My New Admissions Policy, please read

[nutritional_lee]

...were the GPA is just a ceilling to keep out those who aren't very intelligent (no offense) and then those above this GPA are obviously intelligent enough, let's now see if they have the personal attributes that make a good doctor.

 

This is very simplistic reasoning, Wolvenstar. Not everyone goes through university under the same set of circumstances, and you most certainly can't automatically equate GPA with intelligence. For the hypothetical lives-at-home-with-his-parents student who has all of his school and life expenses paid for, it's very easy to think that if your marks aren't high enough, you just ain't smart enough. This same student must not forget that there are plenty of less-fortunate individuals out there who have to bust their arse 30 hours a week at some crummy part-time job to pay their way through school all while maintaining the minimum 15 credits per semester in order just to have their application considered. Their 3.6 GPA is far more impressive than this brat's 3.9. (Don't get me wrong - I'm a spoiled suburb kid with decent grades.) And that's just one example. There are plenty of people who didn't know they wanted to be a doctor until after a few years of university, and whose GPA isn't as high as someone who's had their mind made up since day one. People with high GPAs are usually quite intelligent. The converse, however, most certainly is not always true. Please try not to make such sweeping generalizations about people based on single, solitary criterion.

[lostintime]

I think we all have our personal bias here. We know what schools are better for each of us, so this influences how we look at things.

 

That being said, I personally think that it should be a balance between good academics and solid life experiences. I think UT has too much of an emphasis on GPA, but again, each school has a different approach to things which ends up balancing out.

 

I don't think the process has to be changed at all. The schools are different enough that there's bound to be one that fits your personal qualifications. This also diversifies the graduate pool, as each school will have selected from a slightly different applicant base.

 

Hmm, I'm not really sure about that. I think the interview is a good opportunity to explain yourselves to the admissions people. There are some things you can't really convey in the standard applicatoin questions, and it's so much better to talk to them in person. Of course it isn't the be all and end all, but I think it does a really good job at gaging how professional you are, and whether you have the appropriate life background.

 

The interview isn't the be all and end all at any school though. For the schools that place a huge emphasis on it, you still have to jump hurdles - the GPA, MCAT, essay screens, etc.

 

Lol I didn't get interviewed at UT, but I like their holistic approach better. I guess I just wasn't up to the standards. But the GPA thing, yeah I agree, but the general approach I like because they actually care about LOR, the sketch, etc. I really love Western, but seriously, how can they not even care about the 48 list and LOR? I think those are quite important...but maybe that's just me.

 

Interviews, I think the level of subjectivity plays too key of a role. That's why I think we should be moving towards MMI. It also gages those characteristics, i.e professionalism, communication, reacting to high pressure situations, etc. but in a more objective manner.

[Madz25]

I am at considerable loss of encouragement when seemingly competent people are rejected 2 times a row. I am just saying why should those who might come across with a best answer to questions like, "tell me about a time when...." or "your strengths and weaknesses"? should be admitted and not others. The questions are absurd and have no relevance to the indication of your competence.

 

I realize it is discouraging when people that you think should get in are rejected. But, you DONT know what they really put in their application. You dont know how they handled themselves in the interview. Don't let what has happened to others influence you and get you down. Your energy will be better spent focusing on your own application.

 

Although those questions may seem irrelevant and many of them are - the point is to see how you think, how well you know yourself, and how you choose to answer the question. It's not about having the best answer, it's about HOW you answer. I think a lot of applicants are afraid of questions like that (I know I used to be) because they think they have to come up with some perfectly crafted believable answer. But they aren't looking for some amazingly eloquent answer.

 

Why would they be assessing your competence? Don't your MCAT scores, grades, and reference letters already attest to your competence?

[Lebowski]

Buffy Pool - I'm not sure if your post is serious or not, but that idea would put a gigantic financial barrier in place for all but the most affluent students. Dal charged us 75 dollars for a 2-hour MMI, I wonder what a 4 month MMI would cost.

[vip_138]

I don't really like this idea mostly because its separating applicants into pools that are judged separately based on academics. I can see why a school might do this for disadvantaged/rural tho. However i also disagree with people's opinion as far as how interview supposedly picks the right candidates. Australia as well as some other foreign countries have deemed the interview useless, opting for a lottery or something else. There are a number of studies showing that there was no difference in medstudents who did well on the interview vs. those that don't. This has also been noted in canada and probably why there has been a push for MMI, which i think from a medschool's perspective is the best approach. So far, gpa has been shown to predict medschool academic performance, MCAT for board exams, but they've had trouble with non-cognitive assessment.

