ON/QC schools really THAT competitive?? + Misc Q's

[gravytrain]

Hey everyone and sorry for a weirdish, longish post. I hope it hasn't been covered before and I'm not sure where else to ask these questions.

I'm looking at the AFMC admission requirements information and it appears that the successful application rates are rather low in Quebec and Ontario (like single digits in some cases). And some of the schools in QC look like there was a drop in the success rate of both IP and OOP applicants in the past year or two, but the overall acceptance rate and total number of applicants doesn't seem to have changed much. Anybody have any idea what's going on there? Are the odds of getting into a Quebec or Ontario med school as an IP applicant actually lower than getting into some of the other med schools as an OOP applicant?

The reason I am asking is that, as a clueless American living in the US currently who will be obtaining permanent resident status in Canada next year, I knew it would be tougher getting into Canadian schools as a Canadian/permanent resident than into American schools as an US citizen, but I didn't realize it would be quite that tough. I have read a lot of threads on here about people applying three, four, or even five times before getting an acceptance even with two bachelor degrees or a master's. and it's a bit terrifying because I'm a non-trad and my clock is ticking, haha.

On the topic of getting degrees, I will be applying to transfer to a university in Canada to finish my B.Sc., but I'm still building my application list. My spouse and I could theoretically move almost anywhere in Canada at this point, but now I feel like we have to really factor in the likelihood of getting into medical school in our decision of where to settle, because wherever we "land" as immigrants will be our IP location for med school admission purposes when that time comes. So should we be looking at the Prairies and the Atlantic provinces instead of BC/AB/ON/QC to boost my chances later on?

Besides that and the questions about the admission data for QC and ON, did anyone particular enjoy their undergraduate experience at a particular university? Any other general comments, questions, concerns, suggestions?

I'm a bit of a type-A personality so I feel like I need to have a detailed plan and I'm going crazy overthinking every single aspect of this move, where to apply to complete undergrad, and the Canadian med admissions process, so any input is appreciated! Thank you to those of you who read this far, lol.

[GlassHalfFull]

There are only 17 medical schools in Canada, so I highly recommend you go through each one's residence requirements. 

Some (most?) schools have a residency requirement that extends beyond just landing as an immigrant. Generally, being a full time student in a province does not usually count towards residence. For example, at Mac, you need to have lived in Ontario for 3 years since you were 14. 

QC schools however will consider you as a QC resident if you immigrate there directly under certain conditions- look into their situations to be considered. These can be found on the McGill website.

Whatever you do don't move to Ontario if your only concern is IP status. There is absolutely no IP benefit other than Mac, whereas each other province does. 

[Meridian]

Canadian Medical Schools are very competitive.
If you can move anywhere, I would choose NB or NS which are In-province for Dalhousie with very good potential for an interview.  There is very little benefit to being in province in Ontario for the Ontario schools other than MAC.
If you really really can move anywhere, consider Yukon or NWT territories as you would be considered in-province at many med schools.
Note that most Quebec schools other than McGill teach in French language.
What year have you completed in your B.SC and did you do full course-load in each year ?   Some schools will let you use a weighted  wGPA if you were full-time.  Look at U of T as example.
Are you really sure you want to move to Canada prior to completing your current undergrad.  You will be paying international tuition rates until you have your PR.   And how confident are you that you can achieve PR before medical school ?
 

[la marzocco]

On 6/8/2019 at 11:16 PM, gravytrain said:

Hey everyone and sorry for a weirdish, longish post. I hope it hasn't been covered before and I'm not sure where else to ask these questions.

I'm looking at the AFMC admission requirements information and it appears that the successful application rates are rather low in Quebec and Ontario (like single digits in some cases). And some of the schools in QC look like there was a drop in the success rate of both IP and OOP applicants in the past year or two, but the overall acceptance rate and total number of applicants doesn't seem to have changed much. Anybody have any idea what's going on there? Are the odds of getting into a Quebec or Ontario med school as an IP applicant actually lower than getting into some of the other med schools as an OOP applicant?

