Academies?

[Guest JD]

As I understand it, there are three different "academies" for U of T med students. Can someone tell me a bit more about how this system works?

[Guest YongQ]

Hi!

 

U of T has many teaching hospitals (SMH, TGH, SBH, TWH, MSH...), so it is more resource-efficient to split the class up into three groups and have all hospital-based learning (case-based learning sessions, clinical skills, some community health) conducted at your assigned hospital. This split is established at random in September of first year, and is kept until the end of second year, when one can switch academies (but one has no priority over his/her previous academy in this transition to clerkship, only priority of leaving his/her previous academy). The academies are also used to divide the class into seminar, tutorial, and histology groups. For example, we have 2 histology classes. One is composed of mainly Fitzgerald and Peters-Boyd Academies, and the other is mainly Wightman-Berris Academy (the largest academy).

 

The net effect is that you will see the same 50-70 people much more often than the rest of the class, for the first two years. In third and fourth years, you barely see any people from your class unless they are of the ~5 people that were assigned to your rotation.