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McMaster Accepted/Waitlisted/Rejected 2019-2020


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3 minutes ago, aloeplant said:

Nah. I think we can all agree that the hierarchy of medicine and the toxic parts of its culture are problematic. The reason why these institutions have remained in place for so long is partly because people just roll over without trying to change things for the better due to self-preservation (which is totally understandable). If we want things to change and be more just, we need to advocate for it as future healthcare professionals. What were the CANMEDS roles again?

I literally just got accepted, I'm sorry but there is no way I'm making change in a system I just got into. Do you think I'm going to walk up to long time doctors and say "this is unfair"? Not a chance

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5 minutes ago, Peanuts29 said:

I literally just got accepted, I'm sorry but there is no way I'm making change in a system I just got into. Do you think I'm going to walk up to long time doctors and say "this is unfair"? Not a chance

Congratulations! I didn't ask for you to do anything. I merely wanted to point out that people who may judge or discriminate against mac 2023 are in the wrong, and I hope that you can hold the same beliefs once you're an attending so as to not perpetuate the culture. 

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8 minutes ago, aloeplant said:

Congratulations! I didn't ask for you to do anything. I merely wanted to point out that people who may judge or discriminate against mac 2023 are in the wrong, and I hope that you can hold the same beliefs once you're an attending so as to not perpetuate the culture. 

If you were hiring someone for a job, would you take someone who has been vetted based on merit or would you take the random person who you know just got lucky? Do you think a doctor is going to take a resident to save someone's life and trust in the luck of McMaster's draw? If you needed immediate medical attention as a patient, would you want the doctor who a university thoroughly picked or the university who drew names from a hat?

100% I agree they are in the wrong and I would not do that, but most people will. It is common sense. 

Regardless, I wish everyone the best of luck and I know it is tough but hang in there! 

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Everyone worried about the lottery is suffering from a severe case of quarantine related insanity. Of all the fucking individuals in the world, dont you think doctors would understand how concessions have to be made for things that were done differently during coronavirus? You really think that medical professionals are gonna spend the next 3 years gossiping about how Mcmaster used a lottery system and how they should all band together to deny career opportunities to these people, even though theres 3 years worth of grades from medical school far more accurately demonstrating that persons worth? McMaster is ranked the second best med school in Ontario behind UoT, getting accepts there puts you among 200 people out of 5000 applicants. I see people stressed out and anxious on this board all the time, which is understandable, but could we try to have the barest sense of rationality about this subject? Theres already enough misinformation crowding the internet.

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Result: Accepted (Hamilton)

Timestamp: 8:08 AM

cGPA: 4.00

CARS: 129

CASPer: Ottawa interview so it was probably decent although I definitely did not prepare. 

Year: 3rd year UG

Geography: IP

Button: No

Will be accepting! 

Please stop trying to rain on other people's parade... Regardless of what you think about Mac, there are people who have their reasons for wanting to attend there or only received an offer from Mac. I feel like this is not the time to be like "rip you guys because everyone will look down on you in the future and you'll end up not matching". 

Maybe I am a little biased, but I personally agree more with the statement that Mac included in their FAQ email which basically states that medical school is not the end of the journey, it's just the beginning. It matters way more what we do from this point on rather than what we did before. I'm sure that no matter how the candidates were selected this year, they will continue to learn and grow. No one is going to be applying to residency just as they are right now. I also would like to believe that residency directors will not completely ignore your application and just be like "oh they're from the lottery year, instant reject". If you were able to do just as well during medical school as all the previous years, why would it matter how you got in? 

Since I have already decided that Mac was going to be my first choice, I'm just really excited right now and I know that I'll work hard in the next 3 years. So... I guess I'm not that bothered! Luck is a kind of skill as well? XD Plus, I have definitely heard other medical schools say that after a certain point, it doesn't really matter if you pick the top half or the bottom half of the candidates because they'll have to learn most of what's necessary to be a good doctor during medical school anyway (don't have a source but I'm sure I have heard it somewhere before). 

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24 minutes ago, Peanuts29 said:

If you were hiring someone for a job, would you take someone who has been vetted based on merit or would you take the random person who you know just got lucky? Do you think a doctor is going to take a resident to save someone's life and trust in the luck of McMaster's draw? If you needed immediate medical attention as a patient, would you want the doctor who a university thoroughly picked or the university who drew names from a hat?

100% I agree they are in the wrong and I would not do that, but most people will. It is common sense. 

Regardless, I wish everyone the best of luck and I know it is tough but hang in there! 

A premed talking about what doctors care about <3

Not a single iota will be cared.  CaRMS and residency is already a lottery in a lot of ways, so get over yourself now, otherwise you're in for a rough ride.  Not a single person that matters is going to remember or care.

