RichardDegrasseSagan

If you're not going to be doing any video/picture-editing or comp sci stuff, you're best off with an iPad Air (because these ones now have stylus compatibility). I have one and it works really well for me. I use it exclusively for PDFs and note-taking (with synced notes in OneNote). Here's a great breakdown by a resident doc comparing the different ipads available.

Took me 7 years to finish mine (gap year and two additional years). They didn't bother asking me about it during either Queens/Western interviews. I am currently in the process of wrapping up medical school. Good luck!

Depends on your specific situation and the organization. See if there are any records and/or documentation? You can put yourself down as a verifier if you were unable to track down a verifier but have documentation (e.g., 250 hours of volunteer completed certificate). Don't stress too much about it - just put yourself down if you've tried your hardest and haven't had any luck. That's what I did back when I was applying!

Hi all, I haven't had a chance to be as active or contribute to the community as much I'd like to be, but I figured I'd post an update/reflection on here. I feel like many of us non-trads go through similar challenges when applying to and/or completing medical school. I hope some of you are able to derive some inspiration through my process and avoid the mistakes I've made. Guilt: I feel like this is often a burden to us. Guilt for being behind. Guilt for not performing on tests/courses. Guilt for not preparing hard enough for interviews. That's not to say you shouldn't have a constr

I wasn't trying to imply that the average was 20-22. By skewed towards 20-22 range, I meant that the majority of the students fell in this range. There were still a few 22-24, handful of 25-30, and a couple of 30+. They gave us the statistics of it all during some of the intro lectures.

Some schools tend to be much younger (I know the stats of my school were pretty skewed towards the 20-22 range). That being said, no one is ever too old for medical school. However, age difference is definitely a consideration to be prepared for. Medical school can be a bit of a repeat of high school, some of your classmates can be pretty immature, and so being aware of the fact that reduce the surprise of it all.

Congrats on your turnaround Lauren. I am glad you're feeling like you're in a better place now As for starting a new degree, I don't think it will really matters - Ontario schools will primarily look at your last 2 years (Western), best two years (Queens), weighted last 3 years (Ottawa), weighted GPA (Toronto), or cGPA (Mac). So in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't make a difference. Where it might make a difference is your interest in the material. If you've already completed 2 years of your second undergrad, you're probably going to be starting 3rd/4th year courses. I found these

It sounds like you've had a really difficult time coping with the mental health issues. Depression is insanely tough and kudos to you for managing to do as well as you have. There's no doubt you have the motivation and intelligence to accomplish your goals, but I think the biggest hurdle for your right now is your recurrent depression. Your (mental) health seems to be the deciding factor in your long-term success, not the academics (we've seen that you can get 90s when you're in a good place). So please definitely try to look into getting help for the depression so that it doesn't continue to

hahhahaha

For me, trying to cram the MCAT in with other commitments (work, volunteering etc.) was really difficult. I couldn't find enough time to study. The second summer that I re-wrote in, I took a solid month off from work. It was absolutely necessary to do as many practice full lengths as I could and to properly be able to review them. Also, my content knowledge on chem/physics was quite weak, so I had to devote quite a bit of time to brush up on that. If your content is relatively fresh, I would say 2 to 2.5 months is doable as you can focus on just doing practice tests and reviewing them. If

Try to send everything as soon as you can (ideally at least two weeks out) because this gives you time to fix anything that may have gone wrong. The references and transcripts, once received, will update on your OMSAS application page. Their status will indicate "received". So if you send these in ahead of time, and there's no update even after a week or two, you have a chance to figure out what went wrong. So yeah, don't leave anything to the last minute. The application process can be quite comprehensive (creating descriptions for ABS, contacting verifiers and getting their information

I typed this really long post but was almost going to delete it. I felt like it sounded so silly. But I will keep it in the hopes that some of you find it helpful/encouraging because I've always enjoyed and was motivated by reading this thread. I tried injecting some context into this, so hopefully it doesn't bore you guys too much with being somewhat long. I grew up in a relatively rough neighbourhood. I'll give you an example to highlight the point: in grade 7 while my friends and I were going trick or treating, we ran into three of my older brother's friends profusely bleeding f

It's possible, but would be a huge gamble. But I saw a couple of 3.91s. I got an interview and eventually got in with a 3.92. I likely had a high CASPer score though because I was invited to Mac with a 3.61 cGPA.

Do medical students usually do NSERCs?

Agreed with 1997's points. For me, the two things that improved my grades the most were: 1) Aim for 100s - don't be satisfied with anything less (but also don't get too hard on yourself if you don't achieve this - treat it like a fun challenge/game/sport) 2) Learn from your mistakes and actively plan to get around them. One of my biggest mistakes was that I put in the time, but I put it in too close to exams/midterms. I saw a huge jump in my marks when I simply re-distributed the time I spent studying from closer to exams, to like 2-3 weeks out. When exams rolled around, the majority