Guest DalHopeful Posted February 3, 2003 Report Share Posted February 3, 2003 I haven't seen a posting in several days, so I thought I would start a new thread. I was wondering about the residency matching. I know there have been many post about this, but I was specifically wondering about the interviews. Here is what I dont understand. Say, for example, I wanted to specialize in ophthalmology (highly competitive I understand :\ ) and I would like to go to Ottawa. Do I just interview there? Or say I also like UBC and DAL, do I have interviews at all three places? If that is the case, I noticed that the interviews are held during the same week?? How can you get to three places in one week without spending too much $$$.. And say that I am not matched to any of those places and my back up is Cardiology, do I interview before or after I get turned down by the other three places? What about worst case scenario and I don't get matched in either my first choice or my back up?? **Deep breath**.... Step one is getting in to med school. :rollin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ian Wong Posted February 3, 2003 Report Share Posted February 3, 2003 I'm going to move this out of the Dalhousie forum into the CaRMS forum. You've pretty much summarized the application process; applying for residency is very similar to applying for medical school. Most/all residency applications are handled via CaRMS, the centralized agency which is analogous to OMSAS, except that CaRMS works across Canada, for all specialties. In Med 4, you send your application for one or more specialties to CaRMS, and inform CaRMS of which cities those applications should go to. CaRMS will forward your Ophthalmology applications to as many programs as you indicate; likewise, they will send your application to Internal Medicine (you must complete 3 years of Internal Medicine residency before you can apply for a Cardiology fellowship) to as many programs as you want. The Ophthalmology and Internal Medicine programs will then evaluate your application, and decide whether to interview you. If they invite you for interviews, they will be scheduled in January of Med 4, and yes, you will be flying across Canada and spending whopping amounts of money. It would not be unusual for a fourth year med student to do 10+ interviews in under 3 weeks, each in a different city. It would also not be unusual for you to interview in Toronto on Monday in Ophthalmology, fly to Vancouver to interview in Internal Medicine on Tuesday, and fly back to Toronto on Wednesday to interview in Internal Medicine! Such is life during CaRMS season. You then need to decide which specialty and which cities you will "rank" in order of preference, and each Ophthalmology and Internal Medicine program will similarly rank which candidates they'd like in order of preference. These lists are then forwarded to CaRMS, where a computer program is used to generate the best fitting "match" of each medical student with a specialty program in a specific city. All of these results are then announced on Match Day, which for this year is February 27. On that day, every final year medical student in Canada will discover which specialty, and in which city he/she will be training in during residency. Ian UBC, Med 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Biochem10 Posted February 3, 2003 Report Share Posted February 3, 2003 Ian, quick question: is there any financial help from either your med school or the interviewing school to help pay for all these flights all over the country?? Just curious... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest PhantomPhoenix Posted February 3, 2003 Report Share Posted February 3, 2003 Is it normal for many med students to apply for so many residency programs? In addition, is it normal for meds to apply to programs spread out across the nation.....I would think they would tend to apply within their province. When u rank ur choices....do u rank each one individually or by specialty... for example..someone might want to do optho but if the individual doesn't get in at a specific school they want ..they might opt for their second choice at a school closer to home....instead of doing optho in on the other side of the country. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest UWOMED2005 Posted February 3, 2003 Report Share Posted February 3, 2003 As far as I know, there is no subsidization whatsoever. It really would be impossible for a school like UBC or Western to fund the travel requirements of their students applying for residency positions. You just have to foot the bill the way you've probably been funding everything else. . . by your line of credit. It sucks, but you should be able to pay it back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest therealcrackers Posted February 3, 2003 Report Share Posted February 3, 2003 In our brochures outlining the financial implications of medicine, it was suggested to budget $2500 to $3000 for January of 4th year, for air travel and accomodation to interviews for CaRMS. Some of the programs will have their interviews in a common site----Toronto hosted the ENT interviews for Western, Queen's, and U of T, as an example; but given that there are 8-16 schools that will offer any given program from Vancouver to St. John's, the logistics of funding interview trips for any or all students are nightmarish. That being said---it should be an interesting, stressful and enlightening experience. 2 years to go... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ian Wong Posted February 4, 2003 Report Share Posted February 4, 2003 You can rank however you want. Most people have a specialty in mind that they'd rather match to first, and if they are mobile (no kids, no spouse, no family or other obligations to stay in a particular city), may well end up going to another city/province to get a residency in that particular specialty. This is ranking by specialty. Other people will rank by city, so if someone really wanted to stay in say Vancouver, or otherwise by the nature of their connections to Vancouver, couldn't really leave it, then they might apply to Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, Ophthalmology, and Pediatrics, all in Vancouver, and then let the Match decide which of these will be their specialty. This is ranking by geography. Then there's all sorts of combinations of these two, where (going back to the original example) where maybe your first choice was Ophthalmology, but perhaps you'd rather do Internal Medicine in Toronto versus doing Ophthalmology in Iqaluit, so you'd rank all the other Ophthalmology programs as your top choices, then Internal Medicine in Toronto, then Ophthalmology in Iqaluit, and finally the remainder of your Internal Medicine programs. There's even something called the Couples Match where two senior med students can rank programs together, so either both will end up in the same city, or else neither will, which can work out very well for both partners if each is a strong applicant, but can be really tough if one partner isn't so strong, or else is applying for a really competitive specialty, as it puts the pressure on the other partner to make sure that he/she gets in in whichever city the first person is accepted to. Lots of permutations in CaRMS, and probably something best not worried about until later! Ian UBC, Med 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Carolyn Posted February 6, 2003 Report Share Posted February 6, 2003 Re $$ - Yes it is expensive.... At Mac - the bursary system adds that in and most people in 3rd year get a higher bursary as a result (avg >7000 for all three years - I think many get over 9000 in 3rd year) This year I interviewed most major cities in Canada --- the emerg programme directors coordinate it so that you fly either east to west or west to east and do one interview per day... makes life a lot easier. With discount airlines and couches to stay at in almost all cities I definitely spent under $1500 for all expenses -- including food taxis etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.