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U of T Interview Discussion 2014


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Per facebook, "At present, all interview spaces are filled. It is possible that a few spots may open up on either day, as in past cycles their have been cancellations very close to the final interview weekend. Final notification to the remaining applicants will be on Friday, March 28th." :(

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Finally Rejected.

 

Seriously though, why is it taking them almost 5 months to assess all of the files. I don't care how "holistic" the process is, there is absolutely no excuse for needing to take this long to send out INVITES for the interview. Let me put it into perspective. McMaster not only needs to mark the CASPER, but they usually have 1500 more applicants to go through and they are able to do this at half the time it takes U of T to get through their applications. Taking almost half the year to figure out who will receive an interview or not is beyond absurd. Get more goddamn volunteers. Do something, other than being super defensive about the institution.

 

I wish they had rejected me earlier so that I could actually plan to visit family, or do something else other than having to check my email almost every day for the last few months. It would be nice to be able to make plans around the interviews instead of clinging onto a thread of hope. Don't even tell me that we should be grateful for the application process. It is a service I paid for ($600+ total for omsas) and expect the service to be efficient.

 

Best of luck to all those who waited patiently. Hopefully some of you are able to transfer this knowledge and fix the system from within.

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Finally Rejected.

 

Seriously though, why is it taking them almost 5 months to assess all of the files. I don't care how "holistic" the process is, there is absolutely no excuse for needing to take this long to send out INVITES for the interview. Let me put it into perspective. McMaster not only needs to mark the CASPER, but they usually have 1500 more applicants to go through and they are able to do this at half the time it takes U of T to get through their applications. Taking almost half the year to figure out who will receive an interview or not is beyond absurd. Get more goddamn volunteers. Do something, other than being super defensive about the institution.

 

I wish they had rejected me earlier so that I could actually plan to visit family, or do something else other than having to check my email almost every day for the last few months. It would be nice to be able to make plans around the interviews instead of clinging onto a thread of hope. Don't even tell me that we should be grateful for the application process. It is a service I paid for ($600+) and expect the service to be efficient.

 

Best of luck to all those who waited patiently. Hopefully some of you are able to transfer this knowledge and fix the system from within.

 

Well the concept of volunteering is that people volunteer, so where do you suppose they're suppose to get more volunteers? Forcing people to volunteer just means they won't take it seriously. And you paid $600 to OMSAS, not Toronto in particular. I'd prefer if Toronto use more cutoffs or whatever to speed up the process like Calgary, but that's how they do things so if you want apply there, then you gotta deal with it.

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Actually to be fair, if you check your OMSAS file, you'll see a line similar to the following:

 

Medical School Fee

xxx Universities $CDN yyy.00

School Fee(s) $CDN zzz.00

 

yyy is OMSAS's cut. zzz is the cut that goes to the universities themselves (divvied up according to the application fees).

 

The universities themselves definitely receive remuneration for the process - this is something that was made clear to us when we paid OMSAS.

 

Whether or not we should demand excellent service for this however, I'm undecided. UofT's fee was $115 IIRC...no matter how big a telescope they used to look at my application, that's more than fair compensation (times 3500 applicants btw).

 

EDIT:

 

Also to the contrary of the above: McMaster does not need to mark everyone's CASPer tests, and in fact to do so would be a waste of everyone's resources.

 

They simply rank everyone according to their GPA/MCAT VR Score first (using whatever formula they choose). They look at the top x people, where x is the number of spots they have for interview. Anyone who cannot meet this score even with a perfect CASPer score is simply rejected outright, as even if the top applicants got a zero on CASPer and they got perfect, they wouldn't land an interview. No point in looking if they can't possibly make it to interview.

 

I'd imagine this would shave off as many as half the applicants.

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Well the concept of volunteering is that people volunteer, so where do you suppose they're suppose to get more volunteers? Forcing people to volunteer just means they won't take it seriously. And you paid $600 to OMSAS, not Toronto in particular. I'd prefer if Toronto use more cutoffs or whatever to speed up the process like Calgary, but that's how they do things so if you want apply there, then you gotta deal with it.