 

here's a couple articles:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12634215

http://www.springerlink.com/content/hp06337354r50086/

http://www.academicmedicine.org/pt/re/acmed/abstract.00001888-200410001-00012.htm;jsessionid=LJYT1yGgJ36kjgvzG9LLQCtLGv7c0Q1L47JtnLF1hyVr66vZCMy6!1838886723!181195629!8091!-1

 

"interview scores have repeatedly failed tests of validity"

"interview ratings depend more on theinterviewer than the candidate"

 

Even in the sask thread there is was talk of how the dean noticed a difference in a class selected with MMI vs earlier normal-interview-selected classes, where there were less problems with the students later on.

[Jeremy_N]

The interview isn't about what kind of answers or examples you can muster up. It's more about how you give your answers, how confident you are, and how you can engage in a conversation. You need to know how to communicate clearly and effectively, and there are people that can do this and have very high GPAs.

 

Try giving someone a practice interview and you will soon find out that you can't remember what the interviewee said for each question. But you will remember the manner in which they answer. The interviewers also have to give you a score based on how well they could see themselves working with you.

[AMmd]

hahah you should apply to Sherbrooke, they dont have interviews.. lol they dont even ask for EC...only gpa baby

[jsmooth]

absolutely not. your admissions policy is no go. interviews are a must. i don't care how qualified you are on paper. if you can't stay on par with other candidates after the interview then you need to work on all the skills an interview demands. no excuses. sorry.

[maria]

I definitely do not agree with this idea. I think the interview is crucial to the admissions decisions that are made and rightly so. The nature of the profession is one in which you must be able to communicate quickly, effectively, and clearly in stress situations. There is more to it than just being smart and having high GPA/MCAT. There are doctors who I have been to who are intelligent but I totally do not feel comfortable around them and they cannot communicate well and that gets in the way-regardless of how much knowledge they have. Perhaps people who are not able to get through in the interview should consider doing research in the medical field. I am not talking about your friend specifically as I do not know him/her but the people who are involved in the decisions making of the admissions process are experienced and make the best decisions for their schools and whether we agree with it or not, that is the way it is. I do not think however that the interview should be removed. I have seen the admissions process in countries where there is no interview and well, their med students are not very well rounded individuals by any means.

[supafield]

Well I am not asking to grant the applicants a MD just based on their undergrad marks. You ARE in med school, you ARE evaluated during your residency. You ARE referred (LOR) by your seniors and interviewed before matching in speciality of your interest. So there is a long way to develop those skills. And I agree a subset of communication skills is required prior to commencement of medical school.

The idea of A+ students as introverts is true to an extent but blown out of proportions most of the time. I think interviews are not a great way to assess applicants (but there isn't a better way so they should be done for the vast majority of matriculants but 20 seats in a class of 160 is about 12.5% of class, and worth a risk)

 

Yes, the introvert scenario is a stereotype.... but even if it is a few.... It's not worth it.....

 

You are evaluated..... but at the end of the day.... there's a residency spot for everyone in a Canadian medical school..... and the fail rate once you being an MD is nearly negligible....

 

Again I hold that the interview isn't perfect and may let people in that shouldn't get in.... but it at least makes an attempt to seek rounded individuals.

[sethy]

If your friends didn't get accepted purely due to the interview... then like everyone else that was rejected if they really want to study medicine they should go back and improve their applications. For some people that means going back to school to improve a GPA, or re-writing an MCAT, for others that means taking interview skills workshops, re-writing essays and just working on interpersonal skills. These people were rejected for a reason and it obviously was not their high GPA. If they were rejected because of something found in the interview, why would you want a system that blindly accepts without speaking to these people first? Then they will struggle in school and may ultimately not be the right fit for medicine. Doing well in undergrad and even grad school is a lot different than medicine. Getting high marks doesn't show someone that you're going to be able to do a proper neurological exam or even take proper history for that matter (very important).

 

I am happy somebody finally brought this up. Ultimately, no individual aspect of the process is completely objective or exceptionally revealing about any individual candidate. Education research has shown time and time again, from grade school through to university, marks are often a poor indicator of intelligence or how much an individual knows about a specific topic. The reason for this is that the assessment that those marks are based on are typically very poorly designed. So, rather than testing how well somebody understands biochemistry, physiology or the structure of a piece of music, the assessments actually test how good a student is at school. This is a fundamental concept that is changing the way that k-12 education is being delivered but has not yet reached university education.

