UofT rejections

[temp_degoo]

I agree with you Smurfette (except having MCAT and GPA count for a lot more than they already do).

I think the key here it to explain what you learned from what you did. I commented on this a lot in other threads when people were saying that those with overseas experience are preferred over those with local. I don't think this is the case when you can explain yourself clearly and concisely (you don't get this chance for Ottawa, but that's another topic lol).

The essays can actually be trickier than anticipated. Most people know what they've learned from their experiences, and forget that the reader of the essay doesn't have any clue what you've learned and wants to know. So the essay must be able to support itself (or at least partner well with the sketch/CV).

 

That said, I am confident most essays were written well, and still believe that chance has a lot to do with this.

[TBJ1]

Personally, I prefer the approach like UofT's where everything is taken into account before interviews..... unlike say Queens, where there is a cutoff to determine interviews, but that's just me.

 

I totally agree.

[kahone]

paperweight: re our exchange a few pages back; I happen to agree with you that some of thre responses to posted stats are ri-goh-dam-diculous. The process isn't random - THAT sentiment really annoys me. It only appears so when we can't account for the intangibles in other people's applications. Even, and perhaps especially, OUR OWN. Please people, especially you yungins or first-timers: don't confuse "highly subjective and subject to frequent and inexplicable changes" with "random". If it was random, I would have retired to Patagonia with my Super 7 winnings. I was advised NOT to bother applying to Queen's again since it was "highly unlikely" that the MCAT cutoff would drop by the one point to permit me an interview. I almost followed that advice, but for the fact that the odds of that cutoff changing were WAAAAYY batter than me winning $32 million one fine friday in September!!!

 

...and, truly, not to pick on you Paper, but I actually like how Queen's procedure emphasizes first one element (academics) then another (non academics, interview, personal charater, written responses on PIF) in a sequential way. Once you are deemed academically qualified (and they do set the bar high), as David Brent would say: "NEXT"

I hated the fact that my undergrad GPA - with it's 10 year old and rather irrelevant course marks in the context of my other academic achievement was ALWAYS going to be part of the evaluation at U of T. Ooops, there's my own bias. Seriously, I laugh me erse off because if there was a school that evaluated applications with a hybrid system encompassing the procedures of Queen's, U of T, UBC, NOSM, Mac, and Calgary.....I'd be in like flint. haha, talk about RANDOM!

[heathcliff]

temporary hijack: kahone...I may have missed a subtlety in your post...but did you actually win 32 million dollars in the lottery??? That is unreal. If this were face-to-face I'd ask for your autograph.

 

I think what you mentioned re: Queen's academic cut-off could sort of help put things in perspective for those folks disillusioned at the incredibly statistically qualified applicants being rejected. With U of T, it's not as though MCAT and gpa are insignificant, its just that the competitive nature of the applicants makes having extremely high scores less significant than having scores above a certain "cutoff". Although UofT doesn't have a Queen's/Western policy, I believe that the principles underlying such a policy are held by every school. There is a certain level of academic success above which applicants are likely to succeed in medical school. Although exceling far beyond that level would intuitively help an applicant, I don't think its a linear relationship. Above a certain level, the impressive-ness of incredibly high statistics gets larger by increasingly smaller increments (try to find my point within that hideous sentence structure). Queen's and Western make this very clear, but that doesn't mean that other schools that don't automatically value sky-high marks much more than necessary-for-academic-success-in-medical-school marks.

 

The other mistake I have seen some of my friends make goes like this: A friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend has a really high GPA and MCAT. She gets interviews everywhere, a couple of waitlists and an offer here or there. Goes to meds. Therefore, another friend-of-a-friend who has similar academic success will enjoy a similar application experience. This is so wrong- it assumes that the original friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend got in soley based on her marks! If there is anything that we here can all appreciate, which has been brought home all too harshly, it is that academics are just simply not enough, no matter how strong they are. So don't let the sight of really painful rejections (painful for all of us, because like someone said above, they tear away some of the certainty in the process) disillusion you!

 

If you are applying next year, or in a few years to come, don't let yourself sacrifice some of your personal growth, development, and experience to bring your gpa up a few points, because it may very well be that that personal growth is what is going to get you into med school. If I don't get in this time around, I'm going to take the year to improve my applicability in the non-academic section...as this whole process has really brought home the fact that this is the ultimate deciding factor in my mind.

