Home School Advantage Inquiry

[mdstudent123 15]

Hi everyone! I was hoping to get some insight on how significant the homeschool advantage is! I received offers from Ottawa and Mac and am leaning towards Ottawa due to its curriculum. However, I am from the GTA and would like to do residency closer to home (ideally Toronto). If the home school advantage is significant, then I would prefer to have it at McMaster since its by far closer to my home town. Thanks in advance!

[rarason 19]

19 minutes ago, medhopeful1 said:

Hi everyone! I was hoping to get some insight on how significant the homeschool advantage is! I received offers from Ottawa and Mac and am leaning towards Ottawa due to its curriculum. However, I am from the GTA and would like to do residency closer to home (ideally Toronto). If the home school advantage is significant, then I would prefer to have it at McMaster since its by far closer to my home town. Thanks in advance!

Depends on what specialty you're interested in - if it's a small competitive program, I'd argue there is a homeschool advantage just due to you being able to network with the staff and do projects with them. If it's a medium-sized program like IM, home advantage may help due to being a familiar face but not to the extent where I would pick one school over another.

[mdstudent123 15]

8 minutes ago, rarason said:

Depends on what specialty you're interested in - if it's a small competitive program, I'd argue there is a homeschool advantage just due to you being able to network with the staff and do projects with them. If it's a medium-sized program like IM, home advantage may help due to being a familiar face but not to the extent where I would pick one school over another.

I'm interested in peds or OBGYN... would that be considered small?

[rarason 19]

Peds and OBGYN are both core rotations and a pretty popular specialty amongst med students. I don't think there would be a significant home school advantage at Mac (or any other school) for that, was mostly thinking more along the lines of plastics, ENT, urology for that

[bearded frog 705]

There will definitely be an advantage to matching at your own school in peds at least,  if you express interest in staying and get to know the staff residents, electives etc. If you are clearly trying to go to U of T I don't know if there would be a benefit of mac vs Ottawa. Note that even though you're thinking location now, you may find significant differences in program that may outweigh this, for instance U of T and Mac's peds programs and philosophy are quite different, so you may find yourself swayed one way or or the other, especially with Toronto an hour bus ride from Hamilton.

[Aetherus 205]

The biggest difference between Mac and Ottawa is the fact that one program is 4 years and the other is 3 years. This is so much more important than the theoretical home school advantage.