University of Guelph

[Guest darronolsen]

I am interested if a B.Sc for the University of Guelph would hold any credibility to med school admissions. (ie. has anyone gotten into a "good" med school with a diploma for UofG???)

 

thankies

darron

[Guest Ian Wong]

There's at least a couple good threads on this already, either on this page, or the next one of this forum.

 

Here's a couple:

 

pub44.ezboard.com/fpremed101frm0.showMessage?topicID=489.topic

 

pub44.ezboard.com/fpremed101frm0.showMessage?topicID=520.topic

 

If you are interested in attending Guelph, then I think you should investigate it. It sounds like a cool place to study.

 

Ian

UBC, Med 3

[Guest aneliz]

Guelph is a great school. It doesn't attract as many pre-meds as schools with a med school but it does have a very strong biological science college as well as the ontario vet college. The vet college is involved in a wide variety of biomedical research, a lot of which is applicable to human medicine. (See the older threads for a complete discussion of this)

 

I have just finished 4 years there and I have interviewed at Western and have an interview coming up for UofT. (2 of 2 that I applied to). I know of Guelph grads at Toronto, Western, Ottawa, Mac, McGill and Manitoba med schools. Check out the old posts and the Guelph website. It is as good a pre-med school as any in Ontario. Choose a school that feels right for you!

[Guest UWOMED2005]

We've got a bunch of Guelph grads here at Western, I know there's at least a few at U of T. . . I'm sure there's others elsewhere as well.

 

Guelph is a fine school for meds. On the other hand, there aren't many schools that aren'r good for getting into meds.

[Guest mying]

Just a point of clarification, just so you know to be careful with some of these "buzzwords"...

 

A B.Sc. (or BA or BSc(Agr) or BSc(Tech) or BComm or BASc or anything really that starts with a B... although I heard the DVM works too) from Guelph is just as good a way "into meds" as any other school.

 

A Diploma is not. Diploma programs are like what you get from a community college, despite being offered under the University of Guelph name. They do not qualify as "University education leading to a Bachelors Degree" as most medical schools want you to have. Nothing against dippers, just you got to be working on a bachelors (or already have it).

 

That said, if you like Guelph for a B(whatever), go to Guelph. It's a great school.

[Guest aneliz]

Yes dippers are definitely not 'university students' and their program is far from 'degree level work'. Dippers are definitely fun people though even if they aren't rocket scientists. (Nothing is more fun than an aggie pub....) Thanks mying for clarifying the distinction between degree and dipper students at Guelph. I hadn't even thought that we might have wanna be dippers on this board!

[Guest Liana]

Just a remark to the original poster, if darron's still around:

 

Don't let the rivalry of students from different schools fool you into thinking an education at Guelph (or most other Canadian universities, for that matter) will be inferior to that offered by any other school.

 

Essentially, what the Medical school looks at when you apply boils down to a few simple things: your grades, your MCAT score, your extracurricular activities, and the way you represent yourself in essay and interview format. Rather than picking which school has the nicest name, you should be concerned with choosing the school that will enable you to develop these characteristics most fully. Now, that is a completely personal decision, but the things you should certainly look at are the level of academic support offered by an institution, and the opportunity for you to get involved in extracurricular activities. Guelph has a great infrastructure of student support (accessible profs & TAs, student learning groups, residence study groups, etc etc) that would help you to achieve those high marks that are necessary to get those interviews; Guelph's program in biomedical sciences is great preparation for medical school, although you're quite free to enrol in any program you wish - pick something you're interested in, rather than something you feel obligated to choose, because that will be reflected in higher marks and greater interest in your program.

 

As far as extracurriculars goes, Guelph, being a smaller school, admittedly cannot offer as many different extracurricular options as a larger school; however, you do have great opportunity to get involved in leadership roles, which are much more important than simply joining a club. For instance, at Guelph, you could become a Teaching Assistant in 3rd or 4th year (a paying job usually reserved for grad students at other schools); you could become an editor on the campus newspaper with minimal effort; you could lead campus study groups; and you could easily qualify for a varsity sports team. Another advantage is that you have a greater opportunity to interact with professors, which translates to a greater opportunity to get some good letters of reference for when it comes time to apply.

 

Ultimately, you should look beyond the name of any school you are considering attending. Talk to the students, find out what the lifestyle is like outside of classes, and make sure you have found a place that will make you happy.