Due to the pandemic, will ECs start to matter less

[VancouverToToronto 0]

Hey everyone.

In America, a lot of undergrad institutions have spoken up and said that there will be less emphasis on ECs since they want everyone to stay home and take care of family. Do you think that med schools will do something similar and place less focus on ECs? Especially at EC heavy schools like UBC, uAlberta, uCalgary and Queens? 

[Sharpe Ratio 0]

If that were the case, in that it was significant enough to impact the assessment of ECs for this year's applicant pool, they would have made some sort of official statement regarding it. Given that most Canadian med schools have not, however, I would assume it might be best to think that ECs will be judged the same as before.

In fact, with UBC, they specifically mentioned in their 2020-21 Application Help Guide that they understand COVID-19 has made EC contributions difficult this year, but given that everyone is affected by this, they think it is still considered to be fair to all applicants.

[zxcccxz 81]

I don't think they will start to matter less, just that in terms of ECs, the avg applicant will have a less impressive resume. So ECs may in fact be a distinguishing factor, where if you have strong ECs despite the pandemic, that could seperate your from the larger pool of applicants, many of whom may no longer have strong ECs.

I can't speak for all medical schools, but my school (Calgary) is keeping it's weighting the same, where roughly ~50% of the pre-interview score is non-academic attributes. 

[2cool4u 0]

On 8/9/2020 at 7:04 PM, VancouverToToronto said:

In America, a lot of undergrad institutions have spoken up and said that there will be less emphasis on ECs since they want everyone to stay home and take care of family.

Hey, do you have any source for this? Id love to look at it.