Nik-

I personally handed out starbucks gift cards to all my references. I do this because I've asked for their references so many times (twice for med school applications and many, many times for job applications). I knew that they already bought from that store regardless so it would be used and appreciated. They all were flattered. I wouldn't give a gift to someone if I wasn't totally sure they would enjoy it.

You're on your way to an AP. don't worry haha

Maybe they do, but I doubt it.

I'm going to assume they will disregard that activity. I couldn't think of any reason other than verifiers not completing the form for having such a low activity score last cycle.

I'm already working with Public Health. The program won't offer me much except for possibly the opportunity to work at a management level. I'm not discounting it completely yet, though.

I'm from Ontario. I'll keep the descriptions about the activities in mind for next time; I had someone ready over my application and they suggested the same thing.

I wish I knew what the activity scores really mean... 4/17 doesn't say much. I'm unsure how to improve this.

Thanks, I think I will keep trying since the MCAT score is good for 5 years and it is what I ultimately want to do for the rest of my life. I'm not exactly sure where my weaknesses lie. Maybe it's something in the way I explained my activities or a lackluster reference letter. Can anybody point me to the feedback document from Alberta? I can't find it in the Alberta email or the bear tracks.

Maybe, it's definitely hard to predict. Our healthcare here in Ontario hasn't been meeting the needs of our population for a while now. It seems there is great reluctance to having more staff that would be billing OHIP. It's no secret that having more of certain types of doctors and nurse practitioners would help meet these needs better.

I did consider it, but the PHPM residency has a master's built into it and you could choose to do a public health masters. Also, MPH would not provide me with much benefit in my current role.

Yes but they don't have the full scope of practice. I've also decided I want to pursue a combined residency in public health and family med. I would like to have a family practice at first while working with the city with the hopes of moving into policy influence later in my career. All this is not possible as a nurse practitioner. Sure, you have the ability to set up your own clinic, but you would compete with family practices that offer a full scope of services. It's something I've been asked since I started my undergrad and it's a compromise I'm unwilling to make. Also, many people struggle to find work as NPs (judging by what I see amongst my co-workers who have their licences but still work as RNs).

Yes. In hospital and in my city's Public Health department.

I got the rejection today around 2pm. That's it for this year.

1. Yes I've done many practice scenarios from all over. I even did a few group sessions online with some people from Ontario and Quebec which was fun. I'm not interested in spending hundreds of dollars for third party materials that often aren't representative of the real test. 3. I was going off of the fact that McMaster only accepts a few people from OOP for the incoming class, which I guess isn' t true for the other Ontario schools then. Still, I'm not sure how significant that advantage would be. If I was being given a serious offer from a school that said I'd have to move up there, I'd make it happen. Without that, it just seems way too optimistic for me.

I'm not sure if I'm eligible for the wGPA for Queen's (the website says full-time status is 3 courses per semester which I did have but I'm not too sure how it would work out with the units), but I've attached a picture showing my grades for the courses I took in my last two years as well as a separate picture of my second year in case the third year had too few courses. I'm not eligible for Toronto's wGPA because of the units required to be taken per year; I applied as my "lottery ticket" with my cGPA. UWO also had a requirement like that where you needed 30 units in two years with a GPA of 3.7. I only have two years where I had 30 units (1st, GPA ~3.5x, and 4th year which is >3.9) so I wasn't even eligible to apply to that. It's pretty difficult to offset my grades since every course that I achieve an A+ (4.0) in would only bump me up something like 0.01 points and even less with every subsequent course. I'm not sure how those extra ECs will help me. I have plenty of significant healthcare experience along with a couple other hobbies that I outlined in the app (sports, barbering). I guess next time I could add that I am part of a car club, but I highly doubt that's significant enough to be a deciding factor. I tried to keep my application objective and focused on what experiences that would make me a fit for our desired career without rambling too much. I think I'll be moving on with full-time work. Passing up on full-time work because of studying for the MCAT re-write was the reason why it cost me so much to apply. Where could I find someone who will seriously take the time to critique my application? I can't think of anybody who has gone through the process and would take the time to do that for me. I'll need to make at least some sort of significant change if I am to apply next cycle. I feel like I'd just be wasting my time and money re-submitting the same thing on top of wasting the time of my references again.