 

So, what I am trying to say is that suggesting that an individual would be successful in medicine based on marks and MCAT scores is a fallacy. While I suppose it is true that students with high marks and scores are likely to have success in the pre-clerkship years, that success ultimately means nothing when those students are tested in a true evaluation of their ability to think like a doctor. The process as it is right now is simply the most comprehensive and feasible approach that anybody has come up with. Is it flawed? Absolutely. But it is the same process for everybody, and as doc2B stated earlier, this allows for each student to improve whatever aspect of their application they need to.

[solocup]

Well I am not asking to grant the applicants a MD just based on their undergrad marks. You ARE in med school, you ARE evaluated during your residency. You ARE referred (LOR) by your seniors and interviewed before matching in speciality of your interest. So there is a long way to develop those skills. And I agree a subset of communication skills is required prior to commencement of medical school.

The idea of A+ students as introverts is true to an extent but blown out of proportions most of the time. I think interviews are not a great way to assess applicants (but there isn't a better way so they should be done for the vast majority of matriculants but 20 seats in a class of 160 is about 12.5% of class, and worth a risk)

 

 

I think medical school is a place where students hone their communication skills and not a place to start developing communication skills. You don't have that much time, before you know it, you're in the wards and if can't talk to people for whatever reason, I don't care how high your MCAT/GPA are, you're gone. Besides, the interview is not too much to ask. You might have a bad day and performed poorly at one interview but if you can't make an impression for most of your interviews how the hell are you going to get anywhere, i.e. get a job or a date? Medical school interviews are not stressful compared to more gruelling ones at Google, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs etc.

[sbrugby]

The logic behind this isn't very good.

[sbrugby]

But do you not think that somewhere among the 500 interviewed there was someone with amazing stats and very deserving that didn't happen to make a good impression?

 

This is called variance.

 

In the same way, I'm sure there are people with great stats but that would make horrible physicians who get in every year.

[Lebowski]

It would cost the same as any other 6 credit course at the University.

 

These "med school applicants" would basically be treated like clerks for four months (minus actually getting to do anything to the patients). They'd do histories and physicals and hang around on the wards. They do call 1:3 (just like clerks). They'd do the scut stuff the clerks now do (print out rounding lists at 5:45 am, getting the charts, double checking that all the orders written were signed off by the nursing staff, etc. etc.)

 

1 am, ER phones because you've got a suicidal 15 year old who's woken up post-alcohol-and-aspirin. You send your para-clerk to go get the story. The ward phones (2 am) because their OBGYN patient is "anxious". Para-clerk. Pediatrics - itchy kid (4:30 am). Para-clerk. Family medicine page (5 am, 5:45 am and 6:13 am). Para-clerk. The actual clerk (who's about four months in already) would go with, but the para-clerk would be expected to do the actual interview and physical.

 

Now, the para-clerks wouldn't actually do anything (no orders, no procedures) but they'd be great at doing an H&P by the end of the summer. But most of the time, they round with the rest of the team, and get to observe surgeries, deliveries, etc. etc.

 

The cost for these additional individuals would be limited to:

 

Initial four week session, during which they are taught the basics of H&P. To keep costs down, I'd pressgang the post-LMCC Part I clerks (who are doing nothing much but drink at that point) into doing these sessions. There'd be a week for history, a week for neuro/psych, a week for heart/lung, and finally a week for abdominal exam.

 

Call rooms. There would have to be more call rooms to accomodate the extra bodies in the hospital. I grant you that this could pose an actual problem (but ask yourself, when you were a clerk how much did you sleep?)

 

It would require a lot more out of the applicants than simply turning up for an interview, but that is the point. If you really have a passion to be a great doctor, that will shine through. And it will be a reality check for those individuals who may be choosing the path for the wrong reasons.

I think this idea would definitely select more able candidates than the standard interview, but I still don't think it's feasible. It will definitely cost much more than a standard university course. A standard university course is 3 hours of lecture a week, plus a lab maybe. What you're proposing sounds like mini-medical school/internship including overnight stays, in-depth shadowing and use of hospital resources. I think it's a bit too intensive of a process to actually be put into place. Plus you'd have to accomodate for every undergrad student who attends a university that does not have a medical school. These students would have to move to a new city, paying for travel and accomodation for this entire process. I paid 1000 dollars on application fees alone this year, plus transportation to interviews... and I'm lucky enough to be in a position to pay for that. Others might not be, and the idea you are proposing will only increase that cost.

