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Mun Or Dal?


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For those of us who may have to choose between attending Memorial or Dalhousie medical schools, I was wondering if anyone could provide input on the advantages/disadvantages of going to MUN as opposed to Dal. Quality of education, opportunites for specialties, average living costs, and any other pertinent information would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

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I have no personal ties to either school, and have not been admitted to both, but as far as choosing, go based on the city and location you enjoy the most. MUN might give a smaller community.

 

As far as residency opportunities, it should be the same at both schools. Just think about where you would like to live for 4 years and go based on that.

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The quality of the education is going to be similar at either school. You'll get a good undergraduate medical education at either. I wouldn't worry about anything like that. The residency opportunities will be similar (both schools match well to all programs).

 

Basically it comes down to where you want to live for 4 years. That's more of a personal decision based on a bunch of factors. The much lower cost of going to MUN is a nice plus too.

 

As a side note: You can always change for residency. It's very common from MUN to go to Dal for residency and vice versa.

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St. John's is awesome. Best city in Canada. People are awesome. Way more laid back, friendly and fun than the rest of the country. Extremely fun place to live. Excellent hiking and outdoor activities. Excellent Restaraunt and entertainment scene. Way above what you would expect from a place of only 200k. People love to party and have a good time. Cost of living is relatively low vs large cities.

 

NL is culturally distinct from the rest of the country. Even distinct from the rest of Atlantic Canada. Similar to how Quebec is culturally different.

 

Downsides for a mainlander are winters are long and summers are relatively cool (I'd rather a 20 degree summer day vs a 30 degree day where I can't go outside without roasting but that's just me). You will need a car for med school because the bus system sucks and winter is terrible for walking. Getting around the island is easy. Most people drive. Transportation off the island involves:

1. Flying (multiple daily flights to Halifax, montreal, Toronto). Sometimes you get fogged in but YYT upgraded the ILS so it should be much less of an issue in the future.

2. Driving across the island and taking a 6 hour ferry to cape Breton.

3. Short 2 hour drive and a 20 hour ferry.

It isn't a huge deal as long as you don't live really far west (and hence are looking at a 6-10 hour flight home) or are scared of flying.

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St. John's is awesome. Best city in Canada. People are awesome. Way more laid back, friendly and fun than the rest of the country. Extremely fun place to live. Excellent hiking and outdoor activities. Excellent Restaraunt and entertainment scene. Way above what you would expect from a place of only 200k. Cost of living is relatively low vs large cities.

 

NL is culturally distinct from the rest of the country. Even distinct from the rest of Atlantic Canada. Similar to how Quebec is culturally different.

 

Downsides for a mainlander are winters are long and summers are relatively cool (I'd rather a 20 degree summer day vs a 30 degree day where I can't go outside without roasting but that's just me). You will need a car for med school because the bus system sucks and winter is terrible for walking. Getting around the island is easy. Most people drive. Transportation off the island involves:

1. Flying (multiple daily flights to Halifax, montreal, Toronto). Sometimes you get fogged in but YYT upgraded the ILS so it should be much less of an issue in the future.

2. Driving across the island and taking a 6 hour ferry to cape Breton.

3. Short 2 hour drive and a 20 hour ferry.

It isn't a huge deal as long as you don't live really far west (and hence are looking at a 6-10 hour flight home) or are scared of flying.

 

 

Having also lived in NL for 5 years a mainlander I can say most of these are true for me as well!

 

 Flying home has never been an issue. Round trip from halifax is 250$ish if you go to moncton make that like 400ish. I don't feel isolated, but i have several mainlander friends who cannot wait to get off the island because they feel isolated and expensive/time consuming to get away sometimes to if they stayed in maritimes. I wouldn't count on that being a problem because unless you want to go home super often or something. 

 

Definitely culturally distinct. If you like fishing, hiking, and just being outdoors it is great here. The mall is pretty average, theatre for movies. Not awesome compared to halifax, but better than the rest of the cities in the maritimes. I would say the restaurant scene is a little less good than moncton, but better than st. john (i've never really been there often). 

 

some other cool stuff like break out NL, rock climbing wall, etc etc

 

Rent here in a multi-person apartment will be like anywhere from 400-600 all inclusive as an average, a one person you are up higher though. so compare that to wherever you are ! 

 

one thing i found noticeable is the fruit selection is generally terrible compared to mainland. 

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Overall though I think anyone would love st. john's if you are comparing it to a city in the maritimes. only exception being if you wanted to see family on more than just the breaks. If you are talking halifax vs st. john's as a nova scotian I can't really speak there, but most people chosing between mun and dal are NB or PEI

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MUN is much more rural/family orientated from my understanding 

 

 

I don't think that's really true. Dal has "Rural Week" at the end of first year and there has always been a big push for family medicine (regardless of what people end up choosing - that fluctuates from year-to-year). Most Dal clerks end up going outside Halifax (or Saint John) for rotations. I did family, emerg, and peds in Kentville and Saint John, with electives again in both those places along with Lunenburg. 

