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Just a Thought About Prestige


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Soo I'm from the GTA area and I have pretty stereotypical Asian parents. And as the applications for med are rolling out I was talking to them about it.

 

I tell them I'm applying to all the Ontario med schools I'm qualified for and they're all like that's sweet but as soon as I tell them I'm applying to Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Calgary cause I'm also qualified there they give me this weird look and say "I don't want you going to bad schools".

 

So I do some random research and find out a couple things. According to Macleans' ranking, Calgary ranks above Western and Ottawa and Saskatchewan ranks above Ottawa too. I also run a search on the physician database and not surprisingly, every doctor my parents have visited or brought me to visit has graduated from UofT.

 

Despite me telling my parents that Canada's med schools aren't tiered like the States, they still don't really believe me, and this just brought up a thought in my mind. If say you're a family doctor, how much does med school prestige actually matter? If I can't convince my parents how are my patients going to be convinced?

 

What do you guys think?

 

Edit: I posted this later but I think I should say it here as well: I'm not letting my parents affect my decision and they will be understand my decisions no matter what happens. My point is that if my parents think this way won't other people think this way as well? I personally know that prestige doesn't matter, but what about other people?

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really.. Just tell them you want to apply to them as backup if you aren't able to convince them.

 

Why do you try to explain this to your parents in the first place?

 

My question isn't really about my parents though. Whatever happens my parents will understand. But my question is what about all those other people out there (and all the other Asian parents haha)? Will some patients not want to visit you cause you have an MD degree that doesn't say UofT hanging from your wall?

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My question isn't really about my parents though. Whatever happens my parents will understand. But my question is what about all those other people out there (and all the other Asian parents haha)? Will some patients not want to visit you cause you have an MD degree that doesn't say UofT hanging from your wall?

 

Where my doctor went to med school has absolutely no bearing on whether I choose to see them or not, and I can't think of a single person I know who factors it into their decision. I do know where my doctor went to med school (Dalhousie) as well as where my last one went (St Andrew's and Manchester) because they published the information either on their websites or through an introductory leaflet. My son's paediatrician is absolutely incredible, I have never met a doctor I like as much as her, and I have absolutely no idea where she went to school. It doesn't matter at all.

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My question isn't really about my parents though. Whatever happens my parents will understand. But my question is what about all those other people out there (and all the other Asian parents haha)? Will some patients not want to visit you cause you have an MD degree that doesn't say UofT hanging from your wall?

 

If you are a surgeon or an emergency doctor or a gastroenterologist with a big probe up someones arse I doubt they will be too worried about where your MD degree is from. I have seen quite a number of physicians in my day for broken this or that, sprained this or that from karate and honestly I have never looked at their MD degree on the wall. Maybe its just me but the average person doesnt care unless there is a suspicion of the doc not knowing what they are doing. If you are doing a good job people dont give a crap, its when you are doing a crappy job people are curious about where you graduated from.

 

Besides what is prestige anyway? some local human construct that we make up to make a certain group of people feel good about themselves. It is very artificial and not necessarily transportable .... go to Japan or India and there is probably a good chance that people even in the medical field have not heard of U of T or at least arent even one one hundredth as impressed as you are when they hear the word.

 

I remember 10 years ago when I would meet a medical student I used to thing they were so cool, almost deity like .... then I began to see that they were just like me, the prestige I gave them in my head wore off and I was no longer impressed. Now having been accepted to med school and starting in the next few months, guess what? I will be even less impressed by other med students ... they will be peers not gods ... lol.

 

Besides I feel that most of your learning to be an excellent clinician is in residency training not in medical school ... sure you learn some foundational and basic stuff in med school but I feel that the MD you will eventually become is more formed in residency training and the first few years of practice.

 

If you get into U of T I hope you enjoy prestige that you and some other people have constructed around U of T. I will be going to NOSM, the new med school on the block with an yet undeveloped reputation and dreaded 'Northern' location ... lol ... and I will be truly unimpressed by those U of T med students who frump around fluffing about their peacock tails. I truly hope that most U of T students are humble.

 

As for your parents ... cut the umbilical cord already, become an individual. Perhaps it is because I am in my 30s and have been indepedent from my parents for more than a decade but why do even care what they think ... ? I understand the whole Asian parent thing, just keep explaining what you have been about the medical school system ... some peole will never change their minds but oh well.

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Soo I'm from the GTA area and I have pretty stereotypical Asian parents. And as the applications for med are rolling out I was talking to them about it.

 

I tell them I'm applying to all the Ontario med schools I'm qualified for and they're all like that's sweet but as soon as I tell them I'm applying to Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Calgary cause I'm also qualified there they give me this weird look and say "I don't want you going to bad schools".

