So Let Me Get This Straight (University Prestige)

[Aletheist]

Of course they care and if you go to a small university that doesn't have its own medical school than you're basically screwed. By that I mean you are at a disadvantage.

[shearkha]

Where you did your undergrad supposedly does not matter to medical schools, at least in Canada. That said, UofT does state that they consider things like the rigor of the program though I have no idea how exactly they evaluate that.

I thought they considered the rigor of courework not necessarily the program... Maybe I am remembering it incorrectly

[DarkGhost]

Of course they care and if you go to a small university that doesn't have its own medical school than you're basically screwed. By that I mean you are at a disadvantage.

 

... What?

 

This is anecdotal evidence, of course, but I went to a small university (~5000 undergraduates) without a medical school, and I never experienced this 'disadvantage,' nor did I hear of it affecting anyone else in my graduating class.  

 

 

 

This is the breakdown of UofT's entering class for 2013. Interpret how you will. There are a small number of matriculants from york. Most of the matriculants come from tough programs, like UofT and Mcmaster. That's not to say that they're looking at prestige. It could be that certain schools had less promising candidates. It is clear though, based on the numbers, that in 2013, more UofT students got in than york students, and more Mac students got in than Western students etc. Feel free to interpret this however you like. (Using UofT as an example: Other schools may be different)

Source: 

• http://www.md.utoronto.ca/admissions/statistics.htm

 

The problem with these statistics is they don't take into account the number of students who applied from each institution.  Without that information they're merely 'interesting facts,' not something to draw hard conclusions from.

[rmorelan]

I thought they considered the rigor of courework not necessarily the program... Maybe I am remembering it incorrectly

 

it is also a safety check for them - I always got the impression they were more worried about people loading up with bird courses and other tactics and just wanted a system in place to actually prevent gaming the system etc.

[rmorelan]

... What?

 

This is anecdotal evidence, of course, but I went to a small university (~5000 undergraduates) without a medical school, and I never experienced this 'disadvantage,' nor did I hear of it affecting anyone else in my graduating class.  

 

 

 

 

The problem with these statistics is they don't take into account the number of students who applied from each institution.  Without that information they're merely 'interesting facts,' not something to draw hard conclusions from.

 

just add another wrinkle we know for sure it doesn't matter for a variety of schools - Mac, Western for instance and we know there are some pretty hard cut offs at Ottawa as well (you are not getting bumped up GPA wise just because you were in a so called hard program at that school - you have the GPA or you don't). The two remaining schools bigger schools - Queens and Toronto are more holistic so no one can really tell you exactly what they are doing with that information - although again they both state they don't bias towards schools etc in their information. This analysis would be irrelevant for NOSM.

 

you can process this as you will Personally I would rather have a high GPA from typical program than to have a lower one from a "harder program" and hope somehow that is taken into consideration. I would never recommend doing a hard program simply to try and impress someone - just doesn't seem logical compared to other approaches. People love to think that the educational value of these various programs is different enough to matter but in Canada with everything publicly funded and with public educational standards it is just a much more level field than the US (where this sort of thing is of course critical).

[ArchEnemy]

I think not because from the handful of york kids I know that got into med school, most were kinesiology students. York's life sciency degrees in terms of difficulty are biomed>biology>kinesiology=psychology and very few people from the first 2 get in, which makes me think the applicant's GPA is assessed independently of the person's degree. I would find it surprising for UofT to nit pick universities but not degrees within each university, especially york which UofT probably has close ties to.

 

Anecdotes and speculation ftw!

 

From those numbers, I still suspect there is an unspoken bias towards certain schools.

[positivetension]

From those numbers, I still suspect there is an unspoken bias towards certain schools.

 

Why? I think the biggest factor is that (as rmorelan said) people who are "amibitious and intelligent" tend to go to harder/more prestigious schools for undergrad, and these are the same people applying for tough professional programs. For example, the most "intelligent" students in the GTA who stay in Toronto have their pick of York and U of T, and most are going to pick U of T. It doesn't mean that you're discriminated against if you went to York, it's just that the type of people who get into med school had the choice between York and U of T and mostly chose U of T.

[thehead321]

Why? I think the biggest factor is that (as rmorelan said) people who are "amibitious and intelligent" tend to go to harder/more prestigious schools for undergrad, and these are the same people applying for tough professional programs. For example, the most "intelligent" students in the GTA who stay in Toronto have their pick of York and U of T, and most are going to pick U of T. It doesn't mean that you're discriminated against if you went to York, it's just that the type of people who get into med school had the choice between York and U of T and mostly chose U of T.

Three students from my high school graduated with the highest average (they won the Governor General's Award). One went to mac healthsci, one went to UofT, and one went to york. They all 3.98+ GPAs now (after finishing first and second year) but none of them have straight 4.0s. Let's disregard sample size for a minute... what this does say is that these 3 students would have done well wherever they went. However, clearly, the york student is at a much greater disadvantage if you look at UofT's statistics. Western Schulich has also published their admission statistics and York/small schools had the lowest numbers. Since Schulich uses hard cutoffs pre-interview, I'm guessing program bias factors in post-interview, but none of us will know for certain. If you want to be safe, I guess just don't do a complete bird program, but don't do engineering science at UofT or something ridiculously hard..