[ploughboy]

That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that.

 

As much as your idea has merit (and I like the idea of having a "paraclerk" below me on the grand medical totem pole *grin* ) what about people who want to apply to more than one medical school?

[lostintime]

I think Buffy Pool's idea would make a great television drama series. You should sell it...haha---see crazy premeds in action.

[Alastriss]

OP:

when people like that get rejected, it may be because they get to the point of the interview where it can carry more weight than ur academics

 

In which case your 'decent' ECs will not save you if you DID NOT LEARN ANYTHING FROM THEM.

 

Its not enough to go to africa, or to volunteer at the hospital for 10000000 hours, but to learn from those experiences and have it relate to medicine.

A person with half decent ECs that took some big lessons from them and matured as an individual is a lot better than a person with an amazing ABS sketch but didnt learn/gain from them or grow from them as a person. There should be no sparing those who can't pass the interview - period. Its one thing to look good on paper, but its another to look good to people. In medicine, 'people' is a pretty big theme, or so I hear.

[Kuantum]

It's an interesting idea, however, the reason admissions policies are being slowly changed is because there hasn't been enough evidence that suggests what is being done right now is the best way. Now, if you can show that new admissions policy changes have been tested and there is some promise there, then yes, maybe admissions committees will consider it. Until then, everyone will likely make a transition to the MMI (because that actually has evidence to back it up) until something else comes along that's better.

[The Law]

That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that.

 

I like how creative your approach is though.

[Wolvenstar]

This is very simplistic reasoning, Wolvenstar. Not everyone goes through university under the same set of circumstances, and you most certainly can't automatically equate GPA with intelligence. For the hypothetical lives-at-home-with-his-parents student who has all of his school and life expenses paid for, it's very easy to think that if your marks aren't high enough, you just ain't smart enough. This same student must not forget that there are plenty of less-fortunate individuals out there who have to bust their arse 30 hours a week at some crummy part-time job to pay their way through school all while maintaining the minimum 15 credits per semester in order just to have their application considered. Their 3.6 GPA is far more impressive than this brat's 3.9. (Don't get me wrong - I'm a spoiled suburb kid with decent grades.) And that's just one example. There are plenty of people who didn't know they wanted to be a doctor until after a few years of university, and whose GPA isn't as high as someone who's had their mind made up since day one. People with high GPAs are usually quite intelligent. The converse, however, most certainly is not always true. Please try not to make such sweeping generalizations about people based on single, solitary criterion.

 

 

Well first off I would like to state that I am not stay at home and gets all his life-expenses paid for kinda guy, although I doubt that was what you were implying. Now I go to school and work and I am doing 4 courses per semester, my grades may not be the very best but they do meet the standards required for getting into med school (by the way not many universities require you to do 15credits or 5 courses per semester minimum only full time studies which is generally 3 courses or more).

 

Secondly the best student I know at my school here in alberta is from Manitoba so she is far from her family and any support emotionally she might get from them and she does have a job while going to school.

 

 

Thirdy you might have taken notice that I used the example of a student with a C+ average. Yes there may be differences between a so called "brat" with a 3.9 and a working student with a 3.6 but what I am saying is that those people who can not pull off decent grades (let's say an average of 3.5 or greater) are those that are not intelligent enough to become doctors. It may be argued that a person with a 3.0 or a 2.8 would get a somewhat higher mark if they weren't working while going to school, but it is highly unlikely that it would boost them above the minimum required GPA.

 

 

 

 

 

In regards to vip 138, you state that:

 

"There are a number of studies showing that there was no difference in medstudents who did well on the interview vs. those that don't. "

 

What kind of differences are the studies looking for? You can't just say that because the people who got in and the people who didn't get in have the same hobbies/social groups/communication skills/number of friends doesn't mean they don't have significant difference.

 

You can't take a sports team and say that there are not any significant differences, hell you can take a group of 100 random people and say there are not any significant differences. The studies can't show that the people who didn't get accepted would have made just as good of doctors as those who did get accepted.

 

 

As for what Buffy Pool was suggesting I do not think a program such as hers would work, mostly because the activities that she suggests be involved with this are the activities that occur later on in med school, and which med students are taught about first (it why the clerkship comes later, you do need to learn some stuff first), Although the idea of a summer program to weed out unworthy med applicants is an intriguing and useful idea, your exact program for it I do not believe would work. Obviously though the med schools could take the general idea and turn it into something that would actually work perfectly, but then we run into the issue of money again.

