why WOULDN'T I get in??

[Guest leather cheerio]

I hope you did, otherwise this post won’t make any sense. In a way, each of the girls had “interviews” with that dork. It wasn’t the most deserving (i.e. Shannon) or the prettiest (i.e. Trista) candidate that won, but the one with the biggest rack! Did you see how politically correct he was trying to be, telling everyone how amazing they were etc – a Harvard grad, no less! Most interviews are like the dating game; you tell them how much you would love to go to their school (when you’re really hoping for somewhere else), and they tell you how much they love you (don’t believe it). I’m not trying to say that med school girls are hot (quite the contrary – this goes for the guys as well), but superficial things play a profound role. The interview is the only thing you can control at this point so don’t screw it up by asking stupid things like asking “where’s the bathroom?” before the interview begins etc. I’m not trying to say that med school people are worse than others in terms of morals, ethics, etc. – I’m just saying they’re no better. Just ask anyone at any job how they can’t believe that so and so got promoted when someone else deserved it etc. This happens in every career. It’s been said that the first 30 seconds of an interview determines whether you’re hired or not and the remainder of the interview is used to justify that decision. Good luck.

[Guest leather cheerio]

I hope you did, otherwise this post won’t make any sense. In a way, each of the girls had “interviews” with that dork. It wasn’t the most deserving (i.e. Shannon) or the prettiest (i.e. Trista) candidate that won, but the one with the biggest rack! Did you see how politically correct he was trying to be, telling everyone how amazing they were etc – a Harvard grad, no less! Most interviews are like the dating game; you tell them how much you would love to go to their school (when you’re really hoping for somewhere else), and they tell you how much they love you (don’t believe it). I’m not trying to say that med school girls are hot (quite the contrary – this goes for the guys as well), but superficial things play a profound role. The interview is the only thing you can control at this point so don’t screw it up by asking stupid things like asking “where’s the bathroom?” before the interview begins etc. I’m not trying to say that med school people are worse than others in terms of morals, ethics, etc. – I’m just saying they’re no better. Just ask anyone at any job how they can’t believe that so and so got promoted when someone else deserved it etc. This happens in every career. It’s been said that the first 30 seconds of an interview determines whether you’re hired or not and the remainder of the interview is used to justify that decision. Good luck.

[Guest NotoriousTIT]

Question:

If med school interview success was based on such superficial criteria as breast size, and physical attractiveness, don't you think that your evaluations of the attractiveness of your fellow classmates would be more favourable?

You insist that these factors are so important in the admission process, yet state that your classmates are not necessarily attractive. To me this is simply flawed reasoning.

This thread has really become superficial and silly...

[Guest tommygirl]

Hi L_C,

 

Yes, actually I DID watch The Bachelor-- <cringe> ...

 

.....And I do see the parrallel you are making (don't necessarily agree with it, mind you, but I do see it...)

 

My point: the TV show is a one time thing--- while for medicine, many people apply multiple times to multiple schools and are rejected or consistently wait-listed. This contradicts the the idea of a subjective admission as by the law of averages, (if this process is so abstract), you should be accepted somewhere.

 

Given this, I wanted to know: did you find that it was an upgrade in your O Chem mark or an MSc or better handling of the ethical qx at the interview that made the difference in the subsequent years. I was hoping we could all learn from students who spoke to the advisors after the first rejection, then made the change in their profile, and then got in...(ie. see post from MedWant2Be awhile back. Thanks for that, btw)

 

Actually, (sorry to belabour the analogy), the elimination on "The Bachelor" was based entirely on unilateral, entirely-subjective, criteria which were always changing. This is totally anti-thetical to medicine... so I am not sure if we can even make this comparision....

 

Anyway, good luck to you too, if you are applying.

[Guest ip man]

Dude if your tracking IP addresses, you should know that schools ie Universities go through the same IP pipe, so people posting from school computers may be different posters but at the same school and even on different computers in the school network. You seem to track everyone you little cop you!

 

Just a tip for you Sherlock!

