an NP.

 

Would that work?

 

Thanks for your answers

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Hey everyone.

 

I came across this thread a while back and now I’m one happy guy who gets to post up his story.

 

It actually starts all the way back in kindergarten where I was held back a year. From then on it seems as though I was considered a "special" child. I always had some sort of resource room to go to for homework and I was always given extra time on my tests. This went on until I had to write provincial exams in high school. It wasn’t until grade 12 biology that I actually did well in a high school class except for gym.

 

So there I was. Out of high school and completely directionless. So I went travelling…

 

So there I was, still directionless after travelling. Then I decided that I would go back to school and see if I really liked this biology thing. My heart sank in the meeting with the academic advisor who told me I had to upgrade all of my sciences. Here is the thing: I hated math and for that matter, all other sciences (I now enjoy those things by the way). I had no chem or physics and only math 11. I didn’t even have a good enough grade in math 11 to use it either. I re-took Math 11 and FAILED it. Could not understand a word the teacher was saying. But my bio and chem marks were good! Re-take Math11 again. No problema this time. I was stoked. I also found that I really liked the atmospheric geography classes that I was taking so I decided to just roll with those for a bit. I got super into it and looked at taking meteorology at UBC. To go there I needed more chem, physics and god damn math. So I upgrade all of those and start taking first year sciences as well. After completing first year calculus, chem and physics with A’s in prep for UBC I had a bit of an epiphany: Maybe I could be a physician? This is something that had been in the back of my head for a long time. Just never though I could do it.

 

From then on I was committed. UBC lost my app and so I went to U of C for geog. I still liked geog and it allowed me to take all my electives in med pre requisites. Wrote the MCAT before my last year (which was 08/09). Scores for the record: 11,10,11 N. If you have read this far, you’re likely thinking something along the lines of “yah that N is justified”. I’m just not a good writer, but I’ve been working on it.

 

I applied last year to U of C, U of A and some Ontario schools. I only interviewed at U of C. I was waitlisted all summer and rejected.

 

I applied again this year to U of C, U of A and some more Ontario schools. I only interviewed at U of C and U of A. I thought things went really well and U of C and not so hot at U of A. Despite what I thought, I was rejected from U of C and Accepted at U of A.

 

Sorry for such a long story. Since so many of you folks like to ogle over stats I’ll give you my GPA. CGPA= 3.96 (Good thing high school math doesn’t count, eh?)

 

Thanks for reading and thanks to everyone else who posted their tale.

 

 

how many times should one keep applying to med schools?

 

if i get rejected 5 times from all the med schools, should I keep applying? also when you are rejected, do they tell you the reason (such as low grade, low GPA, poor interview skills e.t.c) so that you can make the adjustments, whether to take some courses at college, night school or University to boost GPA and to get the science courses needed e.t.c

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My journey to medical school has been circuitous to say the least. I can't claim to have wanted to be a physician from birth. In fact, for most of my life I have been unsure of my place in the world.

 

I guess I'll start my story at 16 since that was when I moved out of my family home and started getting into trouble. I partied hard and graduated from alcohol and weed to using heavier drugs like cocaine and ecstasy. Somehow, I managed to maintain decent grades and after graduating from highschool I went off to university.

 

At 19, I enrolled in a B.Sc program but my lifestyle prevented me from devoting time to attending class and studying. I scraped by with a 60% average and then dropped out after first year.

 

At 20, I started my own business and was successful for a while, but eventually I was unable to pay my rent or my bills. I was forced to close my business and live on the street. I ate at food banks and slept in my truck. The food bank I frequented most was called The Mustard Seed, and I thought that to be a strange name given the size of a mustard seed and the number of people that lined up for meals.

 

The food bank was also affiliated with a local church and I was invited to attend. One Sunday morning I walked into the church and sat in the very back row. I don't remember a word that the pastor said and I don't remember any of the worship music...but as I sat there I began to weep uncontrollably. I hated who I had become. That morning, for the first time in my life, I prayed to God and asked Him to help me change. The next day a good friend gave me information about a 12 month, residential, drug and alcohol rehabilitation program.

 

Three weeks later, only a few days after my 21st birthday I entered the program. I used my time in the program to investigate Christianity. While reading the bible one day I came across this verse in Matthew 17:20, where Jesus tells his disciples:

"Assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you."

 

Even though I had many mountains in my life including substance addictions, debts and damaged relationships - I was given a new purpose in life. Slowly, as I began to work through my many character defects, the dream of becoming a physician began to take root.

 

When I left the program 12 months later I entered the workforce and one year later I had payed off the tens of thousands of dollars of debt that I had incurred...and a mountain was moved.

 

I devoted a lot of time and energy to restoring the relationships I had damaged. In 2007, I married the 'good friend' who had helped me get into rehab. This year we will have been married for 4 years! And a mountain was moved.

