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All QuARMS spots are now reserved for Black and Indigenous applicants


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I understand the reasoning, but I think this has unintended consequences. For one, it discriminates against all other underrepresented racial minorities. Who is to say that those groups (Filipinos, Pakistanis, etc) do not face similar systemic barriers when compared to the Black and Indigenous populations? Further, some individuals will view the people accepted into the program as the "QuARMS kids," who only got to where they are today because of their race/identity. While that view is obviously distorted, it will be a prevalent one, and it could further exacerbate the "imposter syndrome" faced by the select few who are accepted.

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Personally I think they should just disband QuARMs and move the seats to the undergrad pool. I really wonder how requiring sky high high school grades and crazy ECs supports "Diversity and Equity". As I see it, the people benefiting from it are those who are well-connected enough to have impressive high school ECs+high grades AND know about QuARMs. This also means these high schoolers only get one shot at the seats, just move those reserved seats to the undergrad pool and select indigenous/black students there, where you're more likely to get a more diverse pool anyway since this move blocks out mature/undergrad students from applying to those seats. I applaud them for adding the seats, but they could do it better by making those seats more accessible to the general population of indigenous/black Canadians. 

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5 minutes ago, MedicineLCS said:

Personally I think they should just disband QuARMs and move the seats to the undergrad pool. I really wonder how requiring sky high high school grades and crazy ECs supports "Diversity and Equity". As I see it, the people benefiting from it are those who are well-connected enough to have impressive high school ECs+high grades AND know about QuARMs. This also means these high schoolers only get one shot at the seats, just move those reserved seats to the undergrad pool and select indigenous/black students there, where you're more likely to get a more diverse pool anyway since this move blocks out mature/undergrad students from applying to those seats. I applaud them for adding the seats, but they could do it better by making those seats more accessible to the general population of indigenous/black Canadians. 

Could not agree more. There are so many issues with QuARMs to begin with, but I think selecting anyone to enter medical school from high school (given that they maintain some requirements throughout their degree) is incredibly flawed. Like you said, many of those who will take advantage of QuARMs will be more likely to be connected and would have to know about it beforehand. Many students don't enter university right out of high school or make the decision to pursue medicine that early in life. I would argue it ultimately reduces diversity as it doesn’t support non-traditional applicants in their pursuit of medicine, such as someone who decides to pursue medicine at 25. I think if they had 10 seats reserved for undergraduate applicants, that would be far better.     

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30 minutes ago, oneday1 said:

Such an unfair program to begin with. Now it is even worse as you can only apply if you are black/indigenous and assumes that they are inferior when in fact they are not, as well as discriminates against all other people. 

From previous years, people have dropped out or have gotten kicked out of the program so not sure why it is not being discontinued. The spots should have been moved to a university stream imo

Wow do you have an article/source on the students that dropped out? That sounds like a huge red flag imo

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Any Program that tends to corrects systemic imbalances can only be a good thing. In the Caribbean, I know one young doctor who graduated from high school in Canada and was accepted directly into University of the West Indies (UWI) médical school and she is an excellent physician in her practice.  

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Quarms was stupid to begin with, atleast this makes it less stupid. If you look up the people in Quarms, most of them come from rich, privileged backgrounds. I was surprised by how many of them were coming from private schools. Even in normal med students, I am kinda shocked at how many private school kids I've seen/met.

Indigenous people already have an advantage at most schools. So I don't get the point of this change. 

I just see this as another pathetic attempt by the school to appear more "diverse" and "accepting". Queens has a reputation for being a really white school so they are probably trying to change it. Unfortunately Black and Indigenous kids are not the only ones facing challenges. There are East Asian and South Asian communities that face a lot of barriers. Asians extends beyond Chinese and Indian people y'know.... It should be based on SES, not race.

 

 

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The model of QuARMS and accelerated medical education has been quite popular in the States. Many elite schools offer the combined BSc/BA with MD (for 7 years) for a long time now. Granted, the competitivenes in med admissions in the US is wayyyyy less intense than here, let alone at Queen's and it's teeny tiny 100-student class. 

Changing it to race doesn't seem to make so much sense though.

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I listened to the Sam Harris podcast with a guy (white) who graduated from Harvard. He was admitted before the affirmative action (AA), which was introduced while he was a students. So, in the podcast he says that before the AA when he saw a black student in Harvard, he (and everyone else) thought "this guy must be much smarter than me", but after the AA was implemented, he (and everyone else) thought "this guy got in because of his race". This stigma stuck with the following generations of black students.

The only beneficiary of these moves are the med schools and their directors, who think of themselves as Lincolns, not less.

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On 7/24/2020 at 4:28 PM, коронавирус said:

 Further, some individuals will view the people accepted into the program as the "QuARMS kids," who only got to where they are today because of their race/identity. 

Replace "race/identity" with "wealth/privilege", and you've got how people have always viewed QuARMS up to this point.

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I agree with that tweet from that student. One of the most obvious barriers to entry is socioeocnomic status, which is more likely causative than ethnicity alone (not lumping in indigenous status, as they face significantly unique challenges that other groups do not due to the history of directed oppression in Canada, residential schools etc.) People are wondering why is it not a low-SES stream in addition to or in place of an ethnicity stream? Surely the systemic racism has led to systematic disadvantages in SES, leading to difficulty even affording quality resources for education or med school preparation material...

In the last few months there was major, major activism by the current student bodies in Canada to specifically introduce a black student applicant stream. The problems I saw posted on social media were that last year there were zero black students at Queens' (the year before there were a few, maybe 2-3%, someone correct this), even though they are 3% of the population. But the statistics here seem abused - in Toronto, there were 24 black admissions (8-9% of entering class), so simply quoting admitted students isn't evidence enough to say they are underrepresented (I'm sure there are though, to be clear). I support the movement but I really hope that future physicians can interpret data properly, citing just one year's admission stats for one of the smallest classes in Canada is just textbook cherry-picking and undersampling. I don't doubt the interpretation (there are a lot of qualitative factors like saying that Queens or Kingston itself is a systematically unwelcoming place etc) and there is likely systemic racism, affecting even application to Queens. Social sciences is a really, really touchy issue and needs to be approached very critically.

I totally support the stream better than the status quo beforehand of QuARMS, but some of the "evidence" presented by the lobby especially on social media is  unscientific or overgeneralizing where it seems to stir up antagonism without details e.g. the movement saying the "healthcare system is racist" - ok, that's plausible but which part? Education? Treatment selection? Drug selection for different ethnicities? Profiling? Triaging? Identify the specific problem so we can change it! Don't just lump all doctors, nurses, techs, PTs, OTs, - most of which are absolutely genuine people, to one umbrella term for the sake of a catchy tagline! Or you might get a healthcare worker who feels wrongly attacked and dissent on social media, leading to an online argument over semantics or whether the healthcare worker is racist. I really hope this doesn't make a school have the reputation as the ignore-science-for-social-media-catchphrases school. Note that the student's twitter shown in the comments above is not like this, her twitter is fantastic and provides a critical look at the issue. She points out that in dermatology there is limited education on non-white skinned lesions which is absolutely a valid issue.

The question is that is school doing this because it is best policy to tack barriers or is it for optics? (I'm sure it's in the right direction, but can it be improved to address other causes of racism in the city and school other than admission statistics? can it also consider low-SES of other ethnicities?) Or are they caving in to political pressure? If a faculty member dissents in any form, are they afraid of protest or public shaming of them? 

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