[Guest UWOMED2005]

Hah - that's hilarious. The fact you know IP addresses are being blocked suggests you tried to log on with a computer whose IP was blocked. . . the fact you care enough to post suggests you are the person the block was intended against.

 

Actually it's not me tracking IP addresses. . . and I certainly don't have the ability to block them for the purposes of posting on this forum.

[Guest Tutor]

Call me stupid but what is that?

 

Tutor

[Guest Thewonderer]

In response to the original poster's question on what one needs to get accepted to med school...

 

Well some golden rules for UBC med

 

1) For all you smarties out there who are cranking A+ (90%+) and A (85%+) grades at UBC, U of A or U of whatever undergrad, do not continue to do so! Drop down to A- or B+ average because as you can see

www.med.ubc.ca/md/admissi.../page2.htm

Once you get 85+% average, you are more likely to be rejected than accepted. In fact, in 2000, they accepted 39% of people with A- average but once you are in the A+ group you had 1 in 7 and 3 in 10 chances of getting in during 2001 and 2000 application cycle. Moral of the story. If you get the talent to kick a$$ on exams, don't do it! Please hide your ability to be an exceptional, outstanding student. Who cares about the meager amount of money they award you for your academic prowess (i.e. regent's scholarship, renewal for OSI a few years back, or renewal for whatever MAJOR ACADEMIC scholarships your universities award you)! If your ultimate aim is UBC med, the money is not worth it! Drop a notch. After all, money is the root of all evil, non?

 

2) If you are male, you can only blame your parents (particularly when you were born in 1978 and were likely to apply to UBC med at the application cycle of 2000 when by far more females get in than males and yet fewer females than males applied). Sorry buddy.

www.med.ubc.ca/md/admissi.../page1.htm

 

3) You screwed up on your MCAT? No worry. Just laugh it off... for UBC med admission, the mean MCAT score per section between accepted and refused applicants is a mere 0.26 per section. In fact, the average MCAT score of refused applicants, when you add up all the sections, is right around 30.

www.med.ubc.ca/md/admissi.../page3.htm

 

4) And if during your interview, Dr. Bates told you that you are not fit to be a physician, then you are GOLDEN (per my earlierl post on another applicant's experience). Go home and sit tight. Start celebrating by drinking a couple cans of Labatt's or Molson's because 2-4 other out-of-province med schools' acceptance letters are coming right at your door soon.

 

sorry, could not resist

[Guest YongQ]

Thewonderer,

 

1. I'm sorry but if you are capable of having a life and cracking 90's, IMO it'd be a <!--EZCODE BOLD START--> really<!--EZCODE BOLD END--> stupid move to start doing BADLY just because of paranoia. You're making the assumption that the 90's and 80's applicants are on avg equal in every other respect, which they're obviously not, so how on Earth can you give that advice?

 

2. Have you examined the applicant distribution? And even if it were in your argument's favour, it could just be an anomaly of the applicant quality that year.

 

3. UBC uses MCAT as a flag.

 

4. Umm, this is a joke, right?

 

YONGQ

[Guest Tutor]

But doesn't blocking people out of discussions demote free speech and inhibit free speech. I made a post somewhere regarding stuff about Aboriginal health care that I learned through research and coursework. Does this mean I am blocked if someone (whoever is in charge.....Ian?) decides they dont like my findings.

 

 

There is something wrong with that I think, we should be able to discuss issues openly.....do you think so?

 

Tutor

[Guest RZ]

Tutor,

 

This is Ian's Forum. He created it, so as far as I'm concerned he can block whatever he wants!

 

RZ

[Guest BC guy]

To Thewonderer:

Although UBC's history of med admission stats do seem to support all the points you are making, surly you did not mean to advise dropping your GPA just to increase

the chance of admisson into UBC med. If one does that, he would seriously decrease his chances at other universities across the country (except for MAC of course). Your 4th point: I don't believe it!!! Did she really say that??

[Guest Carolyn]

Why would it increase your chances at Mac to decrease your GPA??? That is just as ridiculous as at any other school?

[Guest Hey]

I think thewonderer is just being sarcastic about dropping grades to get into med school. He is just making a point about the unpredictability and strange ways of UBC admissions. Who knows how they decide who gets accepted and who doesnt? The stats listed are definitely real if you check the websites...and these stats hold not only for this year, but for many years consistently before that.