[vip_138]

 

What kind of differences are the studies looking for? You can't just say that because the people who got in and the people who didn't get in have the same hobbies/social groups/communication skills/number of friends doesn't mean they don't have significant difference.

 

 

ok, first, you misunderstood my post. They evaluate current medstudents, some did well on their interview, some didn't but got in anyways, due to strong qualities in other areas of selection factors. Now as far as 'how' they define validity, there's a number of ways. Some look at pre-clerkship academic ability, some look at OSCE performance or board exam performance, or they even look at interview score consistency, repeating interviews with different interviewers. All of which have shown little to no validity in accurately assessing candidates.

 

here are some more articles:

(senior year clinical examinations)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17089077?ordinalpos=18&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

 

(reproducibility)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15141132?ordinalpos=59&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

 

(step II scores - US board exam with both academic and clinical assesment)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17209890?ordinalpos=15&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

 

Now some ppl have been saying the interview is to assess your communication skills and ability to relate to ppl but the problem is that it doesn't do this reliably or consistently. There is too much variation that is interviewer-dependent. Which is why we're seeing a move to MMI, which shows more evidence for selecting non-cognitive traits. Yes, all these traits that the interview is supposed to select for are all well and good, but it doesn't actually work in practice. One of the articles i presented mentions the need to properly train interviewers, and also that the interview may be more useful only at extreme scores. It might be useful for a school to use the interview as more of a don't-let-the-crazies-in but significant interview weighting hasn't been shown to be effective.

 

To the person who talked about foreign docs. Did you seriously just make sweeping generalizations based on your limited encounter? and even if their ability/performance was questioned, with such different systems, do you really think you can reliably attribute this to not having an interview?

 

On another note, its interesting what other non-cognitive assessments have been thought up. One, which was proposed by the netherlands for medschool admissions seemed interesting:

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12114155?ordinalpos=77&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

 

basically, it was similar to the assessment of medstudents. "(1) studying a three-to-five page text about diagnostic and therapeutic procedures of disease A during one hour; (2) explaining the studied procedures to another candidate and receiving information about disease B, studied by this other candidate, during one hour; (3) answering the questions of a standardized patient about disease A in 15 minutes; and (4) answering the questions of a standardized patient about disease B in 15 minutes. A three-person selection committee behind a one-way screen observed the two 15-minute interviews with the standardized patients."

[Rica]

Even disregarding the fact that you need an interview to evaluate communication skills....

 

Why are you so sure that someone with a 4.0 GPA would be a better doctor than someone with a 3.8 GPA? I think that you've got to have smart doctors, but I don't know that being a genius would really make someone a better doctor. A doctor has to be able to evaluate research and understand the science behind practice....it's not a profession where you always need to be thinking of things that nobody's ever thought of before. I think that we've all been competing for marks for so long that we've put more of a focus on intelligence than it really deserves. The cut-off method is a lot more appropriate for Medicine than choosing only applicants with a 4.0 or 3.9.

 

Also, I think that GPA depends a lot on what courses you take and where you took them. I think I would have had a much harder time acheiving a 3.9 if I'd studied at U of T instead of Queen's, and I think I probably could have pretty easily gotten a 4.0 if I'd taken easier courses (and still fulfilled all the basic science requirements).

[supafield]

Even disregarding the fact that you need an interview to evaluate communication skills....

 

Why are you so sure that someone with a 4.0 GPA would be a better doctor than someone with a 3.8 GPA? I think that you've got to have smart doctors, but I don't know that being a genius would really make someone a better doctor. A doctor has to be able to evaluate research and understand the science behind practice....it's not a profession where you always need to be thinking of things that nobody's ever thought of before. I think that we've all been competing for marks for so long that we've put more of a focus on intelligence than it really deserves. The cut-off method is a lot more appropriate for Medicine than choosing only applicants with a 4.0 or 3.9.

 

Also, I think that GPA depends a lot on what courses you take and where you took them. I think I would have had a much harder time acheiving a 3.9 if I'd studied at U of T instead of Queen's, and I think I probably could have pretty easily gotten a 4.0 if I'd taken easier courses (and still fulfilled all the basic science requirements).

 

 

agreed.....

[Wolvenstar]

ok, first, you misunderstood my post."

 

Ah, please disregard my post then.