And its a random person of the top 500, everyone of which would be a perfectly fine doctor.  You're ranting about drawing a name from a hat is a huge disservice to those that get in, and is frankly nonsensical. 


 

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The idea that future evaluators / physicians / CaRMS will look down upon or discriminate McMaster 2023 students because of the lottery is absurd and totally ridiculous and shows how neurotic this forum can be.

 

You do realize that the top 550 to begin with are perfectly qualified to be physicians and have the merits to enter medical schools? 
 

While I disagree with the method they used to offer 300ish/550 of the applicants, this does not retract from the quality of the students nor how they will be as physicians. Most of those 550 students will likely become physicians regardless. I highly doubt selecting based on MMI would’ve changed physician quality or future prospects much at all.

 

The admission process in every school to begin with is, in reality, a lottery with a formula that favours those who were lucky to be in the right academic and social environments. 

 

Please stop spreading this idea that evaluators will discriminate against perfectly qualified students 3 years down the line based on changes in admission during a fucking pandemic. They will not care whatsoever.

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30 minutes ago, Peanuts29 said:

If you were hiring someone for a job, would you take someone who has been vetted based on merit or would you take the random person who you know just got lucky? Do you think a doctor is going to take a resident to save someone's life and trust in the luck of McMaster's draw? If you needed immediate medical attention as a patient, would you want the doctor who a university thoroughly picked or the university who drew names from a hat?

100% I agree they are in the wrong and I would not do that, but most people will. It is common sense. 

Regardless, I wish everyone the best of luck and I know it is tough but hang in there! 

*man walks bleeding into emergency room in 2037"

Man: "HELP I NEED A DOCTOR I'VE BEEN SHOT"

Doctor: "I'm here to help".

Man: "Ok but before we get started can you just break down for me how the giant global death flu of 2020 affected the admissions practices of your medical school?"

 

 

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Result: Accepted (Hamilton)

Timestamp: 12am EST

cGPA: 3.96

CARS: 128

CASPer: felt good about it. I am OOP so must have compensated for my cars score.

Year: graduated B.Kin 2019

Geography: OOP

Button: No

I am waiting to hear back from my IP school but if I'm unsuccessful there I will be thrilled to be coming to Mac. I've wanted medicine since I was 6 years old and playing dress up with my dads stethoscope and white dress shirts in lieu of a white coat. Looking forward to possibly meeting some of you in August!

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44 minutes ago, Peanuts29 said:

If you were hiring someone for a job, would you take someone who has been vetted based on merit or would you take the random person who you know just got lucky? Do you think a doctor is going to take a resident to save someone's life and trust in the luck of McMaster's draw? If you needed immediate medical attention as a patient, would you want the doctor who a university thoroughly picked or the university who drew names from a hat?

100% I agree they are in the wrong and I would not do that, but most people will. It is common sense. 

Regardless, I wish everyone the best of luck and I know it is tough but hang in there! 

Are you implying that Mac2023 wasn't vetted based on merit? Do you think an MD2023 grad from mac would have been exposed to a lesser medical curriculum and training than an MD2023/24 grad from another school? 

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23 minutes ago, Cloneable said:

Everyone worried about the lottery is suffering from a severe case of quarantine related insanity. Of all the fucking individuals in the world, dont you think doctors would understand how concessions have to be made for things that were done differently during coronavirus? You really think that medical professionals are gonna spend the next 3 years gossiping about how Mcmaster used a lottery system and how they should all band together to deny career opportunities to these people, even though theres 3 years worth of grades from medical school far more accurately demonstrating that persons worth? McMaster is ranked the second best med school in Ontario behind UoT, getting accepts there puts you among 200 people out of 5000 applicants. I see people stressed out and anxious on this board all the time, which is understandable, but could we try to have the barest sense of rationality about this subject? Theres already enough misinformation crowding the internet.

I don't think I need to point out that medicine is highly competitive, we all know this. Often times, the difference between a rejected candidate and one that gets an acceptance can basically come down to splitting hairs. Given that situation, I can definitely see the lottery factoring in to the situation. It's not just that either, keep in mind that McMaster has a 3 year program, which means you don't have as much time to choose your specialty. This is further compounded by the covid situation which will make it harder to gather clinical experience in some fields. As a medical professional, I would rather take the student who has more experience and has entered through merit, rather than a student who has less experience and entered from a coin flip.

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2 minutes ago, FinallyAccepted23 said:

As a medical professional, I would rather take the student who has more experience and has entered through merit, rather than a student who has less experience and entered from a coin flip.

But you are not a medical professional yet. Check back in with us in four years' time and let us know what you think. 

