Some Questions About Calgary

[Saskatoon]

I was lucky enough to get an acceptance to Calgary out of province and honestly I never thought this would happen and it is creating a rather tough decision for me. Because I am out of province it is hard to get good unbiased opinions on the three year program so I thought I would ask here.

 

One of the biggest issues that people bring up here with Calgary's program is the competitiveness for residency positions. Now obviously with the condensed program there is a less time to build your CV, and I was wondering how big of an impact this had on applying for residency programs. I currently have no idea what I would like to specialize in, and I would like to keep all my options open. I have looked at the match rates and it appears that there is a slightly bigger percentage of students that end up in family medicine compared to the other schools I have applied to and I was wondering if any current students/residents could comment on this. Do you believe that Calgary applicants have a disadvantage when applying to other specialties, or is the higher percentage of family medicine applicants just based on the fact that Calgary's three year program is more appealing to people who have more of an interest in family medicine?

 

The second thing I was wondering about was the ability to do research at Calgary. One of the major benefits to me of a four year program is the ability to do research in the summer, as uninterrupted time is my most productive research time. Calgary's LIM program does seem appealing, but I do not know if I would like to extend my degree in order to do research. Is there ample opportunities to get involved with research during the school year if you are not apart of the LIM program? I still don't know how big of a portion I want research to play into my future career, but I do want to keep my options open.

 

Thank you for your time in reading this, and any responses are appreciated. I just want some more information on this school, as I can say without a doubt that this school has the best community and culture out of all the schools I interviewed at, I just want to make sure its the right fit for me.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Slush

[MSWschnoodle]

Hi Slush,

 

So this has been repeated a lot on this forum, but our students match reasonably well. We routinely match to competitive specialties. That being said, the students who match to those competitive specialties likely do have to hustle to build their CVs up to a competitive level, but it's not impossible. As for why Calgary matches more students to family? We have a lot of exposure to family medicine and we also have a rural family medicine program that many people find appealing. It may also be because our student cohort tends to be a little older in average age and the 2 year residency might be appealing vs. the 5 year residency. I also have many classmates who are looking to do family medicine out of the gate, as you suggested in your comment. I would hesitate to assume that Calgary's higher family med match rate is because those students could not match elsewhere - but it's not out of the realm of possibility either. 

 

There are ample opportunities to be involved in research if you want to, but you will need good time management because you will be doing it in addition to all of you rather class work. There are plenty of students in my class who have all kinds of research projects on the go both within the faculty and outside of the faculty. 

 

At the end of the day I think it comes down to what kind of student you are and what your time management style is. Are you the type of person that likes to pile things on your plate and be busy all the time? If you are then you will probably find you have time to be involved in research at U of C. Are you the type of person that needs plenty of downtime where you are not doing school/academic work in order to feel balanced? That would make it more challenging to work time for research in to an already demanding school schedule. If you have a real passion for research and you want longer blocks of time where you can really immerse yourself into a project than a 4 year school might be a better choice, or you could see if there is a LIM option that would be a good fit for you even if it extended your program by a year (then you'd break even with a 4 year school).

 

The three year schedule is demanding. Many of my classmates now are feeling the lack of time off. There are definitely times of the year where people are extraordinarily stressed and burnt out. But the flip side of that is that we know we get out and get practicing a year earlier. If I was 22 that probably wouldn't matter to me, but as an older student it matters to me a lot. 

 

I'm sure some of my other classmates will chime in with their opinions as well. Full disclosure: I am not really looking to match to anything insanely competitive nor have I entered the carms match yet, so I am obviously not speaking from a position of expertise when it comes to competitive residency applications. What I will say is that student affairs at U of C has advisors available to you from day 1 of medical school who are happy to discuss your Carms plans and career planning, so if you do decide to come to U of C there are supports available to you.

[newmed2016]

Yeah ill echo MSW and add something else...I am planning on applying to a very competitive speciality and have ZERO worries that u of c will disadvantage me in any way. People match to all the competitive specialties from here, really just have to want it an have the goods. 

 

Calgary is a great place to live (mountains!!!) and a great place to go to school. 3 years is shorter (obviously) but has so many other amazing positives that make it a non-issue in my mind. 

[newmed2016]

oh also, you can become an affiliate member of lim and don't have to extend your degree, just do research on the side/ attend seminars/ conferences etc while in the med program

[Cupboardsauce]

Hi -  grad from UofC. I agree with the above comments.  Many of my classmates matched to highly competitive specialties, and also lots of competitive FM placements. For what it's worth, i have some examples of how Calgary's three year program, particularly clerkship, affected me.

There were two main "disadvantages" I ran into in clerkship.  One was the upfront electives - Calgary does 8 weeks of electives at the very beginning of clerkship, starting day 1. Electives are important because they are your chance to get letters of reference for carms, and to explore areas of medicine you are considering. You need to start booking these electives a couple months beforehand so presumably its important to have a good idea of what diciplines / programs you are interested in visiting by the midpoint of your second year - which felt pretty early on!  Besides these upfront electives, there are only 4 remaining weeks of elective time. For me, this meant I went to what I thought would be my top choice program in my 3rd week of clerkship. I asked for a reference letter and got it, which said something along the lines of "this student performed confidently at the level of a senior Med student", but mostly focussed on team work skills, communication etc. it is possible that had I visited after more experience it might of said "performed at the level of a PGY1"... but ok the flip side I think things like demonstrating humility or teachability when you don't know something can be likewise impressive.  I got an interview at this program, and the great majority of my friends interviewed at all of the programs  they did early electives at as well.

The second problem I encountered was the lack of exposure to a variety of medical diciplines prior to carms.  this can be mitigated by being proactive in preclerkship and shadowing a variety of specialities - something I wish I had done. We start clerkship in the winter, and start the  Carms process around September of the same year - for me this meant that I had surgery, psych and  pediatrics all after i applied to residency programs! I did a rotation in August in a specialty I hadn't even considered or ever been exposed to - and ended up loving it so much that I applied to it as my first choice discipline.  I hustled to complete my (very average) application to this reasonably competitive speciality. At the time I wondered if I had gone to a four year school then perhaps I wouldn't have ended up in this last minute scramble because I would have rotated through this specialty in MS3....but then again, maybe maybe not. 

Despite all the unneeded worry,  I got into my first ranked program. I had done a poor job of setting myself up for Carms success in this discipline - namely only having one elective in it, but was accepted in a location that was neither my home school nor the school I did my elective at. Calgary does have unique challenges in clerkship that are worth considering.   While this is completely anecdotal and other students have a range of experiences, I think the take away is to not stress too much about the medical school you go to.  You can set yourself up for success not matter where you are, and even with a less well suited clerkship schedule can succeed. A large part of the carms process, particularly in smaller programs, seemed to be sussing out if you would be a reasonable person to work with - not the number of speciality specific things you've been involved with. Calgary is a strong school with good match stats. Best of luck and congrats!