Ontario Application Stats for Sept 2003 Entry

[Guest aneliz]

Hello all,

 

There has been much debate back and forth on all of the Ontario school forums about the number of applicants for this year and whether they are up or down and by how much. I thought that I would post a summary of what I found out from the Admissions office at Western....

 

According to the stats released by OMSAS to the medical schools, the applications for Sept 2003 are as follows:

 

McMaster 3585 (up 557 from 2002)

        Ottawa 2384 (up 344 from 2002)

        Queen's 1360 (down 281 from 2002)

        Toronto 1576 (down 105 from 2002)

        Western 1534 (down 156 from 2002)

 

So there you have it.

 

Cheers!

[Guest Shahenshah]

I've been soo trying to find this info out and so thank you very much for providing it..aneliz, u the best:)

[Guest Da Birdie]

hmm...i wonder why UofT and Ottawa # goes up by the hundreds while the rest goes down by the hundreds...

 

maybe it's simply within range of normal year-to-year variation?

 

or perhaps due to changes in application requirements ?

 

interesting figures...

 

da birdie

Queens Meds2006

[Guest peachy]

The drop in applications at the three MCAT schools is almost certainly because MCAT scores were available before the app deadlines, so people didn't waste their money applying if they knew they would be automatically rejected.

 

Part of the increase at Ottawa and Mac could be explained by the same thing, maybe? People who normally were most interested in Toronto, Queens, or Western focussed on applications to Mac/Queens instead.

 

The rest of the increase at Mac / Ottawa is quite mysterious to me!! I mean, that's a HUGE increase for Mac especially!

 

It would be interesting if OMSAS collected more demographic information so that we could know where the trends are coming from..

[Guest AJ]

I wonder if the show, Med Students, played any role in that?

[Guest therealcrackers]

One other thing that may explain it... Ottawa dropped their MCAT weighting in their application process this year...

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hey aneliz,

 

Cheers for that! I actually gave OMSAS a shout to retrieve the numbers yesterday...without a pinch o' luck.

 

Kirsteen

[Guest Shahenshah]

hi the realcrackers..I am not sure what you mean that ottawa has dropped the mcat weighting this year..haven't they stopped using it for a few years now

[Guest doctorfunk]

Hmm.. these numbers don't correspond with that Toronto Star article that reported a 16% increase in the total number of applications to the Ontario schools..

Anybody else notice this?

[Guest peachy]

You're right, it really doesn't look like nearly 16% from a quick glance at these numbers alone. The numbers from the star claim 4469 applicants this year, an increase of 669 over the 3800 from last year.

 

Because the number aneliz provided (Thanks aneliz!) represent applications not unique applicants it's really difficult to tie them into the Star numbers. But on a closer look, it seems entirely likely that they represent 669 extra applicants. After all, McMaster alone is up 557 applicants - if we assume that in some sense most of these represent "new" applications, not just replacements from people who got in last year, we've almost entirely covered the increase right there.

 

Also, the "drops" at Queen's, Western and Toronto, as others have noted, are quite artificial. I would guess they just represent applicants who applied at _fewer_ Ontario schools, not applicants who dropped out of the system altogether.

 

The number of Mac applicants, though, continues to be incredibly large in the context of the total number. 3585 / 4469? That's 80% of the total applicant pool applied to Mac! Wow! I am _so_ not getting an interview...

 

IMHO, the take-home message from these numbers is: competition at Q/W/T will be about the same as last year. Competition at Ottawa will increase slightly, and competition at Mac is going through the roof...

 

The other numbers in the article (588 applied to 5, 504 applied to 4, 618 applied to 3, 1073 applied to two, and 1686 applied to one) can presumably support this argument. But I've already wasted too much time on this entirely meaningless line of reasoning. :rollin

[Guest aneliz]

As to where the star got their numbers, I don't know. I assume that they have just put a different spin on things....(ie considered total number of individual applicants vs total number of applications - an important distinction!) I assure you that the numbers I posted are 'real' (and current) and were released by OMSAS to the medical schools. Just goes to show what you can do with different interpretations of statistics....