McGill vs UdeM nursing school

[Alya1412]

Hello I am a college student who has applied to nursing at UdeM and McGill. The point is that my ultimate goal is to go from nursing to medical school. What I wanted to know is if anyone has an opinion on which university I should choose to have the best chance of getting a competitive GPA. I am a native French speaker, but I would say that I have pretty good English and I was wondering if this would be a disadvantage for me to not be an English Native speaker? I would also like to know more about the difficulty of the exams and the level of competition in the 2 different universities. If anyone wants to share their knowledge and experience with me, I would really appreciate it : )

 

[ADoseofLuck]

From personal experience, I would recommend McGill over UdeM, because McGill has a traditional way of giving classes (lectures or cours magistraux) whereas UdeM has APP (apprentissage par problèmes where students "teach themselves" the material and it is overall harder to get a good grade from what I heard). Moreover, the clinicals (stages) at McGill are Pass/Fail, meaning they don't impact your GPA and, at UdeM, they are graded subjectively. I know several people who went from McGill nursing to McGill or UdeM med.

On 4/10/2022 at 6:11 PM, Alya1412 said:

I am a native French speaker, but I would say that I have pretty good English and I was wondering if this would be a disadvantage for me to not be an English Native speaker?

It shouldn't be a problem, a lot of francophones did well in the McGill nursing program. In fact, it puts you at an advantage during stages.

[einstein99]

21 hours ago, ADoseofLuck said:

From personal experience, I would recommend McGill over UdeM

Can second this, I've been at McGill and all health programs (dietetics, OT/PT, nursing) have many theoretical classes/"cours magistraux" (higher potential to have a better grade). If you plan mostly on using nursing as a stepping stone, McGill might be better although Udem surely has its own advantages. It worked out well for me

[nurse2doctor]

If I can add to the discussion, I'm in my third year at UdeM and I have to admit that it can be difficult to get good grades in nursing. However, it is not impossible and you can get away with a GPA that would be average in any other program but is really good in nursing. As an example, I ultimately want to apply to medicine as well and I applied back in November with a GPA of 3,508/4,3 (first 2 years) for a GPA of 32,658. Considering that nursing gave me the tools to do well on the casper (I placed in the 4th quartile and so did my fellow nursing friends), it's not impossible to get in with a GPA of 3,6 (my year anyway) which would be a little more than 33 (the minimum required). I guess my point is that yes it is difficult to have a 4,3, but getting a 3,7 is not if I had been as focused in my first year as I am now. Even though doing well at McGill might be easier, you have to be conscious of the class average and how you do compared to them (for UdeS and UdeM anyway). No matter what your choice will be, I am sure that if you set your mind from day one to excell, you will. Plus, nursing is a beautiful profession and I hope that you will retain a lot of your learnings into your journey to medical school