The reason I am asking is that, as a clueless American living in the US currently who will be obtaining permanent resident status in Canada next year, I knew it would be tougher getting into Canadian schools as a Canadian/permanent resident than into American schools as an US citizen, but I didn't realize it would be quite that tough. I have read a lot of threads on here about people applying three, four, or even five times before getting an acceptance even with two bachelor degrees or a master's. and it's a bit terrifying because I'm a non-trad and my clock is ticking, haha.

On the topic of getting degrees, I will be applying to transfer to a university in Canada to finish my B.Sc., but I'm still building my application list. My spouse and I could theoretically move almost anywhere in Canada at this point, but now I feel like we have to really factor in the likelihood of getting into medical school in our decision of where to settle, because wherever we "land" as immigrants will be our IP location for med school admission purposes when that time comes. So should we be looking at the Prairies and the Atlantic provinces instead of BC/AB/ON/QC to boost my chances later on?

Besides that and the questions about the admission data for QC and ON, did anyone particular enjoy their undergraduate experience at a particular university? Any other general comments, questions, concerns, suggestions?

I'm a bit of a type-A personality so I feel like I need to have a detailed plan and I'm going crazy overthinking every single aspect of this move, where to apply to complete undergrad, and the Canadian med admissions process, so any input is appreciated! Thank you to those of you who read this far, lol.

 

Quebec is actually not that bad if you are IP. You should look at this table of relative opportunity across all provinces. Quebec is #4 in terms of relative opportunity, and Ontario is #10 (dead last in terms of province, i.e., excluding territories). Quebec may not be that bad of a spot to land and gain IP status. Granted 3 of the 4 Qc medical schools are in French. Are you comfortable with French? This is normally a big restricting factor and may change the relative opportunity for your specific circumstances.

#1/#2/#3 are Atlantic provinces - you may need to check with MUN/Dal etc to see what their IP status considerations are.

[gravytrain]

17 minutes ago, GlassHalfFull said:

There are only 17 medical schools in Canada, so I highly recommend you go through each one's residence requirements. 

Some (most?) schools have a residency requirement that extends beyond just landing as an immigrant. Generally, being a full time student in a province does not usually count towards residence. For example, at Mac, you need to have lived in Ontario for 3 years since you were 14. 

QC schools however will consider you as a QC resident if you immigrate there directly under certain conditions- look into their situations to be considered. These can be found on the McGill website.

Whatever you do don't move to Ontario if your only concern is IP status. There is absolutely no IP benefit other than Mac, whereas each other province does. 

It is possible that I may seek work for a year before actually continuing my studies, too, as we are really tethered to where my wife is able to find a decent job in her field that will be able to sustain us through my studies. But I will be sure to carefully review the residency requirements to make sure we on the right track wherever we end up going. We were already leaning away from Ontario, besides the Ottawa/Gatineau region, for various reasons, so I suppose that is just another reason to tack onto the list. Thank you, this was all very helpful.

[gravytrain]

19 minutes ago, Meridian said:

Canadian Medical Schools are very competitive.
If you can move anywhere, I would choose NB or NS which are In-province for Dalhousie with very good potential for an interview.  There is very little benefit to being in province in Ontario for the Ontario schools other than MAC.
If you really really can move anywhere, consider Yukon or NWT territories as you would be considered in-province at many med schools.
Note that most Quebec schools other than McGill teach in French language.
What year have you completed in your B.SC and did you do full course-load in each year ?   Some schools will let you use a weighted  wGPA if you were full-time.  Look at U of T as example.
Are you really sure you want to move to Canada prior to completing your current undergrad.  You will be paying international tuition rates until you have your PR.   And how confident are you that you can achieve PR before medical school ?
 

Never been there, but Halifax seems like a nice city and Dal is on my list, though it's a long list right now. Currently I'm in my second year of my bachelor's program, but I have been attending part-time due to work. I will look into the wGPA, but it's sounding like that may not help me in my situation. I thought it might be neat to live in the territories for a while, but my wife thinks otherwise. If there were an actual university there we would not rule it out.

And if we went to Quebec we would take an extra year so we could learn the language and adjust. We both have a background studying French in school, and would love to become fluent, but we would need to take language classes still which the QC government offers. Three years may not be enough time to become fluent enough to be able to go to medical school entirely in French though. That would just leave me with McGill as my only IP option, like you say, so our Quebec dreams might be dead.

