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AGE? Consensus


MDplz1997

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51 minutes ago, bearded frog said:

Just wayyyyyy too young. The Mac admissions criteria is geared towards young people with high marks and good test-taking skills. They don’t look at people’s experiences/cvs!!!!!

Also, the criteria indirectly makes it harder for people from low SES because they don’t have as much time to study or invest in prep courses due to working—hence harder to score good grades.

It’s just going to keep getting younger and younger every year as well as less and less diverse every year.

Tragic imo.

I hope they change the selection criteria in the future.

 

PS: @MDplz199726 is not abnormal. I started med school at 28. I think life experience and maturity is valuable and will make you a better doctor. Good luck with your applications!

 

 

 

 

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39 minutes ago, Butterfly_ said:

Just wayyyyyy too young. The Mac admissions criteria is geared towards young people with high marks and good test-taking skills. They don’t look at people’s experiences/cvs!!!!!

Also, the criteria indirectly makes it harder for people from low SES because they don’t have as much time to study or invest in prep courses due to working—hence harder to score good grades.

It’s just going to keep getting younger and younger every year as well as less and less diverse every year.

Tragic imo.

I hope they change the selection criteria in the future.

 

PS: @MDplz199726 is not abnormal. I started med school at 28. I think life experience and maturity is valuable and will make you a better doctor. Good luck with your applications!

 

 

 

 

I believe those offers reflect when a person applied, not when they matriculated into medical school. The true statistics are all likely bumped up slightly by one year. I agree though that Mac still probably has one of the younger cohorts. 

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43 minutes ago, Butterfly_ said:

Just wayyyyyy too young. The Mac admissions criteria is geared towards young people with high marks and good test-taking skills. They don’t look at people’s experiences/cvs!!!!!

Also, the criteria indirectly makes it harder for people from low SES because they don’t have as much time to study or invest in prep courses due to working—hence harder to score good grades.

It’s just going to keep getting younger and younger every year as well as less and less diverse every year.

Tragic imo.

I hope they change the selection criteria in the future.

 

PS: @MDplz199726 is not abnormal. I started med school at 28. I think life experience and maturity is valuable and will make you a better doctor. Good luck with your applications!

 

 

 

 

I don't think age is necessarily correlated to good grades, older applicants may very well have excelled in school. ECs give the advantage to older applicants, focus on GPA doesn't necessarily give a disadvantage imo. Also outside of Canada/US medical students are much younger in many countries, doesn't seem to be an issue.

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2 hours ago, Butterfly_ said:

Just wayyyyyy too young. The Mac admissions criteria is geared towards young people with high marks and good test-taking skills. They don’t look at people’s experiences/cvs!!!!!

Also, the criteria indirectly makes it harder for people from low SES because they don’t have as much time to study or invest in prep courses due to working—hence harder to score good grades.

It’s just going to keep getting younger and younger every year as well as less and less diverse every year.

Tragic imo.

I hope they change the selection criteria in the future.

 

PS: @MDplz199726 is not abnormal. I started med school at 28. I think life experience and maturity is valuable and will make you a better doctor. Good luck with your applications!

 

 

 

 

This is mostly true. The majority of Mac's class is people who got in straight out of third and fourth year UG. They have the lowest average age in all of English-Canada. It makes perfect sense as EC's/work experience/etc are worth 0 zero. The schools that value EC's a lot like NOSM/UofA/UofC have average ages of 25-26. Not a surprising correlation. However, for EC heavy schools there has been a steady increase in the average ages. I think the average age at schools like Ottawa/Mac will always stay the same (it literally can't get any lower lol) as there will always be young applicants each year with perfect stats to fill up those schools. 

Also inb4 someone from Mac/Ottawa brings up the fact that the outlier guy in their class in their 30's...that does not count when 70% of the class is 21-22 lol

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I am a lot older than 26, I and I can say from my 2old age" that its never too late, and you are never too old to start something! I applied at 27 and backed off, in part because I was too old...  Years later I decided to apply again and wont make the same mistake this time around! Don't let your age influence your decision! 

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Median is different than mean age. Mean is usually 1 year older than median age due to some significantly older students bringing up the mean. 

