Full courseload??

[Guest Joker]

Hi there,

 

I was just wondering how crucial it is to have 5 courses in every semester of undergrad. In first year, I was still slightly unsure about medicine, and an advisor told me that it would be fine to have 4 courses (14 credits at McGill). Now that I've started reading the reqirements of most schools in greater depth, I'm starting to get a little panicked. Is this going to be a big problem? Will my application be completely rejected because of it, or will the fact that they were all tough courses and add up to 14 credits be sufficient?

[Guest sparkle]

If you only have 1st year with 14 credits (which I must say is very close to 15), you're most likely okay. Toronto is okay with it and so is Calgary. However, Calgary does note on their website that most of the students that got accepted were taking 5 courses. Alberta requires just one year of full course load so there's another opportunity for you

 

Now, if you have your entire undergrad of less than full course load (4 courses), well, then, you're in my situation. It's not a nice situation UWO is completely and utterly out of the question. And Saskatchewan also said "no, sorry, you can't apply no matter how good you're EC and GPA are...but don't feel too bad because we don't accept that many oop anyways". I'm still panicking and looking for schools that I can apply for!

 

I'm not sure if they take into consideration the "tough courses adding to 14 credits". I noticed some schools look at "1 course = 1 course regardless of number of credits" while other schools look at "14 credits, that's almost 15, which is a full course load"...I tried looking for more info but couldn't quite get anything this.

[Guest Elaine I]

Each school has a different interpretation of what "full course load" means. UWO states that 5.0 courses for at least two years are required - no exceptions. U of T applies a weighting formula if you've always taken 5.0 courses, but you are still welcome to apply if you've taken less. NOMS doesn't care about the number of courses you've taken each year. McMaster doesn't seem to care about your courseload either. Queen's only cares that you have a full course load (minimum 3.5 courses) if your overall GPA doesn't meet their cut-off. I don't know about Ottawa.

 

Therefore, even if you don't have a minimum of 5.0 courses each year, you will still have a lot of options. Only the most "traditional" applicants are usually eligible for all schools. If you don't fall into that category (many of us don't), then research the different schools to find out where you are eligible to apply. While it would be nice to be competitive at all schools in Canada, you only really need to get in at one!

 

Elaine

[Guest Joker]

Phew! I feel a LOT better. Thanks for all of your replies. I hope they look at my official transcript and not just the OMSAS one, because it doesn't allow you to reflect the difference between a 3 credit and a 4 credit course, which in my opinion is pretty stupid. Well, hopefully everything will work out for the best.

 

Thanks again

[Guest aneliz]

UWO requires you to have two Sept-April years in which you took 5.0 full or equivalent courses that each meet the GPA cut.

 

The bad news is that there is absolutely NO flex room in UWO's rules....(ie 4.75 courses doesn't equal 5.0), so if you don't meet the requirement, you are completely out of the running. Period. Regardless of the difficulty of the courses, etc.

 

The good news is that it only has to be two years that meet this standard... and UWO doesn't look at the other years at all. So, if your first year is short a course, you can use your 2, 3 or 4th year (or even do a 5th year) to make up for it and UWO will not hold that against you. There are plenty of people that got into UWO having either not taken a full course load in one or more years or having completely failed (1.x GPA) in one or more years. As long as you have two years that meet the standard, you are okay.... they won't look at your other years at all.