hero147

I don't think he's disagreeing with you

Are you sure they werent complaining about their resident salaries? I dont think ive heard of many residents complain about the salary of an attending. Residents get paid like 60k with 5K raises every year for 10 hours a day M-F, working usually 2/4 weekends a block, and overnight call (ranging from 5-6 calls a month in house to 10-11 calls for home call) all of which are specialty and block dependent.

You can also do critical care in 6 years in anesthesia as well.

Not even equals, you'll have coworkers who are more senior than you. And usually the chair of the department has power over you. Ive seen some pretty nasty disagreements within specialties and between specialties in both academic and community sites.

To be fair a lot of people switch into anesthesia from surgery

The latter. It's like working a 60 hour a week job on top of school.

You can try the States with that GPA. But with a 3.6, your chances are slim to get into a Canadian school. Depending on your breakdown, you may stand a good chance at universities that take your best 2 years (like Western) or last 2 years (like Queens). But admittedly, there are very few people that get into medical school with that kind of GPA. Maybe like 2-3 a year to places like McMaster and University of Toronto. Must also admit, I haven't looked at admission criteria for schools in almost 6 years when I applied. The information I provide may be outdated.

Becuase your grades are too low. Unless you have a super super super favourable GPA conversion scale. (emphasis on the super)

It's because residents work too few hours for too much money. I am sure they'd hike up the prices to increase their profit even if the money was coming from whacking baby seals (yes I am bitter about this exam). Gotta get that bonus somehow. If the petition is to believed, 50% of the exam being pure profit is absolutely ludicrous (aka $6 million dollars for the current iteration). Next year it will be a hefty 11 million dollars assuming costs will be the same.

Is it an option to try both?

Residency goes by quickly. Faster than undergrad, faster than medical school. You'll be so busy most of the time you won't have time to mope. If you are really invested in your relationship with your girlfriend, there are ways to make it work. You have 4 weeks of vacation to spend with each other as well as taking a couple of personal days to see each other on weekends sounds nice even if short lived. Plus there's things like skype/facebook messenger/whatsapp for the times you need her through the week. You will slowly adapt to a new life in your new city and make new lifelong friends. I would

Yes, program X did not rank you.

You could but the overhead will still be super expensive unless you get more and more ophthalmologists in your group but then you also get less OR time.

Its the other way around. The program doesn't rank enough applicants. I don't even think the program interviews enough people. A lot of my classmates failed to get interviews at Ottawa even though they received interviews at more traditionally competitive programs like Toronto and Mcmaster. It hasn't just been a one-off thing either, it's been happening consecutive years. I am starting to wonder if its on purpose or if the program is overestimating its own desirability. But the program does pick up second rounders so I am guessing the latter.

I have actually! But it was for one of the smaller programs in a smaller city.