How to Medical Schools view Athabasca U Courses?

[uoftpremed]

Hey everyone,

 

I've emailed the schools to find out directly, but was wondering if anyone has had experience with this before:

 

I took a full course-load this year, but 1.0 (2 half credit courses) of the 5.0 credits I got this year were taken at Athabasca University. How are these looked upon as they are distance ed courses and not courses I took " in a normal fashion" at UofT? Are they acceptable for satisfying the full course load requirement? Schools I am referring to include (Dal, Western, Calgary...)

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance for reading this. I will post the information when they email me back... if they ever doo..... lol it takes forever to get responses from them.

 

This is what Dal says: Transfer credits from another institution do not constitute sufficient reason for a reduced course load prior to applying. Instead, applicants are encouraged to explore a broader range of course work in areas their degree program may not have enabled. I don't really understand what they mean by this/ if this is even applicable to my question or referring to something else entirely.

[jojoluvsu2]

Hey everyone,

 

This is what Dal says: Transfer credits from another institution do not constitute sufficient reason for a reduced course load prior to applying. Instead, applicants are encouraged to explore a broader range of course work in areas their degree program may not have enabled. I don't really understand what they mean by this/ if this is even applicable to my question or referring to something else entirely.

 

My thoughts on this are that you can't take a transfer credit, meaning you did the work prior and are now receiving credit for it, and have that be a part of a full-time semester. So you couldn't do 4FCEs and get 1FCE transferred in if you did that 1 FCE prior to the semester. If you do 4FCEs at one school and at the same time 1 FCE elsewhere that is still considered a full semester. When I emailed and asked about athabasca courses they told me that they were fine and just to let them know that they are to be included in the semester's courses.

 

I think Ottawa is the only school that says they won't accept courses taken by distance education right in their admissions book.

[uoftpremed]

That makes sense; thank-you for clarifying! When they tell you to ask that those courses be included in the full-time year, do they ask for proof of when they were started/finished? Because I started mine April 1st!

[jerkstore]

Who needs med school if you're an Athabasca graduate?

[jojoluvsu2]

On Athabasca's transcripts only the start date is listed. You could ask the different schools if they require proof of date of completion, but there isn't an official way to get this.

[uoftpremed]

That's awesome thanks for your help