Guest Ginny Posted June 15, 2001 Report Share Posted June 15, 2001 I'm a little confused with the timeline of the "med school track." When is a good time to write the MCAT, after 2nd year, or after 3rd year? If you write the MCAT after 2nd year, then would you apply during your 3rd year? Would this mean you would attend med school (assuming you get in) without finishing your 4th year? Would you still have a Bachelor degree? I know UBC has a B.Sc/MD programme, but my adivsor (at UBC) told me that this program is being faded out because it is too hard and stressful for students. Without this programme, can you still get into med school with only 3 years? Reading past posts on this website (which is really helpful, by the way), I read that lots of people are planning to write the MCAT after 2nd year, adn one person who is writing it after her 1st year! The only benefit I can think of from doing this is to see what your chances are for getting into med school; to see if you need a lot of improvement. I apologize for composing an entire post with mainly questions. I've just totally confused myself :b . Some help would really be appreciated. Thanks. :rollin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Katie Posted June 15, 2001 Report Share Posted June 15, 2001 Hi Ginny. I've got a question for you that's totally off topic. What do you mean by your advisor? I go to UBC and had no idea we have premed advisors! Where did you find out about them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ginny Posted June 15, 2001 Report Share Posted June 15, 2001 I meant I talked to a science undergrad advisor. I wanted to talk about electives and I slipped the med school question in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest YongQ Posted June 15, 2001 Report Share Posted June 15, 2001 Hi Ginny, I like your smilies - onto the questions, "When is a good time to write the MCAT, after 2nd year, or after 3rd year?" After 2nd year is preferable. The MCAT score you get is good for 3 years. "If you write the MCAT after 2nd year, then would you apply during your 3rd year? Would this mean you would attend med school (assuming you get in) without finishing your 4th year? Would you still have a Bachelor degree?" You can apply in 3rd year, but most get admitted after 4th year. You won't get a Bachelor's if you skip out of 4th year. BUT at UBC you can put a few credits of med towards your Bachelor's if you were really close (i.e. only need a few electives). "I know UBC has a B.Sc/MD programme, but my adivsor (at UBC) told me that this program is being faded out because it is too hard and stressful for students. Without this programme, can you still get into med school with only 3 years?" The B.Sc/MD programme, from what I understand, puts some med credits towards your uncompleted BSc elective credits, and you will get your BSc if you completed all your required courses beforehand. I haven't heard any news about them revoking this program, after all, it's the student's initiative right? And getting a B.Sc is NEVER necessary to enter med school or finish med school unless you're thinking of the States. All schools in Canada (well, I'm a little less knowledgable about Memorial and the francophone ones) take in 3rd years. "Reading past posts on this website (which is really helpful, by the way), I read that lots of people are planning to write the MCAT after 2nd year, and one person who is writing it after her 1st year! The only benefit I can think of from doing this is to see what your chances are for getting into med school; to see if you need a lot of improvement." I wrote the MCAT after my 1st year, and did fine (>=30, S), but after 2nd year is much, much, much more sane. Why? Well, one reason: organic chemistry (especially the 2nd semester of it at UBC) is on the MCAT and if you don't know it you have no chance of even understanding 1/3 of one of the MCAT's sections. Also, if you're a life science major, by the end of year 2 your knowledge of general bio should be much better-grounded than it was in 1st year. Note: organic chem is DIFFICULT - it's not the kind of thing you want to study by yourself if you're learning for the 1st time. Hope this helped! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ginny Posted June 15, 2001 Report Share Posted June 15, 2001 YongQ ~ thanks, your answers were very helpful and thorough. Just one question, you say "You can apply in 3rd year, but most get admitted after 4th year". Does this mean you have a 1 year wait to see if you got into the school or not, or do you mean the students are accepted during 3rd year, but don't go until after 4th year. On a personal note, did you attend UBC too? What did you major in? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest BCgirl Posted June 15, 2001 Report Share Posted June 15, 2001 YongQ - not all schools accept students after 3 years. You need a degree to get into Dal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Katie Posted June 15, 2001 Report Share Posted June 15, 2001 Also, YongQ, MCAT scores are good for more than 3 years at some schools. (e.g. UBC = 5 years) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest MEDCOMPSCI Posted June 16, 2001 Report Share Posted June 16, 2001 Please do not spread misinformation...you can indeed get a three year Bach. degree. It is called a major (not a specialist/honours degree). You can also apply to med school (since you will have a degree confered after three years) during your third year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest BCgirl Posted June 16, 2001 Report Share Posted June 16, 2001 YongQ mentioned at UBC you can put credits towards your "UNcompleted" BSc. I assumed he did not mean get a 3 year degree and then apply. And it also depends on the school... a 3 year degree at my school is called a "concentration" while a major is 4 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Akane200 Posted June 16, 2001 Report Share Posted June 16, 2001 OR, you can get in after 3 years