Does Mac have the highest success % in 1st choice matches?

[Guest dopetown]

I heard the 1st choice match percentage is the highest among Mac graduates. Is this true? How do the other schools rank?

 

-dopetown

[Guest milkytooth]

Guess so. However Mac also has the highest proportion going to family med... So, it may not be a very reliable indicator.

[Guest strider2004]

You need to go to Carms.ca and look at the PGY-1 match report for each year. You see that Memorial actually has the highest 1st choice match success and Alberta has the lowest. However, there does seem to have some tie-in to the proportion who rank family medicine first. Mac has 30% of its gradautes ranking family first, higher than almost every other school. Does it play a role in match statistics - probably a littel bit. In the end, it probably doesn't matter TOO much where you go to school. The match statistics depend on your individual competitiveness for a program.

[Guest McMastergirl]

Plus, every year the stats are different.

 

After going through the match, I never ran into any prejudice or favoritism based on the school you attend. I imagine this is different in the States.

[Guest UWOMED2005]

This kind of reminds me of the argument that erupted a few years back on Delphi as to which med school was best based on indicators such as % matching to 1st choice, % unmatched, % matching to a particularly competitive specialty (ie Ophtho,) scores on the LMCCs, etc.

 

Trust me: they're ALL pretty useless indicators. Every year it's a new school at the top of the list, the schools are usually pretty close, and there's ALWAYS mitigating factors explaining the gaps in the scores (ie a school did poorly % wise in the match because all the students were going for competitive specialties, relative to the other schools.)

 

There is no real way to compare med schools in Canada effectively. As such, the med schools are looked on favourably against each other by most program directors. Some will have their bias for or against particular schools (based usually on positive/negative experiences with particular residents) but on the whole it ain't going to matter where you went.

 

That being said, of course "Western is Bestern"

[Guest moo]

After going through the match, I never ran into any prejudice or favoritism based on the school you attend. I imagine this is different in the States.

 

Actually, the school you go to doesn't really matter in the US either, believe it or not. Of course there is a certain WOW factor if you go to Harvard, or Hopkins and you MAY get a tiny advantage if you are gunning for the internal medicine spot at MGH or Hopkins or Cleveland Clinic, but all in all, the school you go to really has little bearing on where you ultimately end up. Board scores, LORs, and electives play a much bigger role.

[Guest McMastergirl]

Do you mean, they look at your USMLE scores to decide between residency candidates? If so, how much of a role do the scores play?

[Guest Ian Wong]

Actually, this is not entirely true. There is also a serious prestige factor involved in many residency programs if they are able to fill their residency roster with many Ivy grads. People who graduate from highly-rated medical schools like Harvard, Hopkins, Penn, UCSF, WashU, Duke, etc have a definite advantage in snagging interviews in competitive specialties.

 

All else being equal, and assuming all cut-offs are met, a Harvard student with a USMLE of 220 (close to average), will still more likely get an interview than a state-school student with a USMLE of 235 (a pretty strong score).

 

Obviously, this is a tough statement to prove since there's so many other factors at play, but this is my conclusion after talking to a large number of US applicants who have just recently gone through the match.

 

If you are coming from an Ivy med school, that alone will give you an edge over many other candidates. For everyone else, USMLE scores, particularly Step 1, are crucial. In highly competitive specialties, having AOA status (an American med school honour society not available at most/all Canadian med schools), regional/personal ties to the program, and previous research are also extremely important. Next after that would be high clinical grades and strong letters of reference.

 

One thing that's completely opposite between the Canadian and the US systems, is that in Canada, you are expected to do at least one, and often multiple away electives to make contacts and snag powerful reference letters. In the US, that seems to be a lot less necessary; often, people even advocate AGAINST doing any away electives because of the possibility that you might look bad as you fumble your way around a new hospital/system of clinical practice. I personally think that's a crazy attitude; if you want a spot at a particular program, I think it can only help you to do an away elective there and show them you're interested in the program, that you're fun to be around, and that you can work really hard.

 

The whole goal of the application process should be for your paper application to be strong enough to snag you a large number of interviews. If you have a ton of interviews, it's nearly impossible to go unmatched unless you have a really bad ranking strategy, or come off as simply repulsive during your interviews.

 

Ian

[Guest moo]

I partially agree with you Ian. I totally agree that as a Harvard grad (or Hopkins, Duke, etc.) you will have your choice of prestigious specialties and locales. However, beyond the top 10 schools on the US News rankings, I really don't think you have much of a disadvantage going to a lower-tier school.

 

While board scores are important, they are not the sole factor in the ranking of candidates. Prestigious programs like to see research, and a lot of my classmates have won various research fellowships (Howard Hughes, for example) and are taking a year off between second and third years to do research.

 

One more thing: Ivy does not necessarily mean prestigious. Dartmouth is Ivy, but it's medical school is not considered prestigious by any means (certainly not up there with the likes of Harvard, Hopkins, and Penn). Same thing with Brown. Duke, Stanford, Wash U, Michigan, Washington, UCSF all are not Ivy but are considered among the most prestigious medical schools in the US.