 

As for thewonderer's fourth point, I don't know if it's true, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were.

 

So, please, let's get over the "dropping grades" comment as though he were seriously advising it. Just learn to appreciate the sarcasm.

[Guest Thewonderer]

Hi all,

Yes, my post was meant to be sarcastic. Sorry about that but I wrote in the end of my previous post that I simply could NOT resist (i.e. to take a jab at UBC med admissions)

I do not know how many years UBC med has done the admissions the way it has been shown on the links I provided but definitely it did for the years 2000 AND 2001. So my post was to jab at UBC med admissions for what I have seen and what my friends have experienced. I have just cut and paste the stats and will keep it for a while. Let's see how it is for years to come (i.e. 2002 and onward). My suspicion is that it will continue to show the skew I pointed out.

In response to YongQ, you must have gotten into UBC med and decided to go to U of T and that's why you are hold the opinion you have (or maybe I am wrong and if so, please let me know). But do you know how many people I know who are attending other med schools (either out-of-province or in the states) but did not get into UBC med? I pointed out in the other thread under UBC admissions.

Also to your points,

1) Well, I was semi-serious. But what if UBC med does use that as red-flag (i.e. too high GPA = nerds with no social life) without any justification. Well, I certainly see that coming from a lot of posters here! They all assume that being able to pull 90%+ means you must study all day and you must be socially inept. And why wouldn't UBC med admissions committee hold that prejudice? But what basis is there? 6/7 and 7/10 in application cycles 2000 and 2001 with 90%+ were rejected from UBC med. What? They were all socially inept and could not even pull off a couple 45 min interviews? None of them had talents in piano, violin or at least made the effort to join several if not many volunteer activitieis (I mean, were they so stupid not to even realize that for med school admissions, you need to have some volunteer activities and even better leadership position?)?

 

2) The anomaly of favoring females is two years in a row. Plus, it was so OBVIOUSLY favoring females in year 2000 that it was hard to believe that it was an anomaly (fine, I don't know stats too well but let's use some common sense here).

 

3) UBC uses MCAT as a flag. I agree. So your MCAT scores don't matter. 27 is going to get you in and can keep you out. Similarly, 38 can get you in and can keep you out. So what the heck do people need to do super on the MCAT for?

 

4) It was 2nd hand info (a friend of a friend). Sorry, that's the best I can do. Dr. Bates did not tell that to me face-to-face so unfortunately I cannot provide first-hand info.

 

I mean, I cannot believe that UBC med are turning away applicants that MULTIPLE out-of-province med schools found to be fine physicians. Damn, isn't it harder to get into out-of-province med schools anyway? Isn't it harder to get into Yale, Univ. of Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt, Wash U in St. Louis, Albert Einstein, U of Hawaii, Medical College of Wisconsin, George Washington Univ. than in-province med schools anyway (mind you, the acceptance rate at some of the above schools are 5% or lower while it is around 18% at UBC), just to name some schools my friends have gotten into and got rejected from UBC med. Ok, then you can argue that UBC med has their own set of criteria and seek to accept people who are well-rounded.... Fine, so all the above schools including UWO, U of Toronto, U of Alberta and other schools in the US that I mentioned above seek to admit not-so-well-rounded people whose aims to enroll in med schools is to make big bucks???

And in the end, who does UBC med accept? Many students who ONLY get into UBC med and did not get accepted to other out-of-province med schools and do not even have the GPA and MCAT scores and the leadership activities to even get interviews at top 10 schools in the US?

 

Acutally come to think of it, that strategy is a good one. After all, qualified people who get rejected by UBC med have the option of going to UWO, U of A, U of Toronto or Yale, Penn for med schools while other BC residents who could not get into other schools can attend UBC med. Doesn't that maximize the number of BC residents attending med school at one time, eh? (now, this is also sarcasm, by the way).

[Guest Thewonderer]

I decided to reply your last post on the UBC thread here.

 

I think that you are doing a wonderful job here but since you and I hold different opinions, I just have to put down some thoughts about your last post.

 

I agree with what Hello wrote there:

 

"I do not deny the quality of the UBC medical program. What I would know is that what if with the GPA and MCAT scores you had before your admittance to UBC, you got refused just like the student who started this post, what you would you feel?

 

Honestly if I had extremely high marks and have some decent EC's and got refused, then I will be very frustated especially seeing others getting ahead of me. I am just wondering what your reactions would be in this case. I am not trying to offend you but simply trying to sympathize the feeling those people had. I think they should deserve a spot, for they worked so hard to make those achievement."

 

I mean, say you did even better than you did (get 90%+) but were refused by UBC med and see the state that only 1/7 or 3/10 get in in two straight years, what would you feel? (ok, so maybe you did get 90%+ and 36 MCAT like two of my friends did at the end of their UBC undergrad years then my bad, forget what i just wrote).

 

UBC med certainly does well on the match but so did other med schools in Canada. Furthermore, I am not sure how many years Dr. Bates has been on the admission committee. But let's see a few years down the road if Dr. Bate's personally picked med students still do THAT well in the match.

 

I personally was told from my friend in Ian's year that PBL was not received that well, especially some felt that it was an attempt to cut down cost by asking students to learn the material by themselves. Couple that with the recent woes in UBC hospital, I don't think that UBC med is doing too hot right now.

 

Yes, UBC med is gracious enough to post their admissions data on the website. But they also publish the interview percentile and academic percentile to their rejectees and yet nobody so far can tell me how people with such high academic percentiles as 98 and 96, can do so poorly on interview to get themselves rejected (esp. after interviewing at several out-of-province or US med schools ahead of time. come on, I bet that 1/2 of the applicants from BC only apply to UBC med [i.e Ian and many others] and yet my friends still shake their legs by the terror of interview and get whipped by other applicants). Well, somebody did offer an explanation and that is academic percentile serves as red-flag and in fact, interview is a lot more important. Then why the heck does UBC med admissions office want to publish both ACADEMIC and interiview percentiles and give it to individual rejectees, and make them think that each weighs 50% in the final evaluation? I personally think that it is just a way for the UBC admissions to "appear" objective but in fact, things are set pretty much ahead of time on who is going to get in and who is not.

 

Ian, maybe we can do a survey of current UBC med students and see which one of them hold multiple acceptances from out-of-province med schools and from Yale and Penn.

[Guest strider2004]

Thewonderer,

 

You mentioned something that wasn't mentioned here before. Sometimes admissions committees actually do select student who would be best suited to their school and part of that depends on whether or not the student would go to their school. Here's a possible interview scenario:

 

Interviewer: Have you applied to other med schools?

Applicant: Yeah, I've applied to some ivy league schools and across Canada

Interviewer: HAve you interviewed at these schools?

Applicant: I interviewed at all of them

Interviewer: If you had a choice, which school would you go to?

Applicant: Probably Yale

 

Don't laugh, this does happen. I know of someone who was asked why they should be let into UBC this year and the reply was that if they didn't, they'd probably go to another med school somewhere else next year. Not a good answer. This person had a >90% average in UBC.

 

Med schools will select applicants who are at least a little bit sincere about going to their school. Why do you think they ask "why do you want to come to our school?" You'd better give a good reason or the interview panel will end the interview. It's a known fact that strong applicant who gets accepted to Harvard and JHU may get rejected by smaller state schools of Uof Wisconsin or whatever. Those schools KNOW that the applicant is strong and probably wouldn't go to their school. Why would they waste their time with an acceptance letter?

 

Your friend could have messed up the interview by saying the truth - that they would probably go somewhere else. Maybe you should find out.

[Guest BC guy]

Just want to clearify what I had meant re Mac, getting low GPAs will not decrease your chance of getting into Mac nor will decreasing your GPAs increases your chance of getting into Mac.

To Thewonderer: Interesting, perhaps the stats of declining GPAs re UBC med admissions has something to do with personnel, so my question to you is how long has this been going on, and did the change coincide with a change of personnel. There might lie the answer to your "wondering".

