Competitiveness

[Cyanide and Happiness]

I have a 4.0 cGPA, and some of my extracurriculars and awards include: extensive hospital volunteering, research (2 years as a research assistant and 1 year for my undergrad final year honours project with an NSERC scholarship), shadowing emergency doctors and my personal favorite, 2 national piano gold medals. I didn't get an interview anywhere. My MCAT CARS is pretty bad, but I thought that I'd stand somewhat of a chance in Ottawa, U of T or McGill (I'm Ontarian so OOP, RIP), but no luck. Am I really just not competitive at all?

[hbmed]

57 minutes ago, Cyanide and Happiness said:

I have a 4.0 cGPA, and some of my extracurriculars and awards include: extensive hospital volunteering, research (2 years as a research assistant and 1 year for my undergrad final year honours project with an NSERC scholarship), shadowing emergency doctors and my personal favorite, 2 national piano gold medals. I didn't get an interview anywhere. My MCAT CARS is pretty bad, but I thought that I'd stand somewhat of a chance in Ottawa, U of T or McGill (I'm Ontarian so OOP, RIP), but no luck. Am I really just not competitive at all?

Hard to really say without more information. Each of these school's mentioned also has more to the application than GPA and EC's/achievements. For Ottawa, maybe your CASPER score was weaker and that needs work. For Toronto, it could be the essays. References could be another factor. I would really take a hard look at these other parts of your application and consider if perhaps those areas need improvement. Your GPA is strong and the ECs seem great, but you may need to work on other areas to get the interview. Furthermore, for several applicants, including those who eventually are successful in getting to med, it can take multiple cycles to get an interview. Best of luck!

[zxcccxz]

2 hours ago, Cyanide and Happiness said:

I have a 4.0 cGPA, and some of my extracurriculars and awards include: extensive hospital volunteering, research (2 years as a research assistant and 1 year for my undergrad final year honours project with an NSERC scholarship), shadowing emergency doctors and my personal favorite, 2 national piano gold medals. I didn't get an interview anywhere. My MCAT CARS is pretty bad, but I thought that I'd stand somewhat of a chance in Ottawa, U of T or McGill (I'm Ontarian so OOP, RIP), but no luck. Am I really just not competitive at all?

Hey sorry to hear that you didn't hear the news you wanted this year in terms of interviews. As another person mentioned, it is good to take a look at other parts of your application that may have caused issues. Your GPA is phenomenal and it seems that you have good ECs. It may just be an issue of how you wrote your ABS (how much effort did you spend writing them? Did you get people to edit them? etc.) or essays for schools like UofT. 

I was in a similar situation with UofA this year where I was above average compared to the applicants who got interviews in every single category (based on the applicant feedback that rejected applicants got) yet didn't get an interview. My approach was, "Ok your GPA was good, so was your MCAT and EC score", so the only things it could've been was my reference letters or CASPer. My referees/verifiers were the same as schools that I did get in, so doesn't make sense that it would be that. So most likely it was CASPer that did me in (since I didn't get an interview at Mac either, although I guess my CARS was on the weaker side too). 

If you're comfortable with it, it might help to post more details about your application including your MCAT score (and breakdown of section), how you felt your CASPer went, any research productivity our of your positions (i.e., publications, conference presentation), etc. Might help you get more meaningful feedback on what you can improve for next year.

[Cyanide and Happiness]

14 hours ago, zxcccxz said:

If you're comfortable with it, it might help to post more details about your application including your MCAT score (and breakdown of section), how you felt your CASPer went, any research productivity our of your positions (i.e., publications, conference presentation), etc. Might help you get more meaningful feedback on what you can improve for next year.

Thank you zxcccxz and hbmed for your encouraging words! 

