ease of scheduling majority of electives at Toronto during 4th year

[JPJ]

Having browsed through these forums and after reviewing the curriculums of my top choices, I think I am strongly leaning towards choosing UWO. The superb clerkship structure and moderately rigorous pre-clerkship seem very appealing. My long term goal is to match to a Toronto residency (mostly for personal reasons-family), and looking at the CaRMS stats, a reasonable number of UWO grads have matched to Toronto in the past. It would be very helpful if current UWO meds could shed light on how feasible it is to schedule the majority of electives during your 4th year elective block at one University, especially toronto. I know that it is important only to complete electives in the specific program you want to match to, and therefore doing a majority of electives at one centre is not necessary. But I want to keep my options open with regards to the number of toronto programs I want to apply to, hence my question about scheduling the majority of electives there. It would also be great to hear from those who have matched to toronto residencies in the past (e.g. ploughboy). Thanks.

[ploughboy]

Hey,

 

If you're dead-set on matching to U of T, it would probably be a good idea to start building connections early. Spending part of one or both of your summers after first/second year in a clinical or research placement in Toronto would likely serve you well.

 

UWO's clerkship electives run from September to December of 4th year. You should try and do your U of T electives early during the elective period, so that you can get letters of reference. Some people would suggest that your best strategy for 4th year would be to do a "warm-up" elective in your chosen specialty early in September at a school other than U of T, then do your U of T electives starting in mid-Sept. That's great in theory, but U of T has to accomodate literally hundreds of elective students so you can't always get what you want (but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need)

 

 

As an away student, you can do up to 8 weeks of electives at U ofT. Since you get 16 weeks of electives at UWO, you could potentially spend half of your elective time in Toronto. It may not seem like it right now, but 8 weeks is a *long* time when it comes to electives. Presumably by 3rd/4th year you will have some inkling of what kind of physician you want to be, so you might decide to do fewer than 8 weeks in Toronto in order to do additional electives in your chosen specialty at Mac and UWO (for backup reasons) or at other schools (to demonstrate your committment to your chosen specialty).

 

There are also rules about how many weeks of elective time you can spend in a given specialty, but you don't need to worry about that right now.

 

 

Here is the link to the U of T elective website, for reference:http://admin.med.utoronto.ca/utme/visiting/index.cfm

 

There's some other things specific to my situation and my match to TO that I'd rather share by private message. Check your inbox...

 

Cheers,

 

pb

[JPJ]

Hey,

 

If you're dead-set on matching to U of T, it would probably be a good idea to start building connections early. Spending part of one or both of your summers after first/second year in a clinical or research placement in Toronto would likely serve you well.

 

UWO's clerkship electives run from September to December of 4th year. You should try and do your U of T electives early during the elective period, so that you can get letters of reference. Some people would suggest that your best strategy for 4th year would be to do a "warm-up" elective in your chosen specialty early in September at a school other than U of T, then do your U of T electives starting in mid-Sept. That's great in theory, but U of T has to accomodate literally hundreds of elective students so you can't always get what you want (but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need)

 

 

As an away student, you can do up to 8 weeks of electives at U ofT. Since you get 16 weeks of electives at UWO, you could potentially spend half of your elective time in Toronto. It may not seem like it right now, but 8 weeks is a *long* time when it comes to electives. Presumably by 3rd/4th year you will have some inkling of what kind of physician you want to be, so you might decide to do fewer than 8 weeks in Toronto in order to do additional electives in your chosen specialty at Mac and UWO (for backup reasons) or at other schools (to demonstrate your committment to your chosen specialty).

 

There are also rules about how many weeks of elective time you can spend in a given specialty, but you don't need to worry about that right now.

 

 

Here is the link to the U of T elective website, for reference:http://admin.med.utoronto.ca/utme/visiting/index.cfm

 

There's some other things specific to my situation and my match to TO that I'd rather share by private message. Check your inbox...

 

Cheers,

 

pb

 

Thanks for the awesome post pb! Please check your inbox.