Median ages across Canada

Ottawa/Mac - 22

Western/Queen's/Sask/Manitoba - 23

UofT/UBC/Dal/MUN - 24

NOSM/UofC/UofA - 25

There is a pretty big disparity across Canada (Mac graduates start residency on average at the same age as NOSM/UofC/UofA start medical school on average for example).  

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Different schools also have different cultures. For example, an older student who starts at 28 would fit much better in NOSM/UofC/UofA with many people who likely had finished graduate degrees/worked professional jobs/etc all before medicine and would be around many more peers of similar ages. If they went to Mac or Ottawa they would be surrounded mostly by 21-22 year olds who got in with a 4.0 and a good test score but less experiences/EC's.

*I am not saying one school is better than the other, just stating how it is based on objective data on ages and what schools look for in applicants  

 

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17 minutes ago, Lavarball said:


I think the conversation about whether a school should focus on grades or ECs are an important conversation and tbh I’m glad schools in Canada have different policies so a greater range of applicants can get in.

 

I really disagree with the notion that always gets thrown around that EC focused schools get a more diverse student population. In my experience, I find that EC like research and conferences and unique experiences in undergrad heavily depends on your SES and your connections. The majority of these clubs and research are not paid and only the rich and well connected students have access to these opportunities while other students like me had to work 20+ hrs every week at a regular job to make ends meet. In theory, job experience is “valued” the same as the other categories however my one job that takes up the majority of my time simply does not match up with the 10+ bs clubs and organizations that others take many years to curate.

 

medicine is already such a long journey often being 10 yrs long post undergrad, I don’t think we should be normalizing making schools so hard that people need masters  and long achievements to be able to get in at like 27 or 28. It’s the opposite of diversity and gives a much bigger advantage to the affluent students that can afford to be in a 15+ yr long career training path before making any real money as an attending.

1. research is a very small component of EC's. And undergrad conferences aren't even anything in the grand scheme of things (only published peer reviewed literature or presentations at national/international conferences by the application deadline for example is accepted at UofC as a "publication") 

2. These schools I mentioned have real diversity (people who worked for several years in unrelated careers/parents of multiple kids/people with completed master's/PhD's) which would obviously correlate to higher ages. 

3. Schools have been open to announce that the person who creates 10 uni clubs and fills their app with cliche won't be successful so not sure why you would even have to worry about those "privileged applicants". Sure, some with high stats will get in, but many don't.

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39 minutes ago, Lavarball said:


I think the conversation about whether a school should focus on grades or ECs are an important conversation and tbh I’m glad schools in Canada have different policies so a greater range of applicants can get in.

 

I really disagree with the notion that always gets thrown around that EC focused schools get a more diverse student population. In my experience, I find that EC like research and conferences and unique experiences in undergrad heavily depends on your SES and your connections. The majority of these clubs and research are not paid and only the rich and well connected students have access to these opportunities while other students like me had to work 20+ hrs every week at a regular job to make ends meet. In theory, job experience is “valued” the same as the other categories however my one job that takes up the majority of my time simply does not match up with the 10+ bs clubs and organizations that others take many years to curate.

 

medicine is already such a long journey often being 10 yrs long post undergrad, I don’t think we should be normalizing making schools so hard that people need masters  and long achievements to be able to get in at like 27 or 28. It’s the opposite of diversity and gives a much bigger advantage to the affluent students that can afford to be in a 15+ yr long career training path before making any real money as an attending.

Yea I agree mostly. I think schools should value life experience more than what they currently do now. I guess I should have defined what I meant when I said ECs earlier. To me, it means anything done outside of class. ECs don’t have to be about clubs or research—work experience is key imo. I starting to working at 15, so I know where you’re coming from.

I just think that schools that don’t look at ECs will miss out on the older applicants. 

 

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21 minutes ago, Lavarball said:

I don't know if it's been a while since you applied but research is a very large component. OMSAS has six categories for ECs and it's things like Volunteer Activities, Awards and Accomplishments, and Research, etc. All of these things require jumping hoops, doing research, and attending conferences in order to fill up the CV and get awards. They say they're looking for real diversity but things like taking care of relatives in sickness, helping the family business or doing chores are impossilbe to evaluate compared to volunteer acitivty and how many publications people have.