[temp_degoo]

 

If you are applying next year, or in a few years to come, don't let yourself sacrifice some of your personal growth, development, and experience to bring your gpa up a few points, because it may very well be that that personal growth is what is going to get you into med school. If I don't get in this time around, I'm going to take the year to improve my applicability in the non-academic section...as this whole process has really brought home the fact that this is the ultimate deciding factor in my mind.

 

I concur. .................... (filler to make the reply long enough to post)

[kahone]

Quote:

temporary hijack: kahone...I may have missed a subtlety in your post...but did you actually win 32 million dollars in the lottery??? That is unreal. If this were face-to-face I'd ask for your autograph

 

 

LOL. Even better, I got an interview at Queen's.

No subtlety intended, I had tongue firmly planted, as they say.

[xylem29]

I gotta throw my two cents in here - since there are about 3100+ applicants and only about 500+ get interviews, I would assume that all 500 students are already the "best" - but I would still assume that out of 3100+ students, at the very least, 1000 of these students have a very good chance of getting into medical school.

 

Anyway, to continue with my point - I will assume that everyone who gets interviewed are very similar to each other on paper (essentially whatever attributes they look for in the "whole application", each student who is interviewed has). There will be indeed some students who interview poorly, and if the interview counts for a lot, then these students will likely not get accepted. But out of 500+ interviewees, I don't think that everyone who is accepted interviewed the best while the rest who are rejected were terrible at interviewing - there simply is not enough seats and there will certainly be applicants - who are equally (in every way, qualified as those who do get accepted) - that will not be accepted. You can get an interview one year, and not receive one the next year.

 

I'm willing to bet that an applicant who sucessfully applies in year 1, gets an interview, gets accepted (so clearly, they are "what they are looking for") - cannot repeat this year after year. There will always be subjectivity and this is why I think that there is an element of luck in this process.

 

It's very simple and clear - there are more qualified applicants than there are spots. Some things, we'll just never know!

[eise]

I just want to drive home smurfette's point. As a third time applicant without the STELLAR academics posted above (3.9GPA, 30P), I really concentrated on selling myself this year. I made sure that whoever read my essay really got to know me as a person. They could see that i had good ec's, that i was a good person, and that i was passionate about medicine. I wanted them to think, hey, i would really like this person to be my doctor or be in my class. And, lo and behold, every school i applied to that actually reads your application (without meeting a cutoff, which i don't meet), granted me an interview. So selling yourself, without assuming they will just be impressed with your academics and 'list' of activities, really works. Let's hope i made the same impression in my interview .

[paperweight]

Kahone: I understand your perspective with regards to having an academic cutoff, such as at Queen's.

 

The problem I have with "cutoffs" (even though I would be in the advantage if every school did it like Queen's) is that it puts people in certain ranges at an automatic advantage/disadvantage. Personally, I would prefer that a school looked at me entirely before making an informed decision.

 

I agree that the cut off is fairly reasonable... but then you have cases of individuals who are interviewed with awesome marks/MCATs, who have absolutely no chance of making it because of a lack of social skills/strong background experience - this could have been avoided by looking at the entire package....

 

I still don't understand any disadvantage that could come with evaluating whole applications, except for time issues - but hey, these are our future physicians, dont we want to treat this seriously?

 

Just my two cents.

 

But keep the good discussing going.

[xone]

What a thoughtful post, Smurfette. I went through exactly the same ordeal and came through it with the same conclusions. Just to emphasize, it isn't what you are, but rather what you show you are that matters. Some people are good at making less into more, and others are good at making more into less. The former is good for getting into medical school, while the latter (a good quality in my opinion) can be a hindrance to those wanting to get in. For our purposes, its not a time to be humble.

 

The other thing I liked was that it is so much easier to blame the system rather than doing some serious introspection. Even if the system is flawed (always the case in reality), you still got to play the game. A motto I've adopted is that if the rules aren't in your favor, you should learn them, excel using them, and then when you get into a position to do so, change them. As a visible minority, I sometimes find that prejudice does rear its ugly head, and sometimes you can't fight the unfair decisions. Life goes on, though, and if you cease struggling, it will leave you behind.

 

Anyways, just some personal thoughts inspired by Smurfette's interesting post.

 

Just to clarify...

 

I think GPA and MCAT are important and significant. And in terms of my own application, I wouldn't mind all that much if it were all be based on the GPA and MCAT. I have pretty decent academics (OMSAS GPA~3.98, MCAT=35+).

 

I applied to a few medical schools last year (not U of T) as a third-year applicant. I did not get in. Many of my friends/acquaintances with similar or worse stats did get in. I was hurt and frustrated. And many of my friends were surprised that I didn't get in. Why not? I thought I was a good applicant. Well, after being hurt and frustrated for about a week or two, I took a deep breath and asked myself, "Hmm, what went wrong? Why was I not accepted?" Of course, it would have been much nicer for my ego to tell myself that it was all luck, all "crapshoot", and that medical schools and the admissions process is simply "stupid." But that would be reactive and not proactive and while it might help my ego, it wouldn't help me get in.

 

Well, I did my research. UBC has a feedback session for rejected applicants so I went to that with a list of questions so that I could learn more about their admissions process. I also talked to lots of friends that both got in and didn't and tried to see what might have been the difference (beyond the superficial statistics, which I felt I had).

 

Here are some of the conclusions that I came to. They are my OPINIONS only and may be right or wrong.

 

(1) I had lots of experiences, but I didn't talk about them. At my UBC feedback session, I asked them for examples of activities/experiences that might improve my non-academic portion. They told me some. I was shocked and horrified to realize that I had done many of those activities but I had simply not written them down. Don't just say, I was involved with x organization. Tell them what you learned from it and what you did in that position. You might be a great applicant, but they don't know you - you have to show them in your application/interview.

 

(2) Reference letters make a BIG difference. I know of a few people who's applications were destroyed by weak references. This did not happen to me with my medical school reference letters (as far as I know), but it has happened to me with scholarship reference letters. Choose references who know you and (duh!) like you.

 

(3) I don't think I knew exactly why I wanted to study medicine or how I came to where I am now. Self-reflection is very important. Unless you know why you want to pursue medicine, you won't be able to tell the admissions committee.

 

(4) The admissions committee wants to know who you are as a person. Let your personality shine through and show them how you're going to fit in - whether as a med student or as a doctor. I don't think there's any one personality mode that you have to fit into. All sorts of personalities can be suitable for medicine (well, maybe not the psychopath personality, but you know what I mean... ). The important thing is for you to show the admissions people (both in your application and in the interview) who you are. No matter what the essay questions or interview questions are, the only question they are actually asking is "who are you?" You can say nothing "wrong" on the interview (or the essay), but if you don't show them who you are as a person, then they can't determine if you are the right "fit" for medicine.

 

These are "little things" in the sense that you didn't study for 4 years in order to get a number or study for 3 months in order to write a day-long test. But these "little things" count because everyone else also studied for 3+ years and wrote a day-long test.

 

So after spending a lot of time reflecting and researching, I'm re-applying this year (4th-year student) and hopefully things will work out.

 

As I said before, everything I say is my OPINION only and therefore, I may be "right" or "wrong". I have no inside knowledge; I am by no means an expert on this topic. I'm writing what I *think* is correct and I'm trying to be encouraging for everyone else who is applying. And I would be more than happy to read what other people consider to be "right" or "wrong".

 

*Minor edits for diction. It's so easy for people to completely misunderstand you on these boards...LOL

[Smurfette]

I agree with many of you in that I think the admissions process (at all schools) is flawed. There's going to be people who fall through the cracks whether they be people who shouldn't get in that do or people who should get in that don't. Thanks for your post, xone - I agree with you entirely! We can only work to make it the best as possible (if we're in a position to do so), but other than that you must play the game.

 

And I agree that there's lots of subjectivity. I think many of come from a science background and have the perspective that objectivity=good and subjectivity=bad. Well, that's true only if we can measure exactly the same thing with both measures. Well, if they were to choose people to interview on a first-come first-serve basis, that'd be objective. Or if they were to choose people on the basis of how tall they were, that'd be objective. Because there's a number on how tall people are or on when the application came in. But that wouldn't necessarily give you the best candidates. For you science nerds out there (myself included ), objective measures are definitely precise. But they are not necessarily accurate. Subjective measures are definitely imprecise, but they may or may not be accurate. It's very difficult to objectively and precisely measure things like character, maturity, personality, etc. And that's why the system is flawed.

[xylem29]

Yep - without getting into a whole discussion of how subjectivity in and of itself can never be fair or accurate, I'll just say that the system that we have now is the best that it can be at the given time and I'm content with it.