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I just spoke with a program director for a competitive specialty, and obviously you can't put emphasis on an H/P/F system, especially since most school are just P/F. Instead, they require you to send in your undergrad transcripts, and they weight those in accordingly.

 

Makes me wish I didn't slack that last semester when I knew I would get in med :rolleyes:

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I just spoke with a program director for a competitive specialty, and obviously you can't put emphasis on an H/P/F system, especially since most school are just P/F. Instead, they require you to send in your undergrad transcripts, and they weight those in accordingly.

 

Makes me wish I didn't slack that last semester when I knew I would get in med :rolleyes:

 

Are you serious? Is this a common trend?

 

Do you mind giving more details?

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Are you serious? Is this a common trend?

 

Do you mind giving more details?

 

I've heard the same thing from (what I assume to be) a different PD. The rationale is that since most schools have P/F, they need SOME way to differentiate all of the excellent candidates... The ugrad transcript is relatively objective and quantitative and so they can use it to help differentiate candidates. My understanding is that this only happens in a few really competitive programs...

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do they make the undergrad request separately from the carms application?

 

Also....my original questions was more referring to is it important to get many H's rather than P's in clerkship.....Is a candidate at a significant disadvantage for getting mostly P's in a HPF system for clerkship?

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My impression has been that the written comments that one receives in clerkship evaluations are given more weight, since there is a lot of numerical variability in how preceptors choose to grade students. You can check if a program requests undergraduate transcripts under each program description in the CaRMS directory.

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I agree with the above; very few programs require undergraduate transcripts. However, if you do have stellar undergraduate marks, there is no harm appending your UG transcript as an "extra document" to your CaRMS application. (Unless, of course, the program specifically instructs you *not* to include any extra documents!) If this transcript is appended, there is a chance that the selection committee members will take a quick glance and be impressed!

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You also report any awards you have won during medical school. Many schools have some in-course awards for those with high grades in med school, so this would prove great performance.

 

Undergrad transcripts are very likely to show fabulous performance by most premeds in Canada these days, so while likely used, the added info they would provide is still not likely all that helpful in separating applicants imo. There are some programs who do not even request them.

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That's right.

 

Programs need to differentiate all the excellent candidates academically into tiers - which will help with rank list ordering.

 

Those with lots of H's will certainly jump out.

 

Those from schools without H's need to find other ways to stand out, such as academic awards (as mentioned above), good clerkship evals that "exceeds expectation" etc.

 

Grade is only one factor in CaRMS, and how much it weighs will be program specific.

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Are you serious? Is this a common trend?

 

Do you mind giving more details?

 

This will vary on program and discipline. I applied to 12 programs this year and only 2 requested an undergrad transcript. Only one school asked me wtf happened my first few years of undergrad ;)

 

I don't think it really matters ultimately.

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