Stats for # of med schools applied to

[Guest JD]

3854 is the total number of applicants to Ontario med schools. 1757 is the # of applicants at either Toronto, Queen's, or UWO I guess. I don't know which one it would be, but they're all in that ballpark.

[Guest bad hombre]

the numbers come from the OMSAS website dude, from the "program requirements" page they have

[Guest Liana]

I personally only applied to Mac and Queens; from my (albeit minimally exposed) perspective, they are the only schools that cater to my personality, and pleasantly enough, are the only schools for which I am qualified. Yes, Ottawa lacks the MCAT requirement, and few people realize that they generally tend to have the highest GPA cutoff, so many people would apply here, but because I took a unique program in first year, I lacked the full year of general chem with lab required. A lot of people (myself included) avoid UWO because of the orgo requirement. This may have been due to miscommunication, but from what I could decipher from what the admissions officer explained to me, UWO has some oddball academic requirements that are especially hard to fulfill at a semestered school (eg, 3 full years of social sciences, 2 of which are in the same discipline, 2 of which are above 2nd year level, etc etc).

 

As for the OOP requirement, I think it's a bit silly. As far as I understand, a few years back, Ontario schools had their own distinct system of residency requirements, where each school catered to a certain region of Ontario (eg, Mac preferred southern Ontario undergrad schools, etc). These days, the only Ontario schools with residency requirements don't do much to help. Mac prefers Ontario students, but that doesn't make your 30:1 shot of admission look any sweeter. Ottawa, the only other school to favour the hometown crew, only does so for Ottawans & francophones, which again closes another door for the rest of us.

 

As for the Mac application scenario, someone mentioned previously that most people apply to Mac as a "safety". I think that those who take offense to this comment need to recognize that, on paper, Mac looks like an easy shot to the glittering-resume types. What I am only becoming to truly understand about Mac's admissions process, is not so much that it is supercompetitive or tedious, but that it is a necessary device to choose the students who will actually fare well in the PBL system.

[Guest Carolyn]

I agree with Leona - there are some funny requirements at each different school so unless you planned for med school from day one there may be a chance you are ineligible for a couple of ontario schools based on courses taken or not taken, not just GPA and MCAT scores. I believe that this means you can't directly look at the numbers and subtract.

 

While the Mac admission numbers look nice on paper for GPA requirements, the GPA becomes comparable to other schools when you use their fancy systems (dropping the worst year, counting others by two etc etc.). In fact, one faculty I talked to last year said that someone took a look at the class above me and realized that if they used the UofT calculations their avg. GPA was comparable to UofTs... It likely was just a cursory look, out of curiousity as I've never heard any more about it but it was definitely interesting... That class had an avg GPA of 3.65 (Mac system), It was probably substantially higher when you stick into the UofT gpa system.

 

So, while there are a lot of people with lower GPAs applying, GPA still counts for 50% and many times means that those with a low GPA don't even get to the interview stage. It just shows how important the essays are... Those entering with really low GPAs (3.0 - 3.3) are few and far between and usually have some pretty amazing experiences behind them.

 

Take care - the wait sucks I know!