 

In the fall of 2007 I transferred to another University to resume my undergraduate degree in the hopes of one day practising medicine. Last year I graduated with an 86.5% cGPA...and a mountain was moved.

 

In May of this year I will have been free of alcohol and drugs for 6 six years! And a mountain was moved.

 

And finally, on March 7th, another mountain was moved when I was accepted into Dalhousie Medical School!

 

I guess if my walk with Christ has taught me anything it's that nothing is beyond the scope of possibility for God. He has surpassed any measure that I've tried to hold Him to. He's a God who heals the sick and raises the dead. He's a God who allows the blind to see and the lame to walk. He's a God who feeds thousands with only seven loaves. He's a God who parts the seas, calms storms, and walks on water. And He's a God who transforms wounded drug addicts into healing physicians.

 

He still moves mountains, all it takes is faith the size of a mustard seed.

 

a very good story.

I feel at the very bottom of the barel right now. am under mountain of debts, struggling to get a second job.. always broke...my ex and her evil mother is taking me to court and suing me....

 

am weak and unable to help my parents the way I want to..

[sigh].. but i dont know how or where to begin to have faith...to move those mountains you speak of...

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People derive their strength from believing in something. That just happened to be God for you. God did not get you into medical school, or help in your transformation. Your belief did.

 

+/wrist

 

Oh hey um... did the same God cause the the disasters in Japan? Or was that a different one. Just curious. Lots of suffering in the world. Med school>suffering.

 

nope, His belief in God got him into medical school and through the transformation

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I finally got the acceptance letter from one of the med school yesterday. For me, it has been a long and ardous journey, 10 yrs to be exact since the first time that I applied to a med school. Along the way, I am blessed with encouragements from friends, colleagues, people from this forum, for that, I can't thank them enough. I want to take this opportunity to share my story and to encourage those who has been trying for the past several years to not giving up your dream.

 

First time I applied to med school was back in 2000, when most of the "traditional" applicants were still in either elementary school / Juniour high. I didn't get any interview invites from any of the schools that I applied to; however, it wasn't much a surprise, given my marks weren't competitive enough. I applied once again in 2001 with similar result. Then I decided to do a MSc. degree, hoping that this would help to strenghten my application in the future. After 2 yrs hiatus from the application cycle, I applied to both med and dent in 2003. I only got as far as receiving interviews from UWO and UT dentistry that year. I went back to Taiwan to work as a research assistant for a while. At that time, I started to really worry about my future.

I was lucky enough to be accepted into UBC Dent the next year. At that time, I was just happy to land a career with good income and a rather prestigeous title, irregardless whether it would be a career that I would truly enjoy in doing. Naive at that point, it took me 2 years to come to realization that something is not right. At 2007, I found that dentistry and I were just not compatible. The combined curriculum offered at UBC further strengthened my desire in wanting to pursue medicine.

 

Dropping out from dentistry wasn't an easy choice, especially when your asian parents considered to disown you and wanted to choke you to death for exchanging a great career with more uncertainty. Or when some of your friends started doubting you and think you are being unrealistic about the whole medical school thing. Strains on the relationship with the love one was also significant. At that point, life seems to spiralling downward out of control faster than I can handle. However, thanks for the support from my dentistry friends and other long-time friends, I was able to gather myself up and focus on what I have to do.

 

I applied to med again in 2007 while working as a research assistant, that year, I received my first ever medical school interview. Having high hope for myself that year, I was devastated when I was rejected post-interview. However, since I have always wanted to work in healthcare-related field, that same year, I also applied to pharmacy, and was fortunate enough to be accepted into the pharmacy program in Toronto. I came to acceptance at that point, if I can never get accepted into medicine, at least, I would be happy to work as a pharmacist as a career. I continued to apply to med while studying in pharmacy; however, I kept receiving the same rejections letters year after year. It just seemed that I am not the right fit for any of the medical school that I interviewed with. This past year was supposedly my very last year in applying for medical school admission. It just comes to the point that I lost all the hope of ever getting into medicine, and getting tired from the whole application process. The whole motivation and desire are just not here anymore. But fortunately, I am finally able to accomplish what I set out to do 10 years ago.

 

I know it is never easy in getting rejection letters, I have all sorts from different medical schools across Canada. However, you just cant lose hope and lose sight on what you want to accomplish when you first started on this journey. If you think medicine is right for you and you will be a great physician, then you just have to work hard and make yourself a better candidate for people to see. Most importantly, you have to believe in yourself. There will always be naysayers out there who try to sway your confidence; however, be grateful for the comments they make, and use those as the motivations to reach your goal. Best of luck to those who are in the same boat as I once was. Dont ever lose hope. Keep the faith.

 

what age are you now when you got into med school?

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