 

If you are choosing between MUN and Dal and your family lives in either city, I would go wherever my family is. Having extra support is key.

 

I think this is the most important part. It's not that you won't get a new "support network" if you move, but it takes time. Some people adjust to that much faster, so I suppose it depends on your sense of how you'd do. 

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Here is the reply from the Dalhousie thread,

For alot of reasons I think MUN is a better decision. On top of all of the academic reasons, I also think it might be better for student lifestyle, the perfect class size and a better city to be student in. Also I wouldn't want to be stuck with the same thirty people I went to undergrad with, would rather meet new people.

 

 

clerkship at MUN is outstanding. You are expected to do a lot of work and are given a lot of responsibility. Far more than Dal, and far far far more than Ontario. Much of this is cultural. Newfoundlanders work HARD, and expect everyone else to too. But hard work is rewarded. On top of that, we have very few fellows. So residents are required to do the work that a fellow would do at a bigger center. As a result, clerks are expected to do the work of a first year resident.

 

 

MUN is well known for training the best clerks in the country. A staff man in Ottawa told me during electives that by far the best clerks are out of MUN and this is a well known statement across the country.

 

You will have no problem matching to where ever you want to go.There are a couple reasons for this. First, you will be more competent than most other clerks in the country. And you will work much harder than them because it's what you are used to. Second, the staff here are excellent. They go out of their way to mentor medical students interested in their specialty. They take a personal interest in teaching you the specialty and getting you matched. They will talk you up to program directors across the country and they will call in favours for you. Third, MUN doesn't have residency programs for some of the smaller residencies (ENT, Uro, Cardiac Surg). As a result it's just you and the staff. You get treated like a resident (which means lots of learning).

 

Quality of Dal's program. The medical school was put on probation a few years ago.year. Also who wants to be taught through a satellite conference.

 

Memorial has one of the best match rates in the country. Dal does not come close to it, and over the last few years has had a horrible match rate which is probably due to having lower quality of students due to the increase in numbers from the Saint John campus. ( Basically anyone from nb can get into dal med)

 

 

Student life at MUN is amazing. Everyone is very close. St. John's is an amazing place to live. The people are extremely friendly. The city is small enough to make it quick to get around, but big enough to have everything you want. If you are into night life, you have THE best nightlife in the country. On top of that, say you live by the university, it's only a $10 cab ride down to the bars. All bars are on one strip called george street. Most bars per square foot in the world. Summer has multiple festivals (from the last week of July to third week of august is non stop festivals). For sports, there is lots to do here. Med school hockey, other hockey, basketball, softball, soccer, rugby, figure skating, lots of golf. It's easy to get involved in all these sports. At least one person in my class did them during school. I did several. Ski hill about 1.5 hours away (750 vert. feet). Best skiing East of the rockies at Marble Mountain about 8 hours away. There is a long weekend trip there for the med school in Feb every year.

 

Also memorial does not focus on rural medicine, nor does it only produce family doctors. Over half my class matched to surgical programs were as less than a third matched to family medicine.

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(Cross-posted to the Dal thread)

 

Disclosure: I went to Dal (one of if not the last classes pre-NB campus). Current MUN resident in a program that provides considerable exposure to clerks/students.

Overall MUN clerks are fairly good, though I'm not sure I'd say they're any better prepared than anyone at Dal on average. Often they are asked to take on more patients than Dal clerks would be on CTU. But it's not a huge difference, especially when compared to how CTU in Saint John works. When I was on surgery services as a clerk I was probably working harder than most MUN clerks, if only because the QEII services are just that much busier (e.g. doing gen surg in Grand-Falls is definitely good experience for a med student, but isn't comparable in hours or intensity to three weeks on Surgery E in Halifax). When I was on neurosurg there wasn't even always a resident in the OR, so it would end up being just me and the staff. I was drilling burr holes on my first day.

As for IM, clerks are sometimes asked to take on more patients than they might be at Dal, but I find there is a lot of heterogeneity in documentation skills. Supervision also tends to be lacking at St Clare's, and I would not regard "hard work" there as reflecting an ideal situation.

At no time do we EVER expect clerks to be functioning at the level of a first year resident, and I can't think of many (if any) who could replace an intern. At the very least, not being able to write orders means your function is really quite limited.

Lack of fellows mainly means that sometimes R1s will be covering CCU overnight by themselves in the winter. It doesn't have a lot of implications for clerks - even at Dal I can't think of many times that I worked with any fellows at all. (And when I did it was on things like ID or GI and it was pretty helpful!)

Probation was a silly issue that had mostly to do with bureaucratic issues about "curriculum mapping" and the availability of lockers at the HI. Since then the program has been entirely revamped (much for the better I'd say - I was extensively involved in it).

As for match rates, I'm not aware of the NB students having had comparably more difficulty than the Halifax-based students. In any case, the first year there were significant numbers of unmatched CC4s was 2012 - before anyone at the NB campus had even started clerkship.

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