 

So I do some random research and find out a couple things. According to Macleans' ranking, Calgary ranks above Western and Ottawa and Saskatchewan ranks above Ottawa too. I also run a search on the physician database and not surprisingly, every doctor my parents have visited or brought me to visit has graduated from UofT.

 

Despite me telling my parents that Canada's med schools aren't tiered like the States, they still don't really believe me, and this just brought up a thought in my mind. If say you're a family doctor, how much does med school prestige actually matter? If I can't convince my parents how are my patients going to be convinced?

 

What do you guys think?

 

In Canada people are just happy to finally see a doc. In the States prestige matters because there it's all about marketing.

 

It's funny people care about med school prestige. Residency and fellowship quality is what matters.

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Thanks for the input guys, just want to reiterate that I'm not letting my parents affect my decision and they will be understand my decisions no matter what happens. My point is that if my parents think this way won't other people think this way as well? I personally know that prestige doesn't matter, but what about other people? But you guys presented some valid points.

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Thanks for the input guys, just want to reiterate that I'm not letting my parents affect my decision and they will be understand my decisions no matter what happens. My point is that if my parents think this way won't other people think this way as well? I personally know that prestige doesn't matter, but what about other people? But you guys presented some valid points.

 

Who cares what other people think. It's your life. You will be getting your MD from CANADA and that's what all that matters.

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I honestly think this is an interesting question, though. Is there any research that backs up what you all are saying that quantifies patient attitudes towards location of a physician's medical training in Canada? This is why we do research, guys. To define a problem, and to see what the results are, possibly how we can change the problem as well. If we can show there is a problem, rather than speculate what the attitudes and perceptions of a population we have not studied (i.e. patients), we are just guessing and possibly over-idealizing. :)

 

Don't get me wrong, my gut feeling tends to agree with what you all are saying. But, I think that the general public's opinion towards medical school prestige could change based on:

* previous medical experiences

* media coverage of certain medical schools

* opinions/attitude of loved ones re: med school prestige

 

Whether or not this is true, well, I hate to be over-critical but I would rather be about this. I like to question things and understand the full picture :)

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Thanks for the input guys, just want to reiterate that I'm not letting my parents affect my decision and they will be understand my decisions no matter what happens. My point is that if my parents think this way won't other people think this way as well? I personally know that prestige doesn't matter, but what about other people? But you guys presented some valid points.

 

Now if you were talking about U of T versus Caribean schools than that would be a different story altogether :D

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The way I see it, there is such a doctor shortage in most locations, at least in the field I am interested in, that people will probably just be glad to have a doctor. If some patients do care, they are welcome to go elsewhere - I doubt I will have trouble finding enough patients to keep myself afloat.

 

Personally I know where my doctors went to medical school but I don't really care about it. I know they are good docs because of how they have treated me and that's what matters.

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My current family doctor graduated from UofT and he has absolutely no bedside manners. 5 minutes max and you are out. Always looks like he's about to fall asleep listening to your concerns. Never takes effort in explaining things to me. :mad: I'm sure UofT train many wonderful physicians, just as every other Canadian med schools do. But there will always be a few bad ones out there regardless of which school they graduated from.

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My current family doctor graduated from UofT and he has absolutely no bedside manners. 5 minutes max and you are out. Always looks like he's about to fall asleep listening to your concerns. Never takes effort in explaining things to me. :mad: I'm sure UofT train many wonderful physicians, just as every other Canadian med schools do. But there will always be a few bad ones out there regardless of which school they graduated from.

 

agreed .........

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The prestige doesn't affect the quality of a doctor, nor does the future of a medical student. However, it does play a small factor for a very competitive speciality for residency at an urban area. If you want to become a family doctor, then it does not matter which med school you go to, since there is a shortage of GP.

I will attend the most "well-ranked" french med school this fall according to MacLeans...Nevertheless, I chose this school not because of its so-called prestige but because of its program's uniqueness. That being said, I think that all the French med schools are equally good and I won't hesitate for even a second to attend any of the three. Each med school has its strengths and weaknesses. If in the end you wind up not going to a med school in GTA, don't be discouraged, because you could always come back to GTA for residency.

 

My parents are asian too, they are crazy about prestige too, I could understand your feeling. But they understand that no matter which med school you study, you will become a good doctor in 4-5 years...and sometimes, the most prestigious med school forms certain doctors who are only book-smart but who are not 'patient-oriented'...

 

Go to whatever med school that accepts you and good luck!:P

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This personally has no weight for me WHATSOEVER!