 

It should be mandatory for all students to contribute to the application reviewing process. If you are a medical student, it is your duty to contribute back to the medical community in some way. The fact that there are so many med students unwilling to help out with the application process, despite knowing there is a large shortage, shows that the interview didn't seem to weed out the people who don't seem to care about their direct community. For example, All 4th year McMaster health science students contribute to reviewing the files for future health science students. You are telling me that people in medical school cannot bother themselves with doing the same?

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So, for those of us who STILL haven't heard, we are essentially rejected, they just won't take the time to tell us we're actually on a waitlist that is unlikely to ever move. What if people didn't know to check the facebook page? I'm sure there are plenty of people out there.

 

This is the worst possible situation. Being rejected, but them still telling us there's about a 1/100000 chance so we can continue to check our email every second for the next week.

 

.......................

 

They're doing something wrong.

 

EDIT: As a disclaimer, I know a lot of this is coming from a place of bitterness and anxiety from so much email checking.

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It should be mandatory for all students to contribute to the application reviewing process. If you are a medical student, it is your duty to contribute back to the medical community in some way. The fact that there are so many med students unwilling to help out with the application process, despite knowing there is a large shortage, shows that the interview didn't seem to weed out the people who don't seem to care about their direct community. For example, All 4th year McMaster health science students contribute to reviewing the files for future health science students. You are telling me that people in medical school cannot bother themselves with doing the same?

 

4th year Mac Health science students are not required to review the files. They do them on a volunteer basis and to be fair, it takes a while for all the essays to be evaluated in health sci too.

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It should be mandatory for all students to contribute to the application reviewing process. If you are a medical student, it is your duty to contribute back to the medical community in some way. The fact that there are so many med students unwilling to help out with the application process, despite knowing there is a large shortage, shows that the interview didn't seem to weed out the people who don't seem to care about their direct community. For example, All 4th year McMaster health science students contribute to reviewing the files for future health science students. You are telling me that people in medical school cannot bother themselves with doing the same?

 

How do you know how many medical students volunteer vs dont for this? Probably 95% of my classmates are involved in several extracurriculars, including file review, mentoring high school and undergrad students, student government, charity involvement, research, etc. The ones who volunteer for file review probably spend about 20+ hours working on it, and there usually isn't a lack of student interest in admissions involvement. And the rest of the students are contributing to the school/community/healthcare in many other ways on top of our school work. Also we waited the same 5 or whatever months in our year(s) applying to U of T to get interviews (or get rejected on earlier attempts) and know what it is like to wait, so its not like we are a group of lazy ungrateful students who don't feel like helping out.

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So, for those of us who STILL haven't heard, we are essentially rejected, they just won't take the time to tell us we're actually on a waitlist that is unlikely to ever move. What if people didn't know to check the facebook page? I'm sure there are plenty of people out there.

 

This is the worst possible situation. Being rejected, but them still telling us there's about a 1/100000 chance so we can continue to check our email every second for the next week.

 

.......................

 

They're doing something wrong.

 

EDIT: As a disclaimer, I know a lot of this is coming from a place of bitterness and anxiety from so much email checking.

 

I hear ya. Hopefully interviews elsewhere pan out.

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I wonder how many of us are left in the waitlist pile..must be less than a hundred.

 

It must be less than a hundred... No chance in hell that more than like, 10 people cancel for next weekend. Wouldn't make sense to keep that many people on the line...?

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It should be mandatory for all students to contribute to the application reviewing process. If you are a medical student, it is your duty to contribute back to the medical community in some way. The fact that there are so many med students unwilling to help out with the application process, despite knowing there is a large shortage, shows that the interview didn't seem to weed out the people who don't seem to care about their direct community. For example, All 4th year McMaster health science students contribute to reviewing the files for future health science students. You are telling me that people in medical school cannot bother themselves with doing the same?

 

Contributing to the medical community does not necessarily entail being involved in the application reviewing process. Unwillingness to help with the application process does not necessarily indicate an apathy towards one's direct community. Medical school applicants are not necessarily the direct community of those already enrolled. McMaster health sci students reviewing files for future students does not necessarily mandate medical students to do the same. That medical students do not do the same does not necessarily indicate a lack of motivation such that they "cannot bother themselves".

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