PLT

Of course!! Before accepting my offer I also thought it was the entire curriculum. I was like what do profs do if students are doing everything.....? LOL, but no definitely not. It’s just PBT, and it’s hard at first but so rewarding. Welcome to the Mac PT fam reach out if you need anything!

Hi there! Current Mac student here To add to what was already mentioned, PBL is typically used in problem based tutorials (PBT) which is one course out of 4-5 courses you take in a unit. All the other courses are your typical didactic learning style where the professor gives a lecture. It’s just pbt where the class is divided into groups of ~6 students that meet twice a week with a tutor (who is either a physio in the community or a prof in the program). During the tutorial, we open a case scenario every 2-3 weeks (For a total of about 5 case scenarios in a unit), we create learning objectives, and then each one of us researches those learning objectives outside of tutorial time and comes back to the next tutorial ready to discuss those learning objectives. The tutor helps guide you and makes sure that you’re covering all of the content that you need to cover. The tutor is there for the sole purpose of helping you, but the students are still the ones facilitating the entire discussion. I came into this program knowing almost nothing about pbt and I was quite scared of it initially. It is definitely a learning curve and takes quite a while to research and prepare for every tutorial, but i fully believe in it because it truly makes you an active member in your learning. Personally, I find that it’s way easier for me to remember something that I’ve researched and discussed with others than to remember something that I learned in a lecture. It also improves your skills in discussion and critical thinking. And as a plus, you stay in the same group for an entire unit so you get very close to them. Hope this helps! Tried to cover as much as I can about the structure of pbt/what to expect, but feel free to message me for more details or if you have any other questions

Applied (all PT): McMaster, McGill (QY), UBC, Western, Queens, Dalhousie Accepted: McGill QY, McMaster (was waitlisted at #3) Waitlisted: Rejected: UBC, Western, Queens, Dalhousie GPA: cgpa- 3.66/4.0, sgpa- 3.65/4.0 Perceived strengths: I think it's obvious that the biggest weakness in my application was my sGPA (third year in my undergrad was really tough for a lot of reasons), so I think I made up for that in my CASPer, resume, and video statement (for McGill) and Kira (for Mcmaster) which ultimately were the reasons I got in both universities. I also had experience shadowing/assisting PTs and PTAs in different PT settings including 2 orthopedic PT clinics, Children's Hospital (pediatric PT), and a neurological PT clinic (~250 hours in total). I've heard from current PTs (ones that graduated from Ontario universities) that admissions put a lot of weight on having experience in different PT specializations (MSK, Cardioresp, neuro, pediatric, etc.), so I tried my best to cover as much as I can before applying. If you have any questions, feel free to PM me!

Thank you! I was #3 on the waitlist. I'm honestly not sure why they would tell me that it's unlikely to receive an offer a few days before they accept me. Nevertheless, I'm super excited about getting it cause Mac is my first choice. Good luck to your friend and looking forward to meeting you too!

Got off Mac's PT waitlist today!! I received the email around 4pm

I'm honestly not expecting an offer anymore (I'm also pretty high on the waitlist). I sent them an email 2 days ago asking if there was any waitlist movement and they replied "We have not released additional offers, so it is unlikely that you will hear from us, unfortunately" and then proceeded to encourage me to apply again next year. Not sure if that's their way to reject people on the waitlist nicely, or they're just fed up with me sending weekly emails, lol.

well update: I emailed them back asking if they're at full capacity and they replied "Correct, we are currently at full capacity, so we are not in a position to release additional offers at this time."

For anyone on Mac’s PT waitlist, I emailed them yesterday asking when we can expect them to contact us and they replied “We have not released any offers to applicants on the waitlist at this time. If a spot becomes available for you, you will be contacted within the next couple of weeks”