My MCAT is 512 (Phys/Chem: 130, CARS: 124 Massive RIP I know, Bio: 129, Psyc/Soc: 129)

Unfortunately my research hasn't produced any publications but I do have two small poster presentations that I did at my school's research days. I also highly suspect that it was indeed my ABS descriptions of activities that may have let me down. Since OMSAS didn't have much space to properly describe each entry, I just assumed it was enough to simply state what I did in each case. It was the same for UBC (where I got 25 - 50th percentile as a CV score lol). But I'm hearing people say that you have to write them nicely with a few character adjectives sprinkled here and there (e.g. I demonstrated great leadership for example). I did try harder for McGill's CV descriptions because they did give more space and guidelines to help us, so I'm just waiting for my ranking score to see how I did. 

For my reference letters, my referees know me well (2 years+ and we've worked together on stuff closely) and they've all straight up told me they like me too. I can't really control what exactly they write though, nor do I have the heart to tell them what I want in the letters.

As for CASPER, I did very little prep. I did 1 - 2 practice tests from **DELETED** and that's it. I wrote 1 - 2 sentences for each question and tried my best to answer ALL questions using my own intuition, with no strategy involved whatsoever. I felt it went just OK, I didn't feel that any of my answers were outstanding or clever.

[DrOtter]

CASPer might honestly trip you harder than you expected. I applied 2 years ago to McMaster with a 3.94 and a 128 CARS, and then this year with a 3.96 and a 130 CARS (as OOP both times) and didn't get interviews from them. I figured the first time around that it was my CASPer that ruined it for me. So I practiced typing a lot in between and try to structure my answers. This year I wrote a lot more for all the questions and I managed to get into Ottawa... So improve on your ABS, try to see if you can do better on CARS and practice CASPer a bit better and hopefully you'll be very competitive next year.

You've done all the right things thus far and you're a lot closer to getting in than many others. 

[bearded frog]

Yeah maybe work on the reading/writing stuff, it seems CARS/Casper/essays are whats doing you in.

[Sweesy]

The Good:
- Your GPA is amazing, and it is usually the hardest thing to correct if it was bad. Super competitive for all schools
- You have very unique and exceptional academic and medical based achievements and experiences, which are always amazing to show interest in medicine.
- Practicing for and re-writing the MCAT is the easiest part to redo of the medical application process.

The improvement:

- Talk about the human component of your experiences. Like when you were volunteering in the hospital and emergency, talk about the unique people moments you had. The difficult things you experiences and learned from, mistakes you saw happen or had happen to you, how to learned and grew personally... how you helped someone else (and how it will all apply to your career in medicine). I've noticed through my ABS for Western and the interview, that they are more and more wanting to see that intrapersonal element to your experiences and not just the experience itself.
For example: If you have taught kids how to play the piano, especially those from traditionally lower SES background (who may not be able to afford regular lessons), and have been there with them through the ups and downs of the learning process, you can frame that personal learning experience in terms of medicine, and strengthen your application writeups and interviews. These type of mentorship roles are really great for your own learning, and appreciating how to respect and work with people that depend on your knowledge (i.e patient and doc).

- You may also have difficulties with reading and writing as people mentioned before. I'd recommend regularly reading news and academic (not necessarily science) articles. Read stuff you are not regularly interested in, and try to understand why they wrote what they did, and what they are trying to convince you of.

- I would also suggest getting someone you trust, or an editor to review your write-ups for grammar, argument structure, and redundancy. I had a friend who was an English Honors, who read over my work and found mistakes I didn't know were a thing.

Overall, while it's difficult that you didn't get an interview and it's natural to feel like there may be no hope, I want to just assure you that you are in a great position to get into medicine. It will take a fair amount of personal reflection and growing in skills you may not be the strongest in right now, but you have a really good chance moving forward.

 

[premed72]

Hey there! I was in a similar position in terms of CARS holding me back big time. Wrote the MCAT bare times and still couldnt manage to get a competitive CARS score for most Ontario schools. But, I knew I had a chance at toronto and Ottawa and I realized I had to make sure the other components of my app were solid for these schools. I invested alot of time into my U of T essays and I prepped alot for CASPER. I was able to secure an interview at both schools this cycle. Sometimes you just gotta play with the cards you're dealt. However, maybe try and bump up that CARS score, I know many people who were able to improve substantially. I guess I just couldnt figure it out LOL 

Cheers and best of luck.