Attrition rates for each medical school?

[USMDCanadian]

What percent of medical students fail or drop out at your institution?  

[Edict]

Close to 0. As a general rule, if you got into medical school you'll probably graduate. 

[indefatigable]

I looked into this and have uploaded the latest table.  Outside of the French-Speaking graded medical schools, it's almost 0.  Historically, the French schools have had about 10 or so per year, which works out to about 2-3 per year of study (compared to over 4 years for rest of Canada), but this might go lower with the change to P/F .  Considering that academic excellence is the only criterion for acceptance, besides the interview, this is a notable number. 
 

[Intrepid86]

12 hours ago, premed_thr0waway said:

What percent of medical students fail or drop out at your institution?  

The attrition rate in Canadian medical schools is very low and not even worth talking about. They aren't like Caribbean and other international med schools where it's not uncommon for 30% or more of an entering class to get weeded out.

[Tullius]

From my understanding, the posted pdf file underreports attrition because it doesn't count the people who were held back a year due to failed exams, but eventually completed medical school (with a 5 year transcript that presumably did permanent damage to their career prospects for just about every specialty).  It also doesn't count people who take extended leaves of absence.

I think Canadian medical school attrition is definitely worth talking about.  Your stress level will probably be lower if you go to a Canadian medical school that never holds anyone back or fails anyone out, versus going to a Canadian school that routinely holds back 1-2% of the class which is made up entirely of students who were selected because they are top performers academically. Especially if students are graded against each other, rather than against an absolute standard. 

It's difficult to get straight answers about the grading/failure policies of each school in Canada.  Some let students fail as many exams as they want; others are much more strict and commonly hold people back each year. 

[criston]

I would have thought that many more students would decide to quit school in first year or later, realizing that medical school / medicine is no longer suitable for them. 

Does anyone know of any classmates who decided to leave?  [I feel that many students dream of quitting school!]

 

[bigboydyo]

8 minutes ago, criston said:

I would have thought that many more students would decide to quit school in first year or later, realizing that medical school / medicine is no longer suitable for them. 

Does anyone know of any classmates who decided to leave?  [I feel that many students dream of quitting school!]

 

The whole point of the extremely difficult entry barriers to med school is to prevent students from dropping out . They test your commitment to the medical path by expecting you to do tons of extracurricular/volunteer work and go above and beyond just to get a chance of entering med school. When you factor in the amount of work/stress you must deal with, coupled with some luck, over the course of many years of preparation, and seeing way more failures than successes (as 1/10 people get that apply get in, roughly), it is very difficult to drop out. 

On that vein, I don't know anyone who has quit medical school -- aside from a professor who decided he wanted to do research (although he is from the US) and never finished his MD. I think most people that end up getting selected are just not the type to give up such an opportunity readily! 

[indefatigable]

On 25 mai 2018 at 3:16 PM, Tullius said:

From my understanding, the posted pdf file underreports attrition because it doesn't count the people who were held back a year due to failed exams, but eventually completed medical school (with a 5 year transcript that presumably did permanent damage to their career prospects for just about every specialty).  It also doesn't count people who take extended leaves of absence.

I think Canadian medical school attrition is definitely worth talking about.  Your stress level will probably be lower if you go to a Canadian medical school that never holds anyone back or fails anyone out, versus going to a Canadian school that routinely holds back 1-2% of the class which is made up entirely of students who were selected because they are top performers academically. Especially if students are graded against each other, rather than against an absolute standard. 

It's difficult to get straight answers about the grading/failure policies of each school in Canada.  Some let students fail as many exams as they want; others are much more strict and commonly hold people back each year. 

Attrition means people who don't complete (either by choice or not).  You're also wondering about people who take longer than 4 years to complete.  To get an idea, there's also a separate table, which indicates across Canada there were about ~250 or so repeaters for pre-clinical year 2 (posted below) for instance.  I suspect much of that is from QC, like the actual attrition.  Historically, it's been the case that one could repeat a year without having  failed a single block, although everything is changing with P/F.

1 hour ago, bigboydyo said:

The whole point of the extremely difficult entry barriers to med school is to prevent students from dropping out . They test your commitment to the medical path by expecting you to do tons of extracurricular/volunteer work and go above and beyond just to get a chance of entering med school. When you factor in the amount of work/stress you must deal with, coupled with some luck, over the course of many years of preparation, and seeing way more failures than successes (as 1/10 people get that apply get in, roughly), it is very difficult to drop out. 

On that vein, I don't know anyone who has quit medical school -- aside from a professor who decided he wanted to do research (although he is from the US) and never finished his MD. I think most people that end up getting selected are just not the type to give up such an opportunity readily! 