I just think the more barriers and hoops to jump, the less accessible medicine becomes. It's simply ridiculous that you are expected to have years of work experiences, kids or completed masters/ phds in your example in order to simply get into medical school. In those scenarios, you'll have people finishing up residency when they're 35! Other professions graduate in their 20's and happily practice in their field long before they're 35. I think the truth is if places like uoft really wanted more diverse students, they would actually add scores to applicants with lower SES, diverse upbringings and rural background like some of the other med schools. The reality is that they are actually just looking for people with accomplishments and have a proven research record and those tend to be those who are more affluent.

Some of the biggest stressors I hear students and residents have is the long training, debt, inability to settle down, and envy for friends in other fields who are years into professional practice already. These are all less of a problem to 22 year old matriculants than 27 year old matriculants and can help produce healthier and happier physicians in the long run. 

Going into respond to these paragraphs only.

For the first paragraph:

I never said you needed to have those things done to get into medical school. I was using them as examples of diverse students in some medical schools. Even if someone gets into medical school right away out of undergrad at 22....they would finish medical school at 26...and say they wanted to be a specialist...most FRCPC fields now require a fellowship(s) +/- grad degree to find full-time employment in many cities(so you can say 6-8 years of residency) .... and they are already about "35"...the number that used with an "exclamation mark."   

For the second paragraph:

My point is built on what I said earlier....it seems like you just want to get in and out ASAP. Medicine is the worst career for someone who wants to be done soon and early gratification. I don't know anyone in medicine who is envious of friends who make 60K a year sitting in an office making powerpoints and looking at spreadsheets all day wondering when they could lose their job or having to report to a manager's whims......

Regardless of when someone starts medical school they have many years ahead of them. No one is stopping anyone from "settling down" in medicine and I'm sure those other "friends" would have some sort of "envy" for doctors who will be making what they make in 5-10 years in literally 1 year (depending on speciality), elite status job, amazing autonomy, no worry about layoffs, and all the other perks of being a doctor. 

What's wrong with your post and the mentality of many premeds is that they want the perks of being a doctor without the struggle....if you don't want to be in school for so long, debt, and the many years of grind this is not the path for you. 

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30 minutes ago, Lavarball said:

 

Some of the biggest stressors I hear students and residents have is the long training, debt, inability to settle down, and envy for friends in other fields who are years into professional practice already. These are all less of a problem to 22 year old matriculants than 27 year old matriculants and can help produce healthier and happier physicians in the long run. 

I did zero science courses and zero research prior to getting into medical school. I still have ZERO publications now that I’m graduating medical school in a few months. Nor do I have a masters or PHD. 

Just because there are boxes to fill on OMSAS , it doesn’t mean you need to fill them.

I disagree that younger matriculants produce healthier and happier physicians in the long run.

Currently, I’m seeing plenty of my young classemates struggle to choose a specialty, which is less of a problem for older students because we have a better idea of what we want given we lived another life prior to medicine.

With this said,  I think it really depends on the person, everyone’s situation is different.

Also, I think the “envy” is more of a problem for people in their early 20s because they have to study through their prime years.

I also agree with @offmychestplease. Med school doesn’t stop anyone from settling down. Also, the debt can be easily paid off in the first few years. 

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18 minutes ago, Lavarball said:

But yeah I get that warning the premeds that they actually want this path and that it is a long grueling path to become a doctor. I also think it's important to have an honest discussion that finishing training when you're 35-40 definitely isn't the norm in basically any other field/ path and certainly it wasn't that way when our older preceptors/attendings went thru their training. I don't think there's anything wrong with questioning that.

Any successful person in any career will go through a grind—there are plenty of entrepreneurs and professionals still grinding in their 30s and 40s. People on average change their careers 3-6 times. Many people start fresh in their late 30s or 40s and do just fine.

So if any older applicants wants to do medical school, it’s their choice to decide whether it’s “great” or not for them. Finishing at 40 might be exactly what’s right. 

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I am about 30 and don't know when I will get it. Honestly, maybe it is a protective mechanism that comes with getting older but at my age I could care less about my age. Medicine is not a destination for me, it is a path that I would enjoy experiencing. If I get into medicine, I probably would hold my breath for getting into residency and having some sort of income, but looking at those dangling 300Ks at the end of the tunnel would nothing by increasing anxiety and losing sight of the current moment.

