Redpill

I think if you're even the least bit interested in rural practice its a no-brainer to do the 2+1 pathway. Shorter training times with equivalent outcomes 5 years into practice, and the option to challenge the exam with enough rural ED experience even if you don't match make that a clear win. The challenge is if you want to practice in a metro area. You need to match to the +1 otherwise you are stuck. Makes more sense to try for the 5 year even if it is 2 more years of training.

I wonder if EM seems more competitive because there are two paths to become a practicing emergency physician, and many are agnostic as to which to take. They may not necessarily be the strongest candidates* but will still rank the 5-year first to try and avoid a second match. Whereas with surgical subspecialties, if you don't have the research early on you're not going to bother to try. *I mean strongest candidate with respect to research and ECs that align with EM. Many will still make great Emerg docs but may be weaker from a CV perspective, so end up matching to FM and taking th

You should still care about the grades, as UBC reserves the right to withdraw acceptance if your GPA in your matriculating year is much lower then your AGPA.

Would you be able to expand more on the managerial challenges of the emergency department?

From the other threads on here I gather that the most important things for matching are references, followed by interviews. I think the rest (research, ECs) will depend on how competitive a year it is. People who have done more will probably look better. So I doubt lack of research will significantly disadvantage you, but it may put you behind others who also receive good references and have it. That being said, I get the sense that EM in particular values advocacy as an EC. So I think that will help to some degree. I'm also still in medical school so take what I say with a grain of

This promise was purely a play at winning valuable swing ridings in Surrey. IF it happens (doubtful, for the reasons outlined above) you can expect them to start work on this right before the next election (in 4 years, since NDP has a majority now) with the promise to complete it should they win re-election.

I think when you provide this anecdote on the forum you should emphasize the bolded. It will give students without much knowledge a more clear idea of their chances should they choose to use your strategy.

Looking at only the statistics without context is misleading. How many of those people who matched to their top 3 ranked them all in the same discipline (or maybe two related disciplines) they were very competitive for due to a focused application? I'd imagine the vast majority, so giving advice that you can reasonably match to 3 separate disciplines because of this statistic will set medical students up for failure.

I have heard similar. I can see that perspective, although I do think it disadvantages certain schools that have trouble attracting people, as they have less opportunity to impress applicants. I also think it is more feasible if applicants have had a chance to do electives at that site, so hopefully they allow OOP electives for the 2022s.

For #4, are you talking about core rotations?

Looks like the timelines for the 2022s are out: https://afmc.ca/web/en/media-releases/october-28-2020 What strikes me is that they've already decided to make all interviews virtual. This seems very premature to me and I wonder what influenced that decision. We haven't even seen how virtual interviews will go for the 2021s, and by 2022 there might already be an effective vaccine in place...

Some people like to start enjoying their life before 65

https://vancouversun.com/news/b-c-election-2020-ndp-pledges-second-medical-school-at-surrey-sfu-campus Looks like BC might be getting a new medical school... Was a bit surprised about this as I thought the plan was to create a distributed site at SFU from the UBC program, like the UVic, UBCO, and UNBC sites. The NDP seem favoured to win so this has a good chance of becoming a reality. Personally I think BC could save a bunch of money by just increasing residencies and poaching trainees from Alberta...

Is there a reason it should count as your own award?

Right, that makes sense. And of course you're right that these rules exist for a reason, however I'd still say that we are in a somewhat unique situation that the rules didn't really anticipate. There's a good reason that banks compete to give us such favourable rates with limited oversight. Just need to understand the dangers and know how to mitigate before jumping in imo