Most of the attrition and I suspect repeaters are from QC and during pre-clinical rather than clinical years (for repeating at least).  Only academic excellence is considered for admission within French-speaking schools within QC, besides the interview (i.e. no ECs), which is partly why I found the stats surprising (there's a couple of minor exceptions - from workforce, special path, etc.., but these are only a handful of seats).  It either means QC hasn't been good at identifying academic excellence (although cote R is almost a religion) or the it's harder to get through.  
 

enrolment-a.pdf

[rmorelan]

12 minutes ago, bigboydyo said:

The whole point of the extremely difficult entry barriers to med school is to prevent students from dropping out . They test your commitment to the medical path by expecting you to do tons of extracurricular/volunteer work and go above and beyond just to get a chance of entering med school. When you factor in the amount of work/stress you must deal with, coupled with some luck, over the course of many years of preparation, and seeing way more failures than successes (as 1/10 people get that apply get in, roughly), it is very difficult to drop out. 

On that vein, I don't know anyone who has quit medical school -- aside from a professor who decided he wanted to do research (although he is from the US) and never finished his MD. I think most people that end up getting selected are just not the type to give up such an opportunity readily! 

and well once you start it is the only easy way to pay off the large debit you will have, and you have committed so much already to the process emotionally. Kind of powerful motivation not to leave. 

 

[F508]

I know of at least 4 people who quit med in my year (although not sure what proportion did it because they couldn't keep up vs lost interest). I know someone in another year who quit early on in first year and went into a social science program because they realized they didn't want to do medicine loll. In Quebec, you can start med school at 19 years old and you incur little debt (our medical degree costs less than most bachelor's degree in RoC). So there isn't the monetary pressure and I guess for some people, they were too young to know what they wanted to do.

[goleafsgochris]

In English Canada at least, the only real way to "fail out" is if you don't try/don't do the work, or if there is multiple professionalism issues.  I did not see anyone fail out because they couldn't do it.  I also have never heard of someone dropping out because they decided they didn't want to do medicine anymore.  Essentially, as long as you try and care, this should not be a concern at all.

[NLengr]

18 hours ago, rmorelan said:

and well once you start it is the only easy way to pay off the large debit you will have, and you have committed so much already to the process emotionally. Kind of powerful motivation not to leave. 

 

Oh God this. So much of this. 

I would have quit dozens of times during residency if I could have figured out how to get out of the crushing debt. 

Staff now, life is a bit better lately but it can still be terrible sometimes. 

[canada747]

24 minutes ago, NLengr said:

Oh God this. So much of this. 

I would have quit dozens of times during residency if I could have figured out how to get out of the crushing debt. 

Staff now, life is a bit better lately but it can still be terrible sometimes. 

What would you have changed? I'm going to be an M1 and want to know how to make med school and residency bearable

[NLengr]

15 minutes ago, canada747 said:

What would you have changed? I'm going to be an M1 and want to know how to make med school and residency bearable

I wouldn't have done it. Hahaha

Honestly, med school is fine. Residency is total and utter shit. You just suffer through it to get to the end goal of being a staff. And also because your debt, useless MD degree and lack of real world employable experience don't give you a lot of other options. 

[rmorelan]

18 minutes ago, NLengr said:

I wouldn't have done it. Hahaha

Honestly, med school is fine. Residency is total and utter shit. You just suffer through it to get to the end goal of being a staff. And also because your debt, useless MD degree and lack of real world employable experience don't give you a lot of other options. 

Ha, make no mistake residency can be brutal for many specialties - and there is by that point where it is very hard to go back. You don't have a lot of control about that other than personal attitude. You have to tell yourself - look this is not always going to be fun, and there is a metric ton of work and stress. By the time you become staff you will be one way or the other battle hardened. 

 

[Edict]

On 5/29/2018 at 3:27 AM, canada747 said:

What would you have changed? I'm going to be an M1 and want to know how to make med school and residency bearable

Choose the right specialty haha..

[FailureToThrive]

 Moral of the story: Don't go into surgery 

[medisforme]

One student in first year failed in my cohort.  They were given 2 chances to rewrite one particular exam and failed it both times.  From a distance, it did not look like they tried particularly hard (showed up unprepared for workshops, rarely spoke during PBL etc...).  Person was allowed to repeat the year and didn't have any further issues as far as I am aware.

[indefatigable]

On 5/28/2018 at 2:42 PM, NLengr said:

I wouldn't have done it. Hahaha

Honestly, med school is fine. Residency is total and utter shit. You just suffer through it to get to the end goal of being a staff. And also because your debt, useless MD degree and lack of real world employable experience don't give you a lot of other options. 

