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Western interview invites/regrets 2019


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On 2/4/2019 at 1:06 PM, Hypercalcemia said:

While I acknowledge people's frustration over changing goalposts, I think Western's change this year is commendable.

The reality is, high MCAT and GPA scores are not good predictors of who will become good physician. The aamc has been looking into how medical students and physicians perform based on their entrance scores, and there is no significant difference between someone with a 132 CARS and a 126, for example.

Even more importantly, arbitrarily high cutoffs unnecessarily favour more privileged students (those who can afford tutors, expensive prep courses, not having to work for a summer while they study) and results in less class diversity. By lowering cutoffs in favour of an additional aABS, Western is taking steps to ensure that they've still selected students who are likely to succeed academically, but come from more diverse backgrounds and will better reflect the patient populations they'll be serving. 

As for the quality of someone's EC's, don't assume that just because you've done something unique or flashy, that it holds more value than someone else's accomplishments. Just because Candidate 1 could afford to take a summer off to travel and do charity work in another country, doesn't mean that experience holds any more value than the experiences of Candidate 2, who had to work full time in customer service to support their family. File reviewers are often trained to look for these issues, and would be asked to look through essays and evaluate personal character or what was learned from an experience, not what was actually done.

TLDR; Thinking you have the best scores or flashiest ECs does not make you any more deserving than anyone else, and expressing sentiments of entitlement really make your privilege show.

 

Has anyone come across this article yet (published a few months ago)? https://westerngazette.ca/news/new-competency-based-medical-education-leaves-traditional-grading-behind/article_8df659dc-fdc6-11e8-87a9-df194626a239.html#tncms-source=infinity-scroll-summary-sticky-siderail-latest

I wonder if this shift in their curriculum has anything to do with the new admission criteria.. interesting! :)

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Invite/reject: Invite  

Timestamp: 11:18 AM

IP/OOP: SWOMEN

cGPA: 3.88

MCAT (CHEM/CARS/BIO/PYSCH): 510 (128/128/129/125)

ABS Score (If available): Not published

ECs: Some research, local conferences, science case competition finalist, exec of a couple of clubs. Spent a fair bit of time on my essays.

Made an account just to post my stats for future years.

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Time Stamp: Same time as everyone else really 

Invite/reject: Invite

IP/OOP: IP

SWOMEN (Y/N): N

2YGPA: 4.0

MCAT (CHEM/CARS/BIO/PYSCH): 131/131/132/132 (526)

ABS Score (If available):  

Nothing special, but I guess I tick all boxes to some degree.  For perspective, I got an interview from UofT last year (nothing yet this year, but fingers crossed), but no interviews from queens and Ottawa this year or last. My writing is style is very casual, genuine, and authentic which I think helped for this interview and UofT's last year. 

 

I have a lot of thoughts on the fairness of the system here, but I nothing I say here will change anything anyway. At this point, I'm just happy to have gotten interviews and hoping to get in, and become a physician. That's all I really want in the end. Once I get to a position where I can actually effect change on the current system then I'll do something positive hopefully. But I recognize it's a lot easier to criticize than it is to actually improve a system.

 

Looking forward to my interview :)

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There has been a lot of focus on fairness to medical school candidates. I think that fairness to candidates is only one of the aspects that a medical school admissions committee has to consider and that it isn't the most important one. Any meaningful discussion on this topic should also consider fairness to the public and place that first and foremost. Good luck to all who are interviewing!

 

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