Extracurricular activities/socio-economic status/character

[Guest monkey]

Hello there,

 

This is just a thought that I had following another thread. Someone pointed out that for Law school, extracurricular activities does not necessarily play as much of a role in the the admission process. As previously stated, the opportunity to participate in these activities is often costly.

 

I don't think I would be able to spend my extra time rock-climbing, snowboarding, traveling, volunteering etc... if I were not so fortunate to have enough money to support my daily needs.

 

I have heard that UBC has adopted a point system in evaluating extracurricular activities. I must admit that sometimes have trouble understanding this. No doubt that extracurricular activities builds valuable life skills. However, I think that life...and the unplanned experiences also offer many life skills. Do medical schools integrate these factors into their admission process to, as was previously stated, train physicians that are a good representation of Canada's population at large? Should more stress be put on the essay as opposed to the CV? Should we more be focussing on character in the non-academic portion of the admissions process?

 

I was particularily impressed with Alberta's essay topic " Describe how an event, experience, issue has had a significant impact on your life." It seems this leaves room for very important character and perspective building experiences...that may not necessarily be extracurricular activities.

 

Does anyone have thoughts on this?

[Guest Ian Wong]

I think you still have the flexibility to discuss the issues that you've raised in the UBC application, at least as I remember it. I think every med school out there would be interested to hear about your experiences, whatever they may be, as long as they help demostrate the personal characteristics that would make you a strong addition to their class.

 

You're absolutely correct that professional schools tend to sieve out to a small fraction of the population. There's a fairly tiny percentage of the average Canadian 20-30 year old age group that will attend university for 4+ years, graduate with high academic and extracurricular standing, and then have the motivational drive and financial support to spend another 3/4 years in medical school, and anywhere from 2-6+ years in residency.

 

By the very definition of the cost and length of training necessary to become a physician, you've already worked your way down to a small subset of the the Canadian population at large.

 

You're quite right that having the financial means enables one to take summers off and travel/volunteer, and no doubt that a person who doesn't need to work throughout university has more time to devote to research/extra-currics that will then polish the application. When you get to med school, there will probably be a fairly large number of people in your class who have physician, or other professional standing parents. I do believe that having strong financial backing definitely removes one of the large number of impediments to becoming a doctor, that being the cost and time devoted to having enough money to support oneself.

 

There's a lot of discussion on the medical school level about how high tuition prices in Canada and especially Ontario are leading to an even more focussed group of medical school applicants, generally those with high monetary stability.

 

Ian

UBC, Med 3