We will definitely be receiving our PR before we move up to Canada under the federal skilled worker program, so I will qualify for domestic tuition rates for undergrad and be eligible for citizenship after three years of living there. Worst case scenario is we are able to gain our citizenship and then have to come back to the US for med school if I don't get into a Canadian school before returning to Canada (hopefully) for residency. Definitely not ideal and much more expensive, but not the end of the world. Canadian citizens who attend med school in the US are NOT considered IMGs for the CaRMS match, if I understand correctly based on what I've read so far, so I would have a chance to match back in Canada before going through the US match. My plan is FM so that seems less competitive and we would even go to the North at that point if we had to.

Thank you for your post! It was helpful.

[gravytrain]

49 minutes ago, la marzocco said:

Quebec is actually not that bad if you are IP. You should look at this table of relative opportunity across all provinces. Quebec is #4 in terms of relative opportunity, and Ontario is #10 (dead last in terms of province, i.e., excluding territories). Quebec may not be that bad of a spot to land and gain IP status. 

#1/#2/#3 are Atlantic provinces - you may need to check with MUN/Dal etc to see what their IP status considerations are.

Ah, I love being able to have more data points to make decisions on. This data kind of reinforces the other information I saw, but looking at it from a different point of view. Thank you for posting this.

[BubbleGut]

I'm not the most informed person to answer questions about med applications given that I'm mostly on this forum to follow the dentistry stuff, but I am from Quebec and I think there's a very important factor missing in your discussions! The large majority of spots in Quebec are reserved to cegep applicants. For example, University of Sherbrooke reserves 80% of its IP spots to cegep applicants. Note that other schools, such as McGill with ~40% cegep, take smaller proportions of cegep applicants. However this means that by default, these 80% will get in as a "first-try enrolment". For Sherbrooke, you are only eligible to be considered in this category if you haven't completed more than the equivalent of 3 full-time semesters in university (45 credits). Other schools in Quebec like McGill consider you ineligible as a cegep applicant once you've completed any university credit. Following that, you are fighting for a much smaller portion of the total spots, and it becomes much more competitive in that QC schools convert your GPA to an R score which takes into account their perceived difficulty of your program and as a result some people will not get interviews with a 4.0/4.0 in their programs while others with 3.5 could (except McGill). They also count all your undergraduate grades, unweighted, forever no matter how many degrees you get (except McGill which is more like other Canadian schools in many ways). Some schools also allocate spots for applicants that are midway through their bachelor's degrees, and therefore less for applicants with a completed degree. Others don't. It's a very complex system that changes slightly each year, and I will take a lot of research to understand where you fit in it for each QC school. I'm not the most informed on the whole process for MD degrees but if you go into the Quebec medical schools section of this forum, you might get a lot of help! 

[Edict]

On 6/8/2019 at 11:16 PM, gravytrain said:

Hey everyone and sorry for a weirdish, longish post. I hope it hasn't been covered before and I'm not sure where else to ask these questions.

I'm looking at the AFMC admission requirements information and it appears that the successful application rates are rather low in Quebec and Ontario (like single digits in some cases). And some of the schools in QC look like there was a drop in the success rate of both IP and OOP applicants in the past year or two, but the overall acceptance rate and total number of applicants doesn't seem to have changed much. Anybody have any idea what's going on there? Are the odds of getting into a Quebec or Ontario med school as an IP applicant actually lower than getting into some of the other med schools as an OOP applicant?

The reason I am asking is that, as a clueless American living in the US currently who will be obtaining permanent resident status in Canada next year, I knew it would be tougher getting into Canadian schools as a Canadian/permanent resident than into American schools as an US citizen, but I didn't realize it would be quite that tough. I have read a lot of threads on here about people applying three, four, or even five times before getting an acceptance even with two bachelor degrees or a master's. and it's a bit terrifying because I'm a non-trad and my clock is ticking, haha.

