People from Ottawa area/bilingualism

[Guest aesir]

I know that Ottawa U favors people from the Ottawa area but do they just pull out all the Ottawa applications first or do they look at GPA first or how do they go about this? Does being bilingual make you more likely to get in?

I read the pdf file from the site regarding admissions but it seems to me it has changed.

It says to indicate if you are bilingual and that you will be tested on it at the interview but do they favor bilingual candidates at all? Do you think it would make up for having a less than stellar GPA (provided you had all the other qualifications that most med hopefulls have)? If you are entering into the english program, do they still see it as important?

Also, from what it looks like on the site the french proggie is just the english proggie with added french study groups (I think this has changed to a full fledged prog, but PLEASE correct me if I am wrong - www.medicine.uottawa.ca/a...ons.pdf)??

 

Confused on what order they look at everything....

[Guest diencephalon]

I dont know for sure what happens..

 

From these posts, I speculate that

 

1) If your a francophone, you have a defintite advantage (assuming your stats are competitive) of getting accepted into their francophone program

 

2) the gpa cutoff for francophones is a lot lower than non Ottawa in province apps ~3.6

 

3) All else being equal (biligual, in province non Ontario non francophone) its kinda of grey area...they dont EXPLICITLY give preference to these people, but they say something like we select applicants who "reflect our mission statement"

 

Mission statment reads " The Faculty of Medicine bears special responsibility to the communities of the Ottawa-Carleton region, to Franco-Ontarian and affiliated communities of northern and eastern Ontario. To fulfill these responsibilities, the Faculty of Medicine seeks to prepare a SUFFICIENT number of students to function professionally in both official languages.

[Guest V]

There is a francophone programme -- that is 40 students are in a french speaking medical program while 90 are in an english speaking program.

 

If you are from Ottawa, you have to meet lower cutoffs to get an interview. Outside the region, your cutoffs are much higher.

 

Once you are at the interview, everyone is treated equally. In other words, if you are going for the english program, you have equal chances to gain admission for another applicant going for the english program who speaks french. At this point, it is 100% interview (if tied, it goes to GPA).

[Guest UofCMeds2005]

One of my friends got into the french program at Ottawa and she has a 75 average and no ecs or research. From what she has told me, a lot less people apply to the french program therefore you have a better chance statistically to get to the interview stage and impress them...

 

As for me, in my interview (english one) I tried to work the I would like to improve my french because I think it is really important to be a bilingual doctor.... My interviewers, who were both doctors, sort of laughed because they don't speak any french and get by fine. So, it won't hurt you if you don't speak french, but if you do I think it is a real benefit...

[Guest Sil]

I agree with UofCMeds2005. Although I wrote I was bilingual in my application. They only asked me one question in French and only one of the doctors in the interview knew French, the other doctor and the student did not. So I don't really think it matters if you are bilingual. I know a few of the students currently in the English program (I applied to the English program) and none of the ones I know is bilingual.