Guest opiedog Posted July 24, 2005 Report Share Posted July 24, 2005 A scary thought just came across my mind...the previous program that I completed had a 50 percent attrition rate. Is there anything like that in med shool? What are the chances of failing med school (perish the thought after investing all this money!!) if you put in a reasonable effort? I can see not being successful for a variety of reasons (not going to class, sleeping in class, not preparing, etc) but if you put in the time and energy, what are the chances that you might or could fail? I realise that high marks make you more marketable for carms matches later. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Littlest Zooropa Posted July 24, 2005 Report Share Posted July 24, 2005 There's a saying: it's harder to get INTO med school than to get THROUGH it. Probably true. If you're smart enough to get the marks to be admitted, you're smart enough to handle the academic course load (be prepared to work, of course). At my institution, the faculty went out of their way to help anyone who was limping along. Whereas in undergrad, you might have been accustomed to your professors letting you sink or swim according to your merit, in med school you find that there are a lot of people putting a lot of effort into seeing you succeed. In my graduating class (excluding suicide and other forms of voluntary withdrawl e.g. just won the lottery), our "failure" rate was around 2-4%. And you didn't "fail out" - you simply repeated the year. Humiliating, I guess, but certainly not career-ending. Again, smart enough to get in is smart enough to stay in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest opiedog Posted July 24, 2005 Report Share Posted July 24, 2005 That's actually a comforting thought, thanks for sending it in Zooropa. I'm not afraid of hard work, already do it everyday with kids, a home and a full time and part time job. In an email the other day, my sister sent a quote attributed to Lance Armstrong, which seems quite appropriate, "Pain is only temporary, quitting is forever." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest UWOMED2005 Posted July 25, 2005 Report Share Posted July 25, 2005 For my class of medical school, we lost two students due to illness. Nobody failed out. That is not necessarily true at every school though. . . I do know some schools DO fail students. . . the example (unconfirmed) that I was given was roughly 15 out of 120 (that latter number is extremely rough, partly to disguise the school as the report is unconfirmed and I don't want to be guilty of hearsay. Definitely nothing like 50% failure rates anywhere. . . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Malikar Posted July 25, 2005 Report Share Posted July 25, 2005 When I was researching med school a couple years ago, I found some stats from large and respectable organizations (the names of which I've since forgotten). One reported a 98% graduation rate, and the other a 95% gradutation rate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest therealcrackers Posted July 25, 2005 Report Share Posted July 25, 2005 Those pass rates you quote are pretty accurate. There is occasionally a student who just can't cut the mustard, and several who have significant illnesses, but very few people fail. The process of selecting med school candidates is supposed to weed out the weak, the lazy and the unmotivated; those who remain, a lot of time and money is invested in training them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest InuvikGirl Posted July 25, 2005 Report Share Posted July 25, 2005 The OSAP website has links to different universities and details the graduation and employment rates for students of different programs, including medicine. osap.gov.on.ca/eng/not_se...lsuniv.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest physiology Posted July 25, 2005 Report Share Posted July 25, 2005 Hello, It is VERY difficult to fail at most medical schools. Often times, students fail because of medical, pyschological, or family reasons. And if any of these reasons are the cause of the failure, the administration will allow you to do remedial work or repeat the year. In general, the administration are extremely supportive. If you want to take a year off to raise your newborn or wanted to do medical missionary work for a year, or take a year off between 2nd/3rd year to get some experience in an extremely competitive field, chances are, they'll let you. Of course, everything is negotiated on a case by case basis, but the point is, they are willing to listen and often appoint advisors (usually the Dean of Student Affairs or something like that) to attend to these concerns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest drEvil Posted July 26, 2005 Report Share Posted July 26, 2005 After looking at that website above, it looks like Western has a poor pass rate with only 95%. McMaster has 99% and Queens has 100% graduation rates. What makes Western lag behind? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ploughboy Posted July 26, 2005 Report Share Posted July 26, 2005 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Maybe the Western students spent too much time at the pub? (disclaimer: I'm an incoming UWO student...) Seriously, I'd take those numbers with a grain of salt. According to the notes on the site, graduation rate was calculated simply by counting up the number of students who had started meds in 1994 and subsequently graduated by the end of 2001. Since there were only about 100 people in the class back then, if you have a couple of MD/PhD students going off to do the research part of their programme, somebody transfering to another school, the odd person saying "the heck with it - I don't like sick people" and quitting (this was 1994 remember - long before the days of $16,000 tuition and $150,000 lines of credit), suddenly you have "only" a 96% pass rate. And I wouldn't call 96% poor - that's a 4.0! (oops, gotta get out of that mindset). In comparison, approximately 30% of the people who entered Waterloo's electrical engineering programme with me did not graduate on schedule -- now *that's* a poor pass rate! Note also that the figures on the website are a one-time snapshot (incoming 1994), and are likely subject to some fluctuation year-to-year. Like a med student told me during interview weekend: the hardest thing in the world is to get into medical school in Ontario. The second-hardest thing in the world is to fail out of medical school in Ontario. Or maybe UWO students do spend too much time at the bar... pb -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (MingW32) iD8DBQFC5qgL/HNgbK3bC2wRAi5MAJsEDvHs7Qq7c735v5pqUIdmRTaRGwCeO/Om TbmDD5TyHNZ7CcX6ceCDpCE= =IOmn -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest TimmyMax Posted July 26, 2005 Report Share Posted July 26, 2005 Hey, I'm a Western med student and I spend too much time at the pub. I haven't failed out...yet! :lol Timmy P.S.: I also spend too much time at the bar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ploughboy Posted July 26, 2005 Report Share Posted July 26, 2005 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I think I'm going to like it at Western... -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (MingW32) iD8DBQFC5r6D/HNgbK3bC2wRAokrAKCOHNWcKdGbmueNRBexOcgQvRCUqgCdF15x LOsHw4509AC2eoPtRXG8BRk= =gqtc -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest UWOMED2005 Posted July 27, 2005 Report Share Posted July 27, 2005 Don't trust those OSAP figures - they're @#%$. The pass rate for our class was over 98% (ie only 2 people didn't complete the program out of 118+.) They may have taken only one year into account, and may have included people who didn't finish with their classmates because they took mat leave or did a concurrent PhD. Those figures are probably similar to that fed gov't website that posted doctors salaries. . . such organizations have no clue about what's actually going on with medicine! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest marbledust Posted July 27, 2005 Report Share Posted July 27, 2005 I think I'm going to like it at Western... Ploughboy: Forgive me as I haven't been reading the board too closely lately. Did you get into UWO for the upcoming school year? If so, congrats! I always enjoy reading your posts Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ploughboy Posted July 27, 2005 Report Share Posted July 27, 2005 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi marble, Thanks for the kind words! I was called off UWO's waitlist a couple of weeks ago - yippee! pb -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (MingW32) iD8DBQFC55kT/HNgbK3bC2wRAtQeAJ93KgOMb0DOgdlQWW4Fy43dpuRzpQCghUcj As0Oq/k+L9qZPDQ5YWyXX50= =347J -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest satsumargirl Posted July 30, 2005 Report Share Posted July 30, 2005 I think it's hard to flunk out of most professional schools since that would be one less person in the workforce. As many have pointed out faculty will try their best to be supportive. From a conversation with an anatomy prof some years ago... I can tell you a case of 2 students who flunked anatomy (a course I thought would be considered pretty important) in med school. The prof let them re-write the exam. This prof was extremely nice and actually gave them the exact same exam again, not one change!! 1 passed and 1 flunked again. The one who flunked did not have to even take the course or the exam again. Under pressure from the Dean the student was passed. The prof was pretty upset but could do nothing about it. This sounds unreal. But it is absolutely true. So...I think you'd have to try pretty hard to flunk out of the program entirely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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