 

I have visited quite a few different doctors throughout my lfie (both for myself and for my mom) and I can honestly tell you it hasnt made much of a difference. I actually dont know where ANY of them have gone to and dont really care. I know that our education system is set at a high standard so it really doesnt matter. My FM doctor? No idea! My former FM doctor? No idea. The sugreon who is planning on doing my mom's gallbladder removal on friday? (which even though is a standard procedure I still feel a bit nervous about) - I have NO idea where the surgeon studied. And I really dont care. As long as the government thinks they are eligible to practice then they are.

 

 

The only doctor I've ever met that I have noticed where they got their degree was a neuro specialist I saw 2 months ago with my mom and that was because we were sitting in the examination room for an hour and she had it plastered with her UBC MD and Credentials etc. (and I only remembered this cause I'm intersted in med - ask my mom and she wont remember!)

 

At the end of the day the MAJORITY of your patients wont care (sure some might but really they are the MINORITY) And even if they did....they kind of have no choice in the matter. With our health care system everything is about referrals. You cant just crack open the yellow pages and call up a neurologist and ask for an appointment. You have to go to your FM, get a refferal to a neurologist, and wait like 3-6 months before you get to see them. At this point you dont get to pbe picky or choosy and say 'no I dont want to see the Ottawa U MD specialist I want to see the U of T one'

 

Oh and another thought.... As a specialist does your school really matter? The neurologist we saw went to UBC medical school, Ottawa U residency, Toronto fellowship etc (she had like 6 things worth of education up)

and after all...everyone says you actually START TO LEARN medicine for real during residency.....

 

just my two cents :)

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Asian parents. Prestige prestige money money. I can relate to that, big time. Both of my parents were physicians and their biggest wish was that I study medicine. Except it was for all the bad reasons. Prestige, money, security, being 'better than others'. I found it especially repulsive and shallow. The worst thing was that they never mentioned anything about the love for the profession itself, probably because they didn't love it at all to begin with. Probably because they only saw it as a tool to obtain the 'good' lifestyle. In my case, what they did backfired wildly. I rebelled against the whole academic system. I left school at 19 and started drifting through life, finding odd jobs here and there, living by the day, partying, being a 'bum', being the ultimate black sheep of the family, the 'shame' of the family. Many years later, my mother passed away, God bless her. The last time I saw her, I could see how disappointed she was in me. Following her death, I fell into depression. In order to to understand what I was going through, I began to look into psychology books. It sparked in me the love for sciences and research, saving me from depression in the process. On a whim, I decided to enroll into university, in the psychology program, at age 32, simply because I wanted to know more about what I was reading. Finally, I was going to school for the right reasons. It reflected on my grades, which were stellar. During those years, my interest for the medical profession grew. I finished my psyc program, applied to med, and got in, at the ripe age of 36.

 

Sorry to tell you the story of my life, and for slightly hijacking the thread. But I just think it's a good example of the damage that parents can do when they communicate shallow values to their children. In my case, the damage came in the form of wasting a huge chunk of my life rebelling against the system. I realize that I turned it around in the end, but those years I will never get back. I don't want to blame my parents. Maybe it is I who reacted in the wrong way. Still, their approach contributed to it.

 

Parents, especially asian parents, don't do that to your children.

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The prestige doesn't affect the quality of a doctor, nor does the future of a medical student. However, it does play a small factor for a very competitive speciality for residency at an urban area.

 

No it doesn't.

 

Med school prestige matters in the US to a degree when it comes to residency placement. It does not in Canada. We have very few schools, all are extremely similar in the quality of their students and all are well known to admissions committees. Nobody is going to get a leg up in Canads based on some idea of Canadian med school prestige.

 

Almost all the rank list will be sorted out based on three factors: Work Ethic, Likeability/Fit and Knowledge.

 

I'm in an extremely competitive surgical subspecialty at one of the most popular programs in the country and I can tell you for certain we have never discussed "prestige" during ranking.

 

If you are planning to work in the states, prestige matters because it's all about marketing your business there. But nobody in the US really knows or cares about Canadian schools anyway.

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Sorry about my previous post;

 

Thank God that we are med students in Canada:) where we are fully equal for the CARMS no matter which med school one attends:p

 

 

 

 

No it doesn't.

 

Med school prestige matters in the US to a degree when it comes to residency placement. It does not in Canada. We have very few schools, all are extremely similar in the quality of there students and all are well known to admissions committees. Nobody is going to get a leg up in Canads based on some idea of Canadian med school prestige.

 

Almost all the rank list will be sorted out based on three factors: Work Ethic, Likeability/Fit and Knowledge.

