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How hard is it to match to U of T as a McGill student?


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I am wondering how difficult it is to match to U of T as a student from McGill, for IM or surgical specialties. Carms data show that 13-18 McGill student match to U of T every year, but I am wondering how many of those students match into IM or surgical specialties. I am trying to decide whether I should aim to do my electives in TO or spread them out across multiple ON schools...

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I'd argue that home school advantage is less for Toronto than other school. Large residency programs with faculty across many hospitals means you have to network with the right people in order to make use of home school advantage. It also doesn't help that a lot of med students are from the GTA and want to go there so Toronto ends up being competitive enough that they never have to worry about favouring their own cause they will likely get great applicants due to location (notice how I haven't mentioned quality of residency lol). Careful about doing too many Toronto electives, while it may show them you are interested it can hurt your chances at other schools. There's a lot of antitoronto sentiment at other programs. I've seen friends hurt there chances by doing too many Toronto electives. 

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6 minutes ago, DocBrown95 said:

I'd argue that home school advantage is less for Toronto than other school. Large residency programs with faculty across many hospitals means you have to network with the right people in order to make use of home school advantage. It also doesn't help that a lot of med students are from the GTA and want to go there so Toronto ends up being competitive enough that they never have to worry about favouring their own cause they will likely get great applicants due to location (notice how I haven't mentioned quality of residency lol). Careful about doing too many Toronto electives, while it may show them you are interested it can hurt your chances at other schools. There's a lot of antitoronto sentiment at other programs. I've seen friends hurt there chances by doing too many Toronto electives. 

I do not agree. I don't know where you got that info from, it's as if you are a troll. 

I have friends who are residents at UofT and told me that most of the residents are from UofT med.

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6 hours ago, unreal said:

I am wondering how difficult it is to match to U of T as a student from McGill, for IM or surgical specialties. Carms data show that 13-18 McGill student match to U of T every year, but I am wondering how many of those students match into IM or surgical specialties. I am trying to decide whether I should aim to do my electives in TO or spread them out across multiple ON schools...

I would aim to spread them around, but certainly if you have enough elective time, I would spend a bit more time in Toronto if that is your first choice. Ultimately, its a trade off and a calculated risk. Whether anything is worth it really depends on how badly you want UofT or not. If your goal is just to match to Ontario and Toronto is a preference but not hugely, probably better off to diversify and vice versa. 

Certainly UofT doesn't discriminate against McGill, it is treated in the same light as any other Canadian medical school, and given the relative proximity and similarities between the two cities, there may be a tiny possible benefit to being from McGill, but certainly nowhere near the advantage of being from UofT itself. 

I wouldn't look too much into those match stats because you just don't know how many people from McGill wanted to go to UofT in the first place. 

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1 hour ago, guest123 said:

I do not agree. I don't know where you got that info from, it's as if you are a troll. 

I have friends who are residents at UofT and told me that most of the residents are from UofT med.

Not a troll. I never said that most of the residents aren't from u of t med, I just said home school advantage isn't as strong there as other school. Of course lots of u of t kids match there, they tend do do lots of research and leadership activities, things Toronto loves. 

OP was asking if McGill students have a good chance at matching to Toronto. Which they obviously do because toronto values achievement and academia more than most schools. In my graduating class, anyone who was competitve (pubs, leadership) and wanted to go to Toronto ended up matching there. We however had a ton of people that were not competitive for specific fields (minimal interviews) who matched to our home school. Why... Because they developed relationships with enough staff and residents who went above and beyond for them. My friends in Toronto have told me it's harder (not impossible and involves some luck) to build these relationships simply due to the amount of faculty and learners (students, research students, residents and fellows).

Tldr: a competitive student is a competitve student. Toronto kids tend to be competitive 

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1 hour ago, DocBrown95 said:

Not a troll. I never said that most of the residents aren't from u of t med, I just said home school advantage isn't as strong there as other school. Of course lots of u of t kids match there, they tend do do lots of research and leadership activities, things Toronto loves. 

OP was asking if McGill students have a good chance at matching to Toronto. Which they obviously do because toronto values achievement and academia more than most schools. In my graduating class, anyone who was competitve (pubs, leadership) and wanted to go to Toronto ended up matching there. We however had a ton of people that were not competitive for specific fields (minimal interviews) who matched to our home school. Why... Because they developed relationships with enough staff and residents who went above and beyond for them. My friends in Toronto have told me it's harder (not impossible and involves some luck) to build these relationships simply due to the amount of faculty and learners (students, research students, residents and fellows).

Tldr: a competitive student is a competitve student. Toronto kids tend to be competitive 

I agree 100% with this. Toronto is a big city with lots of internationals, lots of competition. The faculty places great pride on rankings and research. Research leads to more citations and higher rankings. As a result, there is more pressure on faculty to publish, it is harder to land your academic promotions in Toronto in fact, primarily because there is a higher requirement for research. This essentially means that faculty in Toronto are more research focused faculty and have more pressure to do so. That means naturally they tend to be more biased towards people like them, who have done research. The next thing is that Toronto has tons of competition. Any specific faculty will have undergrads, med students, residents, fellows and international PhDs, grad students, IMGs all with their own agenda eager to help out with research. This is not the case at many other schools and this means each faculty is busier and can also get away with devoting less time towards each person. This gives rise to a more competitive every man for himself kind of culture. This rep also draws in people who think they excel in these environments and the cycle continues. 

There are always exceptions and anyone can name them easily because programs still need good clinical residents, without a doubt. But this stereotype does have some truth to it and I would also say that it is also true that UofT taking their own is dependent on the program, some residencies take their own more than others. 

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2 hours ago, pbjtime said:

Would this generally apply for family medicine residency at UofT as well? Since some faculty are spread out around the city/working at different clinics around the GTA?

You need a strong app for family med in Toronto. It's probably as competitive as some surgical specialties. I had friends who ranked Toronto family higher than competitive specialties and matched to things like rads as there second choice.

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