Why Western?

[zeja02]

As i'm preparing for my interview, I keep getting stuck for this question. Can any current Shulich students advise some unique things about Western's program that makes it good?

[MD.VA]

If you can't come up with any reason to pick this school, why did you apply?

[SunAndMoon]

28 minutes ago, MD.VA said:

If you can't come up with any reason to pick this school, why did you apply?

Beeeeecause admissions are competitive and you apply broadly and take what you can get? What kinda question is that? 

 

Zeja, look up their website and look through the forum, you can easily come up with stuff.

[rmorelan]

3 hours ago, SunAndMoon said:

Beeeeecause admissions are competitive and you apply broadly and take what you can get? What kinda question is that? 

 

Zeja, look up their website and look through the forum, you can easily come up with stuff.

a bit harsh but true - you are going to apply pretty much to every school you can. At least if you want to be maximally competitive.

There are some great summaries on the forum for that I mean I am biased but it is a great school and I picked it deliberately over the others in Ontario.

[zeja02]

On 2/10/2018 at 5:45 PM, SunAndMoon said:

Beeeeecause admissions are competitive and you apply broadly and take what you can get? What kinda question is that? 

 

Zeja, look up their website and look through the forum, you can easily come up with stuff.

sorry, im a bit new, is there a particular section where i can find this info or do i just search

[1D7]

Core clerkship rotations completed before electives. Strong connection with rural programs. Fewer BS assessments from what I've heard, at least compared to UofT.

I would ask current 1st and 2nd year medical students what they think about the curriculum since they're the most up to date (though they are most likely to also complain about it -- keep that in mind).

[Edict]

Pro: Western does electives at the end and cores before, which lets you explore specialties fully. 

Pro: London is a great medium sized city, not too big and not too small. 

 

Non-interview reasons for choosing western: Honestly, if you want to remain competitive for specialties particular surgical specialties there are a few schools in the country that give you a leg up when applying and one of those is Western. Western has a strong reputation in surgery and many of their surgical residencies produce great graduates, the curriculum is more traditional and better structured to performing well on clerkship. 

[Comprehensible]

1 hour ago, Edict said:

Pro: Western does electives at the end and cores before, which lets you explore specialties fully. 

Pro: London is a great medium sized city, not too big and not too small. 

 

Non-interview reasons for choosing western: Honestly, if you want to remain competitive for specialties particular surgical specialties there are a few schools in the country that give you a leg up when applying and one of those is Western. Western has a strong reputation in surgery and many of their surgical residencies produce great graduates, the curriculum is more traditional and better structured to performing well on clerkship. 

Any chance you know which other schools are similarly beneficial? Just so we have all the information if we happen to end up in a situation where we have a choice.

[Edict]

On 2/14/2018 at 2:30 PM, Comprehensible said:

Any chance you know which other schools are similarly beneficial? Just so we have all the information if we happen to end up in a situation where we have a choice.

Generally the big surgery schools in Canada: 

Western, Edmonton, Toronto and McGill.

They tend to have the more "hardcore" surgical programs, residents typically work harder during their residency years and often these programs tend to do a bit more to help improve student's applications for surgical residency. This is generally and applies mainly to the more "surgical" surgical programs and there are plenty of exceptions, i.e. hardcore programs at different centers: "ottawa for cardiac, ubc for hpb, mcmaster for uro and ortho etc.. 

They also tend to do more research, which is probably better for surgery keeners since it lets them get involved and have some research productivity when CaRMS rolls around. 

For medical students they also seem, correct me if i'm wrong, to have longer surgery core clerkships, more selectives, more surgical opportunities (complex cases, big name staff), dissection as opposed to prosection, which means more opportunities to get reference letters and to build up surgical skills for electives. All these schools are 4 year schools, which naturally offer students a bit more time to build up their applications, decide their specialty and ensure they are able to perform at a higher standard during electives (despite surgical residencies getting longer and longer, surgery is always a marathon, not a sprint). For Toronto at least, the surgery focus seems to be more on research, skills labs rather than operating due to a higher number of fellows particularly for med students, so its not the same at every school. 

These schools also tend to churn out more surgical keeners than other schools for whatever reason. 

I realize i'm probably going to get a lot of pushback on this because I am stereotyping pretty hard, and I am only saying this because you really pushed for it. I don't by any means feel that you cannot get into surgical programs at other schools and I don't feel that surgical residents are any better or worse at any specific program (residency is what you make of it, a resident who decides to do the minimum will fall flat at any program and a resident that goes above and beyond will succeed anywhere). It also goes without saying, every program is different in every subspecialty and this kind of stuff changes every year. A program can be fantastic one year and due to a faculty switch become not so great and vice versa. It changes like that. Additionally, few surgical programs can be good at everything, surgical programs that offer a lot of research and big complex cases often have fellows who take away said cases. Surgical programs that don't often have great operating exposure. 

 

Note: This list is also only for medical students, not for residents as I have alluded to above. Additionally, there are several other schools that also prepare students well for a surgical residency app that I haven't mentioned because I am not familiar with all the schools. 

 

 

[Comprehensible]

2 minutes ago, Edict said:

Generally the big surgery schools in Canada: 

Western, Edmonton, Toronto and McGill.

They tend to have the more "hardcore" surgical programs, residents typically work harder during their residency years and often these programs tend to do a bit more. This is generally and applies mainly to the more "surgical" surgical programs and there are plenty of exceptions, i.e. hardcore programs at different centers: "ottawa for cardiac, ubc for hpb, mcmaster for uro and ortho etc.. 

For medical students they also seem, correct me if i'm wrong, to have longer surgery core clerkships, more selectives, which means more opportunities to get reference letters and to build up surgical skills for electives. 

These schools also tend to churn out more surgical keeners than other schools for whatever reason. 

 

 

 

 

Interesting, those aren't the schools I necessarily would have expected. 

I'm sure there's a lot of word of mouth that goes around on these things, but as premed students we often don't know what schools are known for what specialty until after we have to pick a school. If anyone is willing, it'd be awesome if some current and past med students could share what each school is known for.