Does it matter where you went to med school?

[Guest paperweight]

For residency matching, do universities normally give preference to students who studied at their medical school?

 

Or is residency matching purely merit-based?

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hello there,

 

Many centres state that no preference is given to students of any given school. However, one important component of matching is familiarty, and if you're keen on a specialty then chances are that you'll have some or more exposure to it at your home school relative to anywhere else and so, that program will be more familiar with you than with those applicants who didn't manage to make it out to the centre for an elective. So if you look at match statistics, there will often be a larger proportion of students accepted from the home school due to, in part, this familiarity factor.

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen

[Guest kosmo14]

Is it really the familiarity factor or is it just a function of a bigger proportion wanting to stay in thier home city for residency?

 

It really doesn't matter what school you went to in Canada, you can still get the residency of your choice over 90% of the time. My med school doesn't have many of the competitive residencies (ie/ plastics, ent, urology, emerg) yet every year we have people matching to each of these and in some cases taking the only spot a school has, even getting it over the person from that school.

 

Truth is if you play the game (CaRMS) well enough you can match to anything.

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hey there kosmo,

 

I absolutely agree with you that there are a good proportion of folks who do wish to stay in the same town as their med school alma mater. I noted in not so many words, however, that the familiarity factor was just one of a number of factors that help to determine where any given student matches.

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen