Congratulations to those who matched in the NRMP today!

[JohnGrisham]

8 hours ago, Pakoon said:

I'm a little confused. Certain situations excluded, what other reasons are there for Canadians to apply to med outside of Canada/US, isn't that the exact reason they go abroad?

A cohort of students do so right after high school into 6 year programs in UK/Ireland/other countries, as a way to "save time" and avoid the rat race of N.A undergrad pathway. It does end up working for some to come back to Canada/US right away, and objectively save time. Others end up just starting training pathways in UK/other jurisdictions and then make their way back...or stay etc.

The rest vast majority who go to 4 year grad entry programs, do so because they couldn't get into Canada/US, or didn't want to keep trying to get in. A colleague of mine applied once to Canada, and didn't want to spend the time to improve his application (weak non academics, otherwise strong grades and strong mcat), so they just went straight to Ireland(family is well off), had a great time in EU, and ended up in a top-tier US residency in their specialty. Of course, it worked out well for them, but you hear less about those it doesnt work out for.  If you have money, strong grades and a strong MCAT and just don't want to sit around, it will probably work out going to a foreign school. But if it is in fact your academics that makes you a weaker candidate in Canada/US, then certainly the chances of things not working out increases greatly..due to the large # of licensing exams you need to take along the way.

[bearded frog]

pre-soap match rates for non-US IMGs was ~45% this year, will obviously be higher with SOAP, and unfortunately we cannot know the result of the subset of candians in this number or even theorize if its more or less than the average

[zoxy]

On 3/18/2021 at 5:52 PM, rmorelan said:

Step 2 CS has also been discontinued. Removing the clinical skills part definitely changes the game as well! Not sure having everything riding on the step 2 CK exam is ideal either but at least success won't be dependent the same sort of medical "trivia" that the step 1 uses. 

 

Step2 CS was P/F anyway and the vast majority passed. It was never utilized for sorting people for residency.  All it ever accomplished was black listing the poor souls who got an F for eternity. The reason that Step1 was used by residency programs over Step2CK is that some applicants wouldn't have taken Step2CK before the sending in their applications. Step1 was the only standardized data that program directors had for comparing applicants. So now with Step1 going P/F, program directors will mandate that all applicants must take Step2CK before sending in their applications and use Step2CK to sort applicants.

 

IMO, this move is extremely short sighted for three reasons. Firstly, it will just shift the mental burden from Step1 to Step2CK. Secondly, if you performed poorly in Step1, you would previously know that you'd be out of the running for competitive specialties like Ortho, Derm, Plastics and make yourself more competitive for a backup specialty. But now, if you get your Step2CK scores a couple of months before sending in your applications, you won't have that time for making yourself competitive for the backup. Thirdly, with less objective data for residency application, the process will become more arbitrary and applicants will be forced to apply to more programs. This will mean that program directors will have less time to spend on each application and will put an even greater emphasis on Step2CK cutoffs to make the pile of applications manageable. Program directors were not consulted when Step1 was made P/F and are dreading future cycles.

 

A slight positive is that data has shown Step2CK to be superior than Step1 in predicting future performance in residency and board exams. Anyway, the American match is still hell of a lot more objective than CaRMS. Thank you for attending my soliloquy delivered two weeks too late.