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What's your first choice med school?


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Hey guys,

 

I just wanted to get an idea of what other med school people had interviews at and what they are ranking as their number one choice (and why)? I remember speaking to a lot of people on my interview day and many of them had numerous interviews... so I'm just curious to see what everyone's thoughts are.

 

Good luck to everyone *patiently* waiting to hear back on May 15th!

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Can you add a poll to this? Might be interesting to see the results that way - some people who don't want to post will at least click and vote.

 

Western is my first choice I think. I'd personally be more comfortable in a lecture based setting, the four year curriculum gives me time to figure out what I want to do (which I have no idea of right now), and London was a beautiful town.

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well, mac is definitely the odd one out in a lot of areas due to its progressive nature.

 

PBL (now adopted by many), very little lecture/structure, condensed learning, satellite campuses and even just from the way they do their invites: minimal impact of grades/mcat scores, casper, sending letters by mail, making your MMI date unchangeable.

 

they're different. i havent decided whether it's different in a good way or not (all things considered), but they definitely structure their teaching through evidence-based methods which is a step in the right direction in my opinion :cool:

 

however.. mac students have somewhat of a bad rep among doctor/nurses

do they? why is this?

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don't hate on me, I didn't come up this myself! my friend's mom is a head nurse, so I heard this from her. apparently they're a little wary of mac students. keep in mind this isn't first hand knowledge though.. but because of the 3year and PBL, I guess, the mac students know less. which they themsleves did admit at the interview day.

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don't hate on me, I didn't come up this myself! my friend's mom is a head nurse, so I heard this from her. apparently they're a little wary of mac students. keep in mind this isn't first hand knowledge though.. but because of the 3year and PBL, I guess, the mac students know less. which they themsleves did admit at the interview day.

 

hmmm that makes sense. a little scary to know they admit that!!!

i guess a lot of the learning is up to you to decide what's important, so if you're vigilant enough you would probably get a lot more out of the program than if you're lazy

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don't hate on me, I didn't come up this myself! my friend's mom is a head nurse, so I heard this from her. apparently they're a little wary of mac students. keep in mind this isn't first hand knowledge though.. but because of the 3year and PBL, I guess, the mac students know less. which they themsleves did admit at the interview day.

I actually heard the exact same thing from a friend whose mom works at a hospital affiliated with one of the satellite campuses. But like sparxx said, I'm sure it evens out fairly quickly. Plus at Mac you kind of direct your own learning, so I'm sure some people come out knowing more than most med students at other schools. I actually think they mentioned at my interview that Mac students often improve faster than others during residency because they are used to the self-directed learning thing.

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I actually heard the exact same thing from a friend whose mom works at a hospital affiliated with one of the satellite campuses. But like sparxx said, I'm sure it evens out fairly quickly. Plus at Mac you kind of direct your own learning, so I'm sure some people come out knowing more than most med students at other schools. I actually think they mentioned at my interview that Mac students often improve faster than others during residency because they are used to the self-directed learning thing.

they were pretty vague about it. they didn't exactly say how much mac grads improve.. in my mind I wondered, if the improvement was to equal UofT levels?

 

and even if you yourself are a hardworker, know all the stuff, you may still get hurt by the reputation thing

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they were pretty vague about it. they didn't exactly say how much mac grads improve.. in my mind I wondered, if the improvement was to equal UofT levels?

 

and even if you yourself are a hardworker, know all the stuff, you may still get hurt by the reputation thing

 

My doctor was telling me I should go to mac because it's 'better'. She wouldn't expand on it though other than saying that they give you better clinical training. I don't know where everyone's biases come from or if they actually exist.

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I think we should keep in mind that residents, clinicians, nurses, etc. are all still individual people with individual biases. I'm sure there are many health professionals who are biased against McMaster students (as I'm sure they're also biased towards or against other med schools) and vice-versa as well.

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Yeah I agree with Rext.

To give you another perspective, I actually had a talk with my supervisor, who is a neurosurgeon, about mac med. She mentioned that it really depends on the individual (surprise, eh lol). In fact, there have been residents from mac med, who successfully completed their neurosurgery residency (and their program is quite academic).

Due to "bad" reputation (not sure if that is the right word) already established among some health professionals, a student from mac may need to work harder to be recognized as competent, but I think it is ultimately up to the individual whether to become competent or incompetent.

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Yeah I agree with Rext.

To give you another perspective, I actually had a talk with my supervisor, who is a neurosurgeon, about mac med. She mentioned that it really depends on the individual (surprise, eh lol). In fact, there have been residents from mac med, who successfully completed their neurosurgery residency (and their program is quite academic).

Due to "bad" reputation (not sure if that is the right word) already established among some health professionals, a student from mac may need to work harder to be recognized as competent, but I think it is ultimately up to the individual whether to become competent or incompetent.

 

lol you talking about Dr. Singh?

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I think we should keep in mind that residents, clinicians, nurses, etc. are all still individual people with individual biases. I'm sure there are many health professionals who are biased against McMaster students (as I'm sure they're also biased towards or against other med schools) and vice-versa as well.

Oh for sure. And I don't think there is a medical school in Canada with a "bad" reputation, Mac just gets scrutinized sometimes cause they do things a bit differently (which is a good thing in some cases). A fantastic school though, I have only heard good things from the students :)

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