Second Undergraduate Degrees from "Second-Tier" Universities

[Prospective_Doc]

I haven't seen many posts addressing the degree of credibility afforded to undergraduate degrees (in my case, a second undergraduate degree) from "second-tier" universities by Canadian, US, and international medical schools in the application process. Any comments and perspectives would be appreciated.

 

I am currently completing a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) degree from Thompson Rivers University ("TRU") (Kamloops, BC) which is an accredited university with the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. I have taken most of the courses through the university's online learning program as I have been practicing as a Chartered Accountant with specialization in income tax for the past 5 years (which made it impractical to take a second undergraduate degree at UBC, SFU, or UVIC which don't offer sufficient evening or distance course offerings). It appears that my GPA for the two years it will take me to complete the degree (was granted two years of credit for previous undergraduate courses & my professional accounting designation) will be essentially 4.0 (this includes re-completion of all of the necessary medical school pre-requisites: Chem., Biol., Org. Chem., and Bioc.). My first undergraduate degree was a BSC in Chemistry at UVIC with a cumulative GPA of approximately 3.2, following which I starting articling as a CA.

 

Setting aside for the moment all of the obvious questions (why retrain when you already have a successful, well-paying professional career, family considerations, financial issues - which are fortunately not a major concern for me), I would pose the following question which may be of some general interest:

 

Not considering UBC, which has accepted medical students every year in recent years from TRU, my specific question is to what degree other Canadian (noteably: Queens, UWO, and Ottawa), US, and International medical schools would consider a second undergraduate degree from a "second-tier" university like TRU (ie. to what degree they would discount for the fact that it is not from a major university - UBC, SFU, UVIC).

 

My rough calculations suggest that, following completion of my Bachelor of Commerce degree, my cumulative GPA will be approximately 3.5 and I have a MCAT score of 38R (13PS/13BS/12VR) to work with. My interest in pursuing medicine is to practise family medicine in a rural community.

 

Any thoughts or experiences on the above issue would be appreciated.

[simpy]

There's a student from TRU in my class at Queen's right now who seems to be getting on just great.

 

I also don't know if anyone will be able to definitively answer your question beyond speculation.

 

But to my knowledge, very few (if any) Canadian schools will care that your degree is from TRU versus a "major" university. American schools may care a little more. But I honestly wouldn't consider schools outside of Canada, because you've got a very good chance of getting into Canadian schools.

[Der Kaiser]

The schools I can think of that discriminate against online degrees in Canada are McGill and Ottawa. Ottawa you can use online courses for prereqs, but not for a gpa. McGill does not accept them for a degree or prereqs except in extenuating circumstances (or something to that effect). Keep in mind that some schools have a full course load requirement. I am unsure how things work at TRU, but if they are anything like Athabasca there is no indication on your transcript when you finished a course and therefore nothing to indicate you went from Sept. to Apr..