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1 hour ago, Lavarball said:

Well I didn't want to use the extreme example of an intense residency, but I think that just proves my point even more. Then for an older matriculant, the training would put them closer to 40 by the time they really finish which isn't great. 

I'm sorry if I came off that way, I think I forgot I was on the premed section and was in the medical student section instead. I'm already a medical student so I do see the realities for some of my older classmates that have to do the mental calculations in their head for certain specialties and certainly it limits them much more than a younger classmate. It's easy to say to embrace the struggle of training and have the many yrs of grind but for many, family med becomes the most realistic and possible option simply because it is the shortest. 

But yeah I get that warning the premeds that they actually want this path and that it is a long grueling path to become a doctor. I also think it's important to have an honest discussion that finishing training when you're 35-40 definitely isn't the norm in basically any other field/ path and certainly it wasn't that way when our older preceptors/attendings went thru their training. I don't think there's anything wrong with questioning that.

Thank you for clarifying that you are a medical student but no disrespect, and I don't want to make any assumptions, but I assume you got into medical school young. What many people who start medicine young and haven't worked "in the real word" before starting medical school they think that everyone their age is living life to the extreme and the average working professional is living life making 100K at age 22 or something silly while they are stuck in their room studying. I don't know about you...but I would much rather be in my room studying interesting things in medicine than go into an office looking at spreadsheets all day or try and make myself busy to impress my boss at meetings lol I'm going to list a few common careers and explain to you some of their "grind" and the time it takes them to get "A" full-time permanent job and not even to move up the ladder. 

Engineer: the market is saturated...after a 5 year engineering degree (Co-op), many fail to find a full-time job upon in engineering upon graduation and will jump around a few positions until something related opens up 1-2 years later...and/or do a 2 year master's to get an entry level junior role. That's at age 25-27.

Teachers: After doing 6 years of university (4 year undergrad + 2 year education degree) almost all will have to work part-time as a sub for at least 2-3 years (sometimes even longer) before getting a contract position. That's at age 27. 

Accountants: After doing a 4 or 5 year accounting degree many have to do a further 1-2 year master's to find a position or apply for 1-2 years before a related position opens up. That puts them at 24-25. 

Lawyers: The average law school entrance age in Canada is 25. Then 3 years of law school and 1 year of articling puts a brand new junior lawyer at 29. 

I even read that having post-secondary education and further work experience and volunteering before applying to the police force really helps get into the police academy. The average police officer starts at 26-27. 

These examples I posted are just to get a foot in the various jobs in late 20's to make the same as a resident who is about the same age and does not include an important factor like that those residents will get a nice 5-10x pay rise in a few years and sustain that for the rest of their lives.... I'm also assuming that everyone in the above examples finishes HS at 18 and does not take any years off, gap years, switches majors, works for a few years etc. Every job is more competitive out there than it was when attendings did their training. It's harder and longer for any occupation in the world. Being in medicine in Canada is literally winning the golden ticket, and that's not an exaggeration. Whether starting at 22 or 32 everyone should be grateful to make their dreams happen. And besides, if someone is 32, 35+ or whatever who is to say they didn't "live life" before medicine and one can safely assume they are ok with the long training...if not why did they apply? I personally know several people between 29-33 who would kill for a seat in medicine...who wouldn't give their age a second thought.

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I agree with you on the equity and diversity for sure. I think we do see eye to eye in the end. I just got off on a bit of a tangent because one of my biggest pet peeves is when medical trainees in Canada are pessimistic about the field which I assumed you were doing but I am happy that I am wrong... especially when there are thousands of people desperate to be in their position, and if they stepped outside their bubble and thought about the life of the general working public in virtually any career they would be extremely grateful for the life, status, income, autonomy, perks etc that medicine in Canada affords them over virtually 99% of people.

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I will be entering medical school in the fall at 31 with a family and a very unique background. I’ve found this discussion frankly entertaining. The closer you get to 40, the more you realize... 40 really isn’t THAT old lol. I’m really excited to start this journey, and the prospect of having a generously remunerated job that I like by the age of 40 sounds amazing. I will still have 20, possibly 25 years in my career of choice, not counting residency. The fact that choosing a specialty that is less demanding on family life sounds limiting to you, doesn’t mean it is for others.

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