US premed applying to Canadian Schools .

[Guest kornphan]

I am in US and finishing off my premed this year. I am thinking of applying to few Med schools in Ontario. Does anyone here have any experience in doing this ?.. any pro/con that you experts can think of ?. Thanks in advance for all suggestions.

 

Korn

[Guest Ian Wong]

Hi kornfan,

 

The five medical schools in Ontario are:

 

U of Ottawa

U of Toronto

U of Western Ontario

Queens U

McMaster U

 

Of these schools, the only one that I am positive accepts international applicants is McMaster. For the other schools, perhaps other people can help you out, or better yet, you can look on their medical school web-sites, and let us know.

 

On the other hand, if you are a Canadian citizen/landed immigrant in Canada, your options expand to all of the above schools, and you are in a particularly good position should you hold Ontario residency.

 

The major pro to attending a Canadian university as a Canadian citizen is the cost, although tuitions are skyrocketing in Ontario, with most published tuitions between $10,000-$15,000, which could very likely increase further by the time you apply. In the rest of Canada, however, tuition fluctuates anywhere from $4000 on up to perhaps $7000 per year. This is dirt cheap compared to all but your local state medical school, especially considering the strength of the US dollar versus our own right now.

 

Cons include potentially having a tougher time getting back into residency in the States. While Canadian medical schools are generally recognised in the States as being of at least equivalent quality to American med schools, I don't think our curriculums in many cases prepare you quite as well for the USMLE Step 1, which has a very heavy basis in the basic sciences, and in which scoring highly is very helpful to earning a desirable residency.

 

My personal opinion is that PBL doesn't do as good a job of teaching all the nit-picky minutiae that is tested in the above exam. What PBL is excellent for is teaching clinical reasoning skills, and most students in my class, when researching learning issues for PBL, tended to skip the hardcore basic science, and concentrated instead more on the clinically relevant details. I think most schools in Canada make at least some use of PBL in the first two years of teaching, which isn't necessarily the case in the states.

 

A further con regarding getting a US residency, is the absolute necessity of doing away electives. Therefore, if you are looking to get a US residency, you need to do electives in the states while you are attending medical school in Canada. This might be doable, but for example, only 2 of the 4 elective blocks at UBC are set up for international electives. Therefore, you would have to, by definition, do at least two Canadian electives here at UBC, which might not necessarily help you in getting a US residency.

 

Just some things to consider. The first thing to do should be to check out each medical school web-site, and decide whether you are eligible to apply there.

 

Ian

UBC, Med 3

[Guest kornphan]

Ian.. I have sent you a email on this... take care.. thanks..

[Guest Akane200]

I believe U of T takes American applicants also; however the # of spaces for international applicants is very very small.