On the topic of getting degrees, I will be applying to transfer to a university in Canada to finish my B.Sc., but I'm still building my application list. My spouse and I could theoretically move almost anywhere in Canada at this point, but now I feel like we have to really factor in the likelihood of getting into medical school in our decision of where to settle, because wherever we "land" as immigrants will be our IP location for med school admission purposes when that time comes. So should we be looking at the Prairies and the Atlantic provinces instead of BC/AB/ON/QC to boost my chances later on?

Besides that and the questions about the admission data for QC and ON, did anyone particular enjoy their undergraduate experience at a particular university? Any other general comments, questions, concerns, suggestions?

I'm a bit of a type-A personality so I feel like I need to have a detailed plan and I'm going crazy overthinking every single aspect of this move, where to apply to complete undergrad, and the Canadian med admissions process, so any input is appreciated! Thank you to those of you who read this far, lol.

Yes, you should probably consider AB/Prairies/Atlantic in order to maximize your chances if your goal is purely to get into a school. Ontario doesn't really have much IP, Mac has IP but given the size and competition of Ontario, their IP is nearly meaningless. Western has an IP for locals who did high school in SW ontario which you wouldn't qualify for. NOSM reserves all spots essentially for rural candidates. The rest don't care, Ottawa's french stream is easier to get into though. 

So all in all, by moving to a province that cares for its own citizens, you can basically still compete for Ontario spots while being competitive for your own province's spots. 

[LittleDaisy]

On 6/8/2019 at 11:16 PM, gravytrain said:

Hey everyone and sorry for a weirdish, longish post. I hope it hasn't been covered before and I'm not sure where else to ask these questions.

I'm looking at the AFMC admission requirements information and it appears that the successful application rates are rather low in Quebec and Ontario (like single digits in some cases). And some of the schools in QC look like there was a drop in the success rate of both IP and OOP applicants in the past year or two, but the overall acceptance rate and total number of applicants doesn't seem to have changed much. Anybody have any idea what's going on there? Are the odds of getting into a Quebec or Ontario med school as an IP applicant actually lower than getting into some of the other med schools as an OOP applicant?

The reason I am asking is that, as a clueless American living in the US currently who will be obtaining permanent resident status in Canada next year, I knew it would be tougher getting into Canadian schools as a Canadian/permanent resident than into American schools as an US citizen, but I didn't realize it would be quite that tough. I have read a lot of threads on here about people applying three, four, or even five times before getting an acceptance even with two bachelor degrees or a master's. and it's a bit terrifying because I'm a non-trad and my clock is ticking, haha.

On the topic of getting degrees, I will be applying to transfer to a university in Canada to finish my B.Sc., but I'm still building my application list. My spouse and I could theoretically move almost anywhere in Canada at this point, but now I feel like we have to really factor in the likelihood of getting into medical school in our decision of where to settle, because wherever we "land" as immigrants will be our IP location for med school admission purposes when that time comes. So should we be looking at the Prairies and the Atlantic provinces instead of BC/AB/ON/QC to boost my chances later on?

Besides that and the questions about the admission data for QC and ON, did anyone particular enjoy their undergraduate experience at a particular university? Any other general comments, questions, concerns, suggestions?

I'm a bit of a type-A personality so I feel like I need to have a detailed plan and I'm going crazy overthinking every single aspect of this move, where to apply to complete undergrad, and the Canadian med admissions process, so any input is appreciated! Thank you to those of you who read this far, lol.

Official answer from AFMC about each Canadian medical school's acceptance rate, the acceptance rates for Quebec French Medical Schools are not that bad: https://afmc.ca/node/245

Granted you have to speak French fluently to be accepted! 

[WeDayDream]

I just want to point out AB is only "easier" on paper. I know so many people who came to AB for this reason only to find themselves bottom of the class. Let's stop pushing this idea and giving prospective students false hope.  

[peace2014]

If your passion is medicine, I would also apply broadly to US MD and DO schools. Your chances are way better since you are American, and if you want to come back to Canada to practice, you can still apply to first iteration without significant disadvantages and US residencies without any restrictions (which broaden your choices!! Very important if you want a competitive specialty). If you exclusively want to apply to CDN schools (which I really do not recommend given your background), I would move to Alberta or Saskatchewan... definitely not metro Toronto.