[Guest JD]

Didn't Dr. Bates become head of admissions only 2 or 3 years ago? I know that there was a huge jump in the percentage of females accepted right after that, but I don't know if their weird selection process still existed before she was in charge.

[Guest BrainDrain]

From my personal experience of applying to the US, some of the so-called "lesser" schools will not accept an applicant with high GPA, MCATs, and good EC's based on the rationale that this applicant will surely get acceptances to "better" schools and thus turn down the acceptance of the lesser school. You have to think that the adcoms at these schools would be unwise to accept all the top applicants, and then find out in June that all the acceptance letters sent out were turned down leaving them with only a few months to fill up over 100 seats. In the meanwhile, other schools will be snatching up the other applicants leaving them with nothing. To make an analogy, this is sort of like asking someone out for the prom...if you waste all your time asking all the beautiful/popular girls out, once you get turned down, all the girls who you should have been asking out have all been taken:)

 

There is no other way to explain how I got accepted to some of the top schools in the US but not to my "safety" schools. Looking back at all the interviews at my "safety" schools, one common question was "where else have you applied?" or "with your marks, why are you applying here?" I honestly told them that I also applied to Harvard, Hopkins, Duke, etc. Given the circumstances, this is probably the wrong answer but it is the TRUTH.

 

After all was said and done, I was wait-listed at my safety schools. I was also given the impression that if I REALLY wanted to go to these schools, I should send the Dean a letter of intent to express my desire to go to that particular school.

 

Thewonderer, Perhaps this is the case at UBC where they feel that your friends are too good for UBC.

[Guest The Beaver]

Brain Drain

 

Interesting theory ! Perhaps it holds some truth.

 

I was wondering why you selected to study in the US. Is it your backup plan provided you do not receive acceptance in Canada? Just curious if you had info regarding financing your degree, are you (would you) apply for loans, lottery he he, etc.

 

 

Thank you

 

the beav

[Guest JD]

Interesting point BrainDrain, but that shouldn't be too common. Not everyone in Canada with amazing stats, extracurrics, etc. wants to go to the States. Also, even if someone had said they applied to Duke, Hopkins, or whatever, UBC probably knows that they still have a chance of retaining this applicant just because of the huge disparity in tutition costs. In terms of "better" schools in Canada, I don't think there really are any. It's probably as good as any other Canadian school. Hell, I'd go there over my "home" schools (Toronto, Queen's, etc.) if I actually had a chance of getting in (i.e. they took more than 5 OOPs), just because it's so much cheaper (for now, anyway) and Vancouver sounds like such a cool place to be.

[Guest BrainDrain]

the Beav,

 

Actually, if you asked me two years ago, I'd say I'd definitely want to go to UofT or Ottawa.

I applied after 3rd year with GPA 4.0, MCAT 30, and good EC's and got rejected.

I applied again after 4th year with GPA 4.0, MCAT 36 and excellent EC's + research and got rejected again [but this time UofT didn't even bother giving me an interview!...theWonderer: maybe I should have dropped my GPA:) ]

 

After that I said F*** this sh*t...I'm getting the hell out of here! Hence, the nickname. I'm going to the UofT May interview in two weeks to tell them to shove it.

[Guest The beaver]

That is very bizarre, you seem like an outstanding candidate. Did you consider some of the other schools ie Western or Queens? Who knows braindrain, you may just get accepted this time around at UofT (unless of course you are heading there soley to tell them where to go he he)

 

Just out of curiosity how will you be paying to go to the US. Do you have info regarding financing your education in the US (loans etc)

 

Good luck to you, I'm sure the saying "the creme always rises to the top" will hold true in your case

 

The beav

[Guest YongQ]

BrainDrain,

 

I'm sorry you got the shaft twice from U of T, it looks like you definitely have the intellectual raw power to breeze through the curriculum... however, have you ever thought maybe it's a non-academic thing you got rejected for? Just for example, if I had perfect stats like yours but wrote a total crap essay, the student marking it could just give me a zero and I'd thus have zero chance of interviewing. Or maybe it's just bad luck.

 

YONGQ