There's no way out at a certain point - I was facing mid-career uncertainty and underemployment, but I could see there could have been happiness on the personal side perhaps.  So far, I've had a rough professional and personal start to a medical career.  I never completely realized becoming fully proficient in a different language would be so difficult and the repercussions of that  weakness/outsider status within and outside academic/medical environment.  

[shematoma]

On 5/28/2018 at 12:42 PM, NLengr said:

I wouldn't have done it. Hahaha

Honestly, med school is fine. Residency is total and utter shit. You just suffer through it to get to the end goal of being a staff. And also because your debt, useless MD degree and lack of real world employable experience don't give you a lot of other options. 

This, this and this. My biggest regret in life at this point is going into medicine, or at least meeting the people who gave me the idea of going into medicine. It's a virus that has quite literally ruined my life. And everyone here has nailed the problem on the head - the mounting student debt, otherwise useless degree and several years of your young adult life that you will never get back. If I could only be so lucky to be part of the attrition statistics, but it's too late for me. I'm "too close" to the end to stop.

[NeuroD]

On 5/28/2018 at 3:09 PM, rmorelan said:

Ha, make no mistake residency can be brutal for many specialties - and there is by that point where it is very hard to go back. You don't have a lot of control about that other than personal attitude. You have to tell yourself - look this is not always going to be fun, and there is a metric ton of work and stress. By the time you become staff you will be one way or the other battle hardened. 

 

Where does a rads residency fall on the spectrum?

[goleafsgochris]

6 hours ago, shematoma said:

This, this and this. My biggest regret in life at this point is going into medicine, or at least meeting the people who gave me the idea of going into medicine. It's a virus that has quite literally ruined my life. And everyone here has nailed the problem on the head - the mounting student debt, otherwise useless degree and several years of your young adult life that you will never get back. If I could only be so lucky to be part of the attrition statistics, but it's too late for me. I'm "too close" to the end to stop.

The problem if you get hopelessly stuck pretty early.  My family was well off and could likely have helped me if I really pushed it (although I would have hated that), but EVEN STILL: after 1, and certainly after 2 years of med school, you are 50k tuition in debt + living expenses for those years- so likely almost 100k.  Plus the fact that you already have OSAP and debt from your undergrad, which to some people is significant. 

If you get a random office or lab job, that's a huge amount of debt--like being very generous say a lab job pays you 80k/year (which is VERY generous).  How long would it take you to pay off 100-120k of debt?  A decade?  How do you convince yourself to do that instead of staying in med, when you could pay it off in a year or 2?  Ive thought this through before, you get stuck very quickly because of the debt unless you have an insanely rich family.

[NLengr]

5 hours ago, goleafsgochris said:

The problem if you get hopelessly stuck pretty early.  My family was well off and could likely have helped me if I really pushed it (although I would have hated that), but EVEN STILL: after 1, and certainly after 2 years of med school, you are 50k tuition in debt + living expenses for those years- so likely almost 100k.  Plus the fact that you already have OSAP and debt from your undergrad, which to some people is significant. 

If you get a random office or lab job, that's a huge amount of debt--like being very generous say a lab job pays you 80k/year (which is VERY generous).  How long would it take you to pay off 100-120k of debt?  A decade?  How do you convince yourself to do that instead of staying in med, when you could pay it off in a year or 2?  Ive thought this through before, you get stuck very quickly because of the debt unless you have an insanely rich family.

I honestly wonder how many people would have quit during residency if they didnt have the debt stopping them. 

[distressedpremed]

3 hours ago, NLengr said:

I honestly wonder how many people would have quit during residency if they didnt have the debt stopping them. 

I think if I won the lottery I wouldn't quit residency (I do like the field I'm in), but the pressure for success/accomplishment/worrying about the job would be completely gone. I would be able to worry much less about scoring a job, lest one that has OR time. 

Too bad it's hard to even afford the weekly tickets on a resident salary

[Hanmari]

11 minutes ago, distressedpremed said:

I think if I won the lottery I wouldn't quit residency (I do like the field I'm in), but the pressure for success/accomplishment/worrying about the job would be completely gone. I would be able to worry much less about scoring a job, lest one that has OR time. 

Too bad it's hard to even afford the weekly tickets on a resident salary

I buy every draw, it's the only thing that gives me hope

I can buy it if I skip meals, meals don't give me hope

at least not when I'm trying to choke them down in 30 seconds while getting paged

btw today is the draw, everyone go buy