 

I'm in an extremely competitive surgical subspecialty at one of the most popular programs in the country and I can tell you for certain we have never discussed "prestige" during ranking.

 

If you are planning to work in the states, prestige matters because it's all about marketing your business there. But nobody intheUS really knows or cares about Canadian schools anyway

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I can certainly relate to that...For the past 7 years of my life, my parents keep emphasing on the profession of physician, and how great it is for the wrong reasons: security and money....and even a brighter future for my offspring. My asian parents also emphasize on which med school is better than another in Quebec...bla bla bla.....:o

 

Nevertheless, I developed a passion for medicine during my voluteering at a hospital...Even if the salary of a physician goes down by 50% or even more, I would still choose this profession...because if you love what you are doing, then you are successful and happiness comes along with it.:)

 

 

 

 

 

Asian parents. Prestige prestige money money. I can relate to that, big time. Both of my parents were physicians and their biggest wish was that I study medicine. Except it was for all the bad reasons. Prestige, money, security, being 'better than others'. I found it especially repulsive and shallow. The worst thing was that they never mentioned anything about the love for the profession itself, probably because they didn't love it at all to begin with. Probably because they only saw it as a tool to obtain the 'good' lifestyle. In my case, what they did backfired wildly. I rebelled against the whole academic system. I left school at 19 and started drifting through life, finding odd jobs here and there, living by the day, partying, being a 'bum', being the ultimate black sheep of the family, the 'shame' of the family. Many years later, my mother passed away, God bless her. The last time I saw her, I could see how disappointed she was in me. Following her death, I fell into depression. In order to to understand what I was going through, I began to look into psychology books. It sparked in me the love for sciences and research, saving me from depression in the process. On a whim, I decided to enroll into university, in the psychology program, at age 32, simply because I wanted to know more about what I was reading. Finally, I was going to school for the right reasons. It reflected on my grades, which were stellar. During those years, my interest for the medical profession grew. I finished my psyc program, applied to med, and got in, at the ripe age of 36.

 

Sorry to tell you the story of my life, and for slightly hijacking the thread. But I just think it's a good example of the damage that parents can do when they communicate shallow values to their children. In my case, the damage came in the form of wasting a huge chunk of my life rebelling against the system. I realize that I turned it around in the end, but those years I will never get back. I don't want to blame my parents. Maybe it is I who reacted in the wrong way. Still, their approach contributed to it.

 

Parents, especially asian parents, don't do that to your children.

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Sorry about my previous post;

 

Thank God that we are med students in Canada:) where we are fully equal for the CARMS no matter which med school one attends:p

 

you do realize that if we grew up in the U.S., and went to US schools, we would've probably ended up in mid->high tier med schools in the US -- just because there are so many med schools in the U.S.

 

essentially in Canada, the best and luckiest students get into med school.

In the US, the best and luckiest students get into high tier med schools, others go to low tier ones.

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Does it matter if you went to a different U of T campus? Does that still count as the same level of prestige?

 

As Beef says, prestige is horse****. It's just about what the schools, and their various levels of funding, have done in terms of graduate-level research. Oh and maybe how old and castle-y the campus looks.

 

Completely inconsequential when it comes to undergrad.

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you do realize that if we grew up in the U.S., and went to US schools, we would've probably ended up in mid->high tier med schools in the US -- just because there are so many med schools in the U.S.

 

Don't get too far ahead of yourself - let's pull out some objective indicators here that have been shown to statistically correlate with medical school & licensing performance... like the MCAT. The average MCAT for the top 20 American medical schools is typically like a mid-30, like 34 - 36. The sum of the median section scores for U of T (the school that at least has the reputation for being most demanding on numbers) IIRC, is a 32... UBC is even lower than that. That 32 MCAT is not going to cut it for even an interview invite at a top 20 US school (regardless of your GPA) unless you are URM and/or have truly amazing non-marks related factors in your application.

 

I guess it's because Canada is such a small country and our education system is so not stratified - but most people in Canada really haven't seen/don't have a clue about what the most competitive/impressive pre-meds in North America (ie America) are like. Those people are the 1 in a 1000 that have jumped all the hoops to get into top high schools, Ivy League colleges, etc. . . Those are, for the most part, the kind of people who are going to interview and attend top American schools (I was at those interviews and saw the school lists myself). A lot of the successful med applicants that I know personally in Canada would NOT have made the cut to a top 20 American.

 

EDIT - by no means am I disparaging Canadian med students, not at all. I'm just pointing out the hubris/fallacy of thinking that the average Canadian premed is capable of going to a top American school.

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