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  • Medical schools are designed to shape all students into doctors, there will be plenty of "vetting" throughout medical school, classes, rotations, and residency interviews, residency, etc...
  • there is no evidence that a lottery system will produce poorer docs, rather this provides a great opportunity to see if a lottery system has merit through further research
  • only a select portion of the class was chosen through lottery, and few will know who they are
  • it's a pretty common theme among admissions that after a certain point, there is no way to differentiate applicants- besides the class were all selected through a merit based approach
  • i'm sure McMaster faculty crunched some numbers and used a evidence based approach for their decision

I feel concerned that it's someone to be a part of my class at Western who has these beliefs about the lottery. oh well that's what 4 years of medical school is for..

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28 minutes ago, OrangeTestingApple said:

The idea that future evaluators / physicians / CaRMS will look down upon or discriminate McMaster 2023 students because of the lottery is absurd and totally ridiculous and shows how neurotic this forum can be.

 

You do realize that the top 550 to begin with are perfectly qualified to be physicians and have the merits to enter medical schools? 
 

While I disagree with the method they used to offer 300ish/550 of the applicants, this does not retract from the quality of the students nor how they will be as physicians. Most of those 550 students will likely become physicians regardless. I highly doubt selecting based on MMI would’ve changed physician quality or future prospects much at all.

 

The admission process in every school to begin with is, in reality, a lottery with a formula that favours those who were lucky to be in the right academic and social environments. 

 

Please stop spreading this idea that evaluators will discriminate against perfectly qualified students 3 years down the line based on changes in admission during a fucking pandemic. They will not care whatsoever.

The problem with this is that it's all speculatory. I understand that you doubt it'll have an impact on the future of applicants such as myself, but the fact remains that this is one of the biggest controversies to come out of a canadian medical school in quite a long time. These are real issues which impact the decisions of those who don't want to start off their medical careers on the wrong foot.

5 minutes ago, premed647 said:

But you are not a medical professional yet. Check back in with us in four years' time and let us know what you think. 

I'm putting myself in the shoes of a medical professional and unfortunately the consequences of McMaster's decisions have fallen on my shoulders as an applicant. In 4 years' time, it will have been too late. 

I feel like I need to get this off my chest because I see a lot of people downplaying the stresses that applicants such as myself are facing in the current lottery/covid situation.

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Result: Accepted (Hamilton)

Timestamp: 8:05am

cGPA: 3.97

CARS: 130

CASPer: Should be decent; received uO and McGill (OOP) interview. I have a 140wpm typing speed (thanks to my 10k+ hours of practicing piano) so typing my thoughts down fast enough was never an issue for me.

Year: 4th UG

Geography: IP

Button: No

Declining offer. Mac is a great school, but there are a few issues imo to Mac's lottery system that deter me from accepting. Good luck to all those on the waiting list, and I hope I'm able to open up a spot for someone!

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Result: Accepted (Hamilton)

Timestamp: 8:06AM email, 12:00AM OMSAS

cGPA: 3.91

CARS: 129

CASPer: No interview at Ottawa, but I also feel like my ABS was not great so idk. Prepared for about a month

Year: finished third year, finished internship year, did not start fourth year

Geography: IP

Button: No

Will be accepting the offer! I feel like it doesn't matter that it was lottery-based, over 50% of the class gets accepted to McMaster anyway and I'm sure the remainder are accepted to other schools. If not, they apply again the next year and get accepted then. But if you don't feel that way don't accept your offer. Just my two cents, but I think that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy--people who think the lottery system will lower their chances might not make the best of their opportunities and end up worse off because of that.

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I'm getting a lot of anger for bringing up a legitimate concern of mine. If this is how people at Mac are going to respond to me genuinely asking if this is a problem, then it is not helping. 

I get everyone in the top 500 worked very hard (I am one of those people this year) and I may have been part of the lottery myself. If people think doctors are going to remember how they divided the 200 into lottery and non lottery and remember the circumstances, that won't happen. People remember headlines, that's why new articles use them. 

I get what people are saying but it is not a risk I'm willing to take.

People will always prefer merit over lottery. Put yourself into the shoes of someone hiring someone for a job, people don't want to take risks of picking someone who never went to an interview who could be smart on paper but crazy in person. 

Again, I believe everyone here deserves to get into medical school and I wish them the best of luck. I'd like to have a rational conversation rather than hate. 

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Also, let's say the people who think the lottery class will be disadvantaged are correct. Your life doesn't end if you don't get matched in 2023, you can take another year and try again. You wouldn't even be behind in this case, just on par with people attending other medical schools, and graduate in 2024.

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14 minutes ago, conbrio said:
  • Medical schools are designed to shape all students into doctors, there will be plenty of "vetting" throughout medical school, classes, rotations, and residency interviews, residency, etc...
  • there is no evidence that a lottery system will produce poorer docs, rather this provides a great opportunity to see if a lottery system has merit through further research
  • only a select portion of the class was chosen through lottery, and few will know who they are
  • it's a pretty common theme among admissions that after a certain point, there is no way to differentiate applicants- besides the class were all selected through a merit based approach
  • i'm sure McMaster faculty crunched some numbers and used a evidence based approach for their decision

I feel concerned that it's someone to be a part of my class at Western who has these beliefs about the lottery. oh well that's what 4 years of medical school is for..

If this was true at all, McMaster would have done a lottery years ago. If it is all just luck anyways even with interviews then why did they even bother ever holding interviews?

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Just now, tutor989898 said:

Also, let's say the people who think the lottery class will be disadvantaged are correct. Your life doesn't end if you don't get matched in 2023, you can take another year and try again. You wouldn't even be behind in this case, just on par with people attending other medical schools, and graduate in 2024.

That still doesn't compensate for the stress involved with partaking in a 3 year program during these unprecedented times. I know that many individuals in med school are already worried about getting enough hospital experience when choosing their specialty, this issue will be even worse provided that covid and its repercussions will likely spill into the following year too.

Also, from my understanding, going unmatched is something that's looked down upon. Not only are you in an overwhelmingly small minority, but such a gamble would also mean being 1 year behind the peers I went through medical school with. It just doesn't seem like a gamble I would be willing to take if I didn't have to.

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3 minutes ago, Peanuts29 said:

If this was true at all, McMaster would have done a lottery years ago. If it is all just luck anyways even with interviews then why did they even bother ever holding interviews?

Because people like having a sense of control over the situation/application. Considering all the backlash Mac is getting due their response in an unexpected  pandemic, if they implemented this on purpose earlier the reactions would be even worse 

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12 minutes ago, Peanuts29 said:

If this was true at all, McMaster would have done a lottery years ago. If it is all just luck anyways even with interviews then why did they even bother ever holding interviews?

I don't feel like there is a need to prove anyone right or wrong here. Don't get me wrong - your opinion is valued, but there exists a line in which it can be seen that you're shaming/disrespecting those that accept the Mac offer...

I mean all the respect when I say this, but if you don't like the way Mac conducted their admissions this year, simply take an offer somewhere else and let it be. Let's not ruin the day for anyone, especially for those that weren't as lucky to receive multiple offers - or even an offer off the bat.

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Result: Accepted (Hamilton campus)

Timestamp: 8:08 AM (midnight on omsas)

cGPA: 3.92

CARS: 129

CASPer: I think I did well, looking back at it now. I was really harsh on myself after the test finished, but who knows

Year: graduated

Geography: IP

Button: No

I was so sure the button meant acceptance and I was feeling so down for the past few days. But I guess you just never know with these glitches 

Will be accepting! Can’t wait to meet you all! :) 

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4 minutes ago, FinallyAccepted23 said:

That still doesn't compensate for the stress involved with partaking in a 3 year program during these unprecedented times. I know that many individuals in med school are already worried about getting enough hospital experience when choosing their specialty, this issue will be even worse provided that covid and its repercussions will likely spill into the following year too.

Also, from my understanding, going unmatched is something that's looked down upon. Not only are you in an overwhelmingly small minority, but such a gamble would also mean being 1 year behind the peers I went through medical school with. It just doesn't seem like a gamble I would be willing to take if I didn't have to.

It only stresses you if you let it stress you. If you think it's more about how you handle this opportunity that was given to you, then you may not be as concerned. For example, if I went unmatched in 2023, I would think about why this is the case. How can I improve my application and do better? If it's just me who was rejected, it probably has more to do with some part of my application that I did wrong (and that would probably have happened regardless of my school), rather than being a part of the lottery class. If it's not just me who was rejected but instead many of the lottery class who have to wait a year, then I don't have to be a year behind my medical school peers.

I think the role of lotteries and non-merit-based systems in the real world is understated. Although I hope residencies don't operate this way, I know a company who hires interns based on the timestamp of their application rather than the content of their applications and interviews. If you ever do interviews, I'm sure you'll know what I mean when I say there are so many qualified applicants and it can be really hard to judge. 

However, I agree that you are right to choose Ottawa. This kind of doubt doesn't need to plague you for your entire career. It's going to shape every decision you make, even if the doubt is not based in reality. As such, I think that you would do better at Ottawa where you feel you've been accepted by merit. For myself, I think other factors (Hamilton location, three year program, 98% residency match rate) are more important in my situation. Obviously not everyone is going to use the exact same criteria to decide, that's why we're lucky that there's more than one medical school.

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