RichardHammond

Unnecessary IMO.

Although a while back, I was low waitlisted for Western one year and did not get off the list. Worked in healthcare for a year, reapplied and was accepted to Western. With Western's closed interview style, I would suggest you put a lot of effort in the interview prep. Practice with people who won't be afraid to be critical with you. Since you had one experience already with the interview, that's already an advantage in a sense. Without breaking the non-disclosure agreement, find out how you could improve those answers or how others would answer. You might be surprised how one thing that you sa

I think there's more to Calgary's FM problem beyond that. A few years ago the PD or assistant joined the forums to respond to some of the criticism regarding the program. Regardless of how true certain claims are, the general impression I got from FM applicants was that Calgary's program was quite undesirable.

Also keep in mind in your CaRMS applications, you'll have an opportunity to write about why you want to do residency in X location and try to take advantage of any sort of connection you have with the city/school, even if you didn't get an elective there. Not sure how strongly you can persuade a program that way but it's still another opportunity to demonstrate interest.

Doesn't sound like an unreasonable rule, especially if they want to help candidates be more concise and avoid running out of time. I cannot think of many questions or scenarios, especially in a traditional-style interviews, where one should be speaking for more than 4 minutes. Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?

I agree with this. I know a couple people in my year who were hoping to ride the "home school advantage" in a specialties with roughly 2:1 ratios but they ultimately matched to 2nd choice discipline or unmatched after 1st iteration. So 13:7 isn't really good odds IMO.

Unlikely. I would assume when it comes down to application time, you'll have to submit transcripts from both schools and they'll calculate GPA based on the school you took those courses.

Flash cards, anki, question banks are all pretty easy and interactive ways to keep testing your knowledge if you're feeling keen. It's nice because you can literally just run through a few questions during a commute, at the gym etc. Overall not necessary but easier than flipping through preclerkship notes to review. OnlineMedEd is pretty good for a rough review too. Uworld is a bit random with obscure questions, and some of it will not help you at all during clerkship. Still waiting to apply my knowledge about ehrlichiosis, pseudocyesis, or about high-output heart failure secondary

Also:

Mean score is 250, SD is 30, passing score is 226. Assuming normal distribution, pass rate should be around ~80%. Also echoing others in saying the exam was horribly designed. Ambiguous questions, vague prompts, etc. Even the MCCQE website has errors. For example, they say you have 1 minute 14 seconds per MCQ, which is incorrect (Should be 240 minutes / 210 questions = 1.14 min = 1 minute 8 seconds). Sounds trivial but you will be 19 minutes over if you follow their info. They made the same mistake again talking about CDM timing.

When deciding on a specialty, be careful not to confuse your excitement with getting to do new things as your calling to a particular specialty. For example, on your emerg rotation your staff will be like "have you ever sutured before? no? go try on that dude's face" and you'll feel like a badass cowboy and think emerg is your calling. But 20 years into your career, you will not find half the things that excited you in medical school remotely interesting. Instead, try to see parts of a specialty you hate because they often don't go away or even get worse (e.g. call requirements, shift work, et

"

You would think a T2202A is standard enough to notice, especially for a firm reaching out to residents. I too used a national accounting firm that offered free services for residents/students this year and was also surprised by the service. They were confused about how to go about filling TD1 and T1213 forms to carry forward tuition credits to reduce tax at source -- something I assume not uncommonly requested by residents. Perhaps they're less thorough when they're working for free... But anyway, I think it's not too late to get things changed. Plus, tuition credits are non-refundable an

Hey! I remember you! You're the candidate we didn't rank. jk that wasn't me. That was Dr. Robert Hammond.

Wow do you even congratulate someone for matching to their 288th choice or offer your sympathy