WITHOUT a degree. The minimum requirements at most schools is 3 years (15 full credits) of undergraduate studies with a required # of third year courses (or a major of study; basically, they don't want you to take all 15 credits in lower year courses and without any direction in study). Some schools do not offer general B.Sc./B.A. (3 year) degrees. Or, if you were in a specialist program, and coming out of 3rd year, have not finished the 4 year program (missing a few courses), you would not have a degree. In that case, all you would need is a letter from your registrar to verify that you have completed 3 years of study at the university. I think what yongQ was trying to say that UBC accepts many students who have finished all 4 years (B.Sc. Hon). BCgirl, so they call 3 years a "concentration", and 4 years a major at UBC huh? That's interesting and at the same time highly confusing for us that come from elsewhere. Over here, you get a 3 year degree (15 credits) with a single major (7-9 full courses in a certain area), and a 4 year degree (20 credits) is either a specialist (13-15 full courses) or a double major. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest BCgirl Posted June 16, 2001 Report Share Posted June 16, 2001 Akane200, I actually go to a university in Nova Scotia (not UBC). I'm not sure what the degrees are like at UBC, but at my school the 3 year degree is a concentration. A major is the 4 year degree or you can do an honours. For an honours you just take more courses in your honours subject and do a thesis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ian Wong Posted June 16, 2001 Report Share Posted June 16, 2001 Hi Ginny, I'm not even going to touch the differences between the three or four year programs. I think the bottom line there is that these designations vary with each undergraduate school (there is no consistency), so each person's response, while applicable to their own experiences, might not hold for you. The other important point that I think has already been addressed, is that for most Canadian med schools, it is possible to get in after three years. However, your application credentials must generally be superior, as you've had one less year to do all the volunteer work, research, extra-currics, travelling, etc versus the people who have had four years of undergrad. Regarding your initial question, the whole point is that you don't have to take the MCAT at a specified point in your education. While I think the majority of students take the MCAT in the summer after third year, that's not the point. The point is to take the MCAT whenever your background has you most prepared to write it. In my personal case, that was the summer after second year, because I had already covered all the university courses that had testable material on the MCAT: English, Physics, Inorganic and Organic Chem, Biology, Biochem, etc. In my case, it would have been foolish to write the MCAT after third year, because my third year was mainly Genetics, Economics, Philosophy, and other stuff that wasn't as directly relevant. Therefore, take a look at your own schedule of coursework, and write the MCAT whenever you will be best prepared. You can apply to medical school at any time after you've fulfilled all the application pre-requisites (you can check each medical school web-site for those). Do remember that your MCAT scores expire after X number of years after you write them, and that each medical school might use a different expiry date (again why you should check this out). Therefore, you should write the MCAT whenever you feel you know the material best, and apply to medical school whenever you have all the application pre-requisites. You'll need to figure out those times, when it's best for you personally; I and the other helpful folks here can't help you with that. Hope that helped. Ian UBC, Med 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ian Wong Posted June 16, 2001 Report Share Posted June 16, 2001 Oh yeah, regarding the three year program; there is no such thing. Traditionally, and this occurs only in the States, a Bsc/MD program is a 6-7 year program that you apply for out of high school. If you are accepted, then you are guaranteed a medical school seat in 2-3 years, after you spend that time in undergrad, as long as you meet their MCAT and undergrad GPA requirements. This does not exist in Canada, at least not English-speaking Canada as far as I know, in that there's no guaranteed seating in medical school for you as you graduate from high school. The BSc/MD thing your UBC advisor is referring to, is that students who get in after three years without finishing their degree don't actually have an undergrad degree. The BSc/MD option allows you to use the first year of medical school to finish off your fourth year of undergrad, and allows you to get your BSc. This has effectively been phased out, and is effective for this year, with the major reason being that you are then using the first year of medical school simultaneously to fulfill an undergraduate degree, as well as your MD degree, which doesn't really wash. Furthermore, since the med school curriculum has been changed in the past 4 years, and we now study organ systems rather than discrete courses like Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Clairisa Posted June 17, 2001 Report Share Posted June 17, 2001 I was hanging on your every word there Ian...is there more to that post? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ian Wong Posted June 17, 2001 Report Share Posted June 17, 2001 Hmm. That's weird eh, Clairisa? I actually had typed out another 3/4 of a page, but I guess the POS computer I'm using in the local hospital must have cut out while I was posting my message. What I was trying to get at, was that often, in the fourth year of an undergrad degree, there is a requirement to take a certain number of upper-level courses. However, this doesn't translate out too well when using the organ-system basis of teaching at UBC med. For example, in our 2 month Brain and Behaviour block, where we studied the structure and function of the head, neck, and spinal cord, topics from the following subject areas were covered: Embryology Anatomy Physiology Biochemistry Pathology Histology Neuroanatomy Neurophysiology Nutrition Psychology/Psychiatry Pharmacology However, none of these subjects was really discussed in a great deal of depth; just enough to give us some conceptual understanding of brain function. As a result, the admin decided that it was time to stop granting the first year of med school as equivalent to the final year of undergrad, because functionally, as far as subjects are concerned, it isn't. The bottom line is that it is still possible to get into med school after three years; the only difference between now, and before, is that now, upon finishing medical school, you willl leave with an MD, and three years of undergraduate credits, whereas before, you would leave with both an MD and a BSc. Either way, you still get to practise medicine, and no patient will care (most won't even notice), if you don't have a BSc beside your name. In fact, I was considering at one time to go back, and complete my undergrad degree in my first year med summer, before I regained my sanity, and decided against it. One of my friends even went as far as saying that hey, "if anything, it looks even better for you that you managed to get your MD degree without needing to get a BSc. That's rare to accomplish at UBC." I think the bottom line is that even with UBC removing this BSc/MD option, that you can still enter med school three years after high school; you just get one less certificate to hang on your wall. Ian UBC, Med 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest YongQ Posted June 17, 2001 Report Share Posted June 17, 2001 MEDCOMPSCI, I've never heard of a majors program where the students are supposed to take 3 years to get a Bachelor's. Which program is this? Majors at UBC, as far as I know, are all 120-credit programs, intended for the student to take 30/yr, with a few programs (co-op and the like) taking 5 years. About the other schools back east, I'm totally clueless, never even heard of a "specialty." Oh boy, I messed up a couple facts on my first post, sorry. Forgot about Dal too, I don't know anything about it since I didn't apply there. Hey, but that's what forums are for eh... BTW Ginny, I did go to UBC, and I'm finishing up the last 6 credits of my Cell Bi & Genetics major this summer. OK edit #2!!! Ian, I think the reason you might wanna get a BSc even though you're going to end up an M.D. is: you might not match well in CaRMS the first time you do it, and might wanna take a year after your M.D. to do research or work at a biotech lab or whatever. However, not having a B.Sc for this kind of work is BAD, because an M.D. isn't worth much in that respect. I only know this because I know an Anatomy grad student who has a friend who didn't match, then decided to apply for some job in a biotech company, and got shut out b/c he didn't have a B.Sc... (heh, heh, but this is pretty unlikely to happen to anyone I gather). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JSS02 Posted June 17, 2001 Report Share Posted June 17, 2001 Hey YongQ, didn't you say that you have just finished your second year of undergrad? How on earth did you get 120 credits done in such a short amount of time? Even if you did 6 courses in Sept-Apr. for both years, that would still mean 4 more courses each summer... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ginny Posted June 17, 2001 Report Share Posted June 17, 2001 Hey YongQ! This is totally off my initial topic, but Cell and Genetics Bio is what I want to go in to. Was it fun/interesting/hard? How does it compare with Biochem? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest MEDCOMPSCI Posted June 17, 2001 Report Share Posted June 17, 2001 Hey, Well I goto UofT and we doo have three-year Bach. degrees. Just check the website if you want confirmation. We need 7-9 related credits and we get a Bach. degree. If you do a four-year degree, it is called a specialist degree, or an honours B.SC. You can also get an honours by doing two three year degrees (three year degrees are called majors and need 15 credits with 7-9 being required ones). Not all schools have three year degrees though, so you may not have heard of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest YongQ Posted June 19, 2001 Report Share Posted June 19, 2001 Hi everybody! Medcompsci, yep I've never heard of specialist degrees, the number of programs UT has in undergrad is amazing! My sis applied there and was so confused about the college system, and the hundreds of programs they had... Ginny, CGBI is a great program. It's very flexible, and all the courses & CGBI electives are awesome - it feels really integrated, with each course overlapping just a bit with the others. Another thing I liked about CGBI is the flexibility of the program - you can take whatever courses you want pretty much, with plenty of elective space, unlike more stringent programs at UBC like biochem, pharmacology, and physiology (the last of which I was planning to go into but changed my mind about 2 days before the reg date!). With that said, some of the CGBI electives are, IMO, really crappy. Be careful what courses you choose in 3rd and 4th years, and some of them are pointless paper-reading courses that teach you nothing general, just obscurities. I won't list any of 'em here, but just make sure to choose subjects you either genuinely love, or subjects that are applicable to what you want to do (i.e. transferable skills). JSS02, I'd rather not explain this beyond saying I took a hecka lot of credits in all sessions. Suffice to say, my app to meds was very weird and I wouldn't recommend 99.9999% doing the same because the workload is overwhelming. YONGQ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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