I'm #3 and I still didn't hear back

Hey, Thank you! My cGPA is 3.66/4 (my ORPAS sGPA is 3.65, but i don't know if McGill takes into account the extra courses I took to upgrade my GPA so i'm not quite sure how they calculated my sGPA) and I have approximately 250 hours of volunteering in PT clinics and shadowing PTs, OTs, PTAs, and kinesiologists in 3 physiotherapy clinics (2 of which are mainly sports injury clinics and one is neurophysiotherapy). I also worked at the children's hospital as an interpreter, and a lot of interpretations were between pediatric PTs and patients, so I also kind of observed/have some knowledge of that specialty. Since my GPA isn't high, I imagine my video statement (where I talked about my experience in those clinics/hospital) and my resume were what got me into the program! I got an offer from McGill PT QY on May 1. I accepted it because the deadline was May 21, but I'm probably gonna withdraw from the program soon because I also got waitlisted for McMaster PT at #3 so I'm hopeful that I will get an offer from them as well (and Mac is my first choice). I got rejected from both OT QY and PT QY at McGill last year on May 2nd, so if you still didn't hear back from them, you're probably on the waitlist. Have you tried contacting them to ask if you are on the waitlist? I was planning on sharing more of my experience, the universities I applied to, and the ones I got accepted to/rejected from once I know for sure if I'm getting an offer from McMaster, but these are the main points. Let me know if you have any further questions!

Hey! I can’t answer your second and third questions, but as for your first one, I took NUTR331 (Nutrition for Health) at Athabasca and it was interesting and quite easy from my experience (but my undergrad was very heavy in physiology, biology, and chemistry courses so I probably had an unfair advantage compared to other students). The course is a self-paced course that you have to finish within 6 months. It took me 2.5 months to finish while I was taking 4 other courses (and that speaks volumes of how easy I found it). Although there is a book you need to purchase/study, the main material you need to study is organized in notes written by the instructor, and the information that I personally studied from the book was only the “learning outcomes” that were expected of me but not mentioned in the notes. The instructor was very friendly, answered emails (and was open to phone calls too) very quickly, and was overall very helpful in guiding me to the material that is important for exams (although I’m not sure the instructor stays the same throughout the year). I don’t know if they changed the grading scheme, but when I took it (Oct. 2019- Dec. 2019), the grade was split between a midterm, a final, and 2 assignments. The exams were easy and straightforward and had some questions directly from the weekly quizzes (the quizzes were optional and didn’t count towards the grade), and the assignments were also very fair. Overall, I highly recommend NUTR331 cause it was 1) easy to get an A+ 2) interesting 3) a 300 level course that universities counted towards the sGPA. When I was looking for courses to take at Athabasca, I got in touch with a physiotherapist that also took extra courses to update his GPA, and he recommended another course at Athabasca which was HADM369 (Health Policy in Canada), I personally didn’t take it, but his feedback about it was that although he found it tricky (a lot of essays), the instructor graded easily. I also took 2 online courses at Thompson Rivers University. Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll send my feedback on them!

Rejected from Queens (just received the email) and western, and waitlisted at Mac (PT). if I’m in the top 5 of the waitlist at Mac, is it safe to assume that I will get an offer?

I did apply to UBC and Dalhousie, but I was rejected unfortunately (and I expected it to be honest). UBC and Dalhousie's prerequisites were closer to Ontario's, so I was able to apply (UBC did require English and Physics extra though from what I remember). I personally found McGill's application process easier. McGill has a lower cut-off GPA and also gets less applicants (~350-400 applicants as opposed to 700-1000 in Ontario). I assume it's because 1) the program is about a semester longer than other schools 2) you don't get accepted immediately into the master's degree, rather you get into a qualifying year and then the masters degree 3) I would guess some people get intimated by the french "requirement". The program itself is in English, but from what I know, atleast one of the placements has to be in Montreal where you will be required to know both french and english in order to interact with francophone patients. Personally, I know very basic french, but if I end up going with McGill, I'm gonna work on it more this summer. Hope this helps! If you have any other questions I'd be happy to answer them here or through a message!

Hey! I'm from Ontario as well. I would say one thing I wished I paid attention to earlier is the prerequisites because they usually require more prerequisites than Ontario's regular anat, phgy, etc (for example, UofA requires courses in Canadian Indigenous History and human movement; both of which are not required in Ontario). I wasn't able to apply to a couple of universities solely because of the prerequisites that I didn't have, so if you're planning to take extra courses, I'd say keep that in mind! This year was my second time applying. I got an acceptance from McGill, but I prefer to stay in Ontario so I'm crossing my fingers for tonight. If you don't get in this round, try again next year! Good luck, you got this!

Hi everyone, since I saw a lot of people post about not hearing back from Dal PT, I just wanted to share that I received the rejection letter from them on May 15 (I’m OOP), so if you didn’t hear back, you still have a chance! Good luck!