[positivetension]

Three students from my high school graduated with the highest average (they won the Governor General's Award). One went to mac healthsci, one went to UofT, and one went to york. They all 3.98+ GPAs now (after finishing first and second year) but none of them have straight 4.0s. Let's disregard sample size for a minute... what this does say is that these 3 students would have done well wherever they went. However, clearly, the york student is at a much greater disadvantage if you look at UofT's statistics. Western Schulich has also published their admission statistics and York/small schools had the lowest numbers. Since Schulich uses hard cutoffs pre-interview, I'm guessing program bias factors in post-interview, but none of us will know for certain.

 

You can't just disregard sample size because that's the whole point. Of those 3 students you mentioned, the Mac and U of T ones made pretty typical post-high school decisions, and the York one is a bit of an outlier (I'm not saying it was a bad decision; maybe they were offered more scholarship money, or had family reasons, or any number of other reasons). And that same York student is probably the type of student that makes up one of the 4 people who got in. I'm not saying that there is 0 bias (especially post-interview), but I am saying that it's probably not a major factor.

[thehead321]

You can't just disregard sample size because that's the whole point. Of those 3 students you mentioned, the Mac and U of T ones made pretty typical post-high school decisions, and the York one is a bit of an outlier (I'm not saying it was a bad decision; maybe they were offered more scholarship money, or had family reasons, or any number of other reasons). And that same York student is probably the type of student that makes up one of the 4 people who got in. I'm not saying that there is 0 bias (especially post-interview), but I am saying that it's probably not a major factor.

True

[ArchEnemy]

Why? I think the biggest factor is that (as rmorelan said) people who are "amibitious and intelligent" tend to go to harder/more prestigious schools for undergrad, and these are the same people applying for tough professional programs. For example, the most "intelligent" students in the GTA who stay in Toronto have their pick of York and U of T, and most are going to pick U of T. It doesn't mean that you're discriminated against if you went to York, it's just that the type of people who get into med school had the choice between York and U of T and mostly chose U of T.

 

Let's use quantitative numbers to compare students (rather than qualitative, since the latter is influenced by more factors).

 

The admission average for Grade 12 students into Biology at York and UofT are both between low to mid 80s. 

Assuming the top 5% in Biology at both York and UofT have a GPA of >3.9 and they all apply to medical schools, why is there significantly more UofT students than York students? 

[Savac]

Let's use quantitative numbers to compare students (rather than qualitative, since the latter is influenced by more factors).

 

The admission average for Grade 12 students into Biology at York and UofT are both between low to mid 80s. 

Assuming the top 5% in Biology at both York and UofT have a GPA of >3.9 and they all apply to medical schools, why is there significantly more UofT students than York students? 

 

Are you sure it's fair to make those assumptions?

[positivetension]

Let's use quantitative numbers to compare students (rather than qualitative, since the latter is influenced by more factors).

 

The admission average for Grade 12 students into Biology at York and UofT are both between low to mid 80s. 

Assuming the top 5% in Biology at both York and UofT have a GPA of >3.9 and they all apply to medical schools, why is there significantly more UofT students than York students? 

 

As Savac said, how are you justifying those assumptions?

 

Even if that's true, if I had to guess, medical schools probably do some kind of "normalizing" for borderline cases, in the same way that some undergrad programs normalize high school grades. They see how people with a certain average from school X compared to school Y end up doing in the program, and if people from school Y consistently do better, school X probably has grade inflation. In the same way, maybe U of T med school has found that people with a 3.9 from U of T undergrad do better than a 3.9 from York. I still wouldn't consider that "discrimination" just for attending York, though; that would just be an attempt to normalize the scale (if it even happens).

[NutritionRunner]

As has been said, you would really need to know just how many people applied from each university in order to make any sort of valid comparison.  There could be a large number of UofT students accepted to UofT medical school for a number of reasons:  more people from UofT applied, people who were admitted to multiple schools were more likely to choose UofT if they went there for undergrad, and more likely to choose other medical schools if they went elsewhere for undergrad, just to name two that immediately pop to mind.  There are no doubt a number of other variables that come into play.

 

It doesn't surprise me that UofT has the highest number of undergrads going on to do medical school at UofT.  After all, UofT is one of the largest, if not the largest, universities in Canada.  I've also found that most people who live and attend school in downtown Toronto want to stay in downtown Toronto.

[rmorelan]

As has been said, you would really need to know just how many people applied from each university in order to make any sort of valid comparison.  There could be a large number of UofT students accepted to UofT medical school for a number of reasons:  more people from UofT applied, people who were admitted to multiple schools were more likely to choose UofT if they went there for undergrad, and more likely to choose other medical schools if they went elsewhere for undergrad, just to name two that immediately pop to mind.  There are no doubt a number of other variables that come into play.

 

It doesn't surprise me that UofT has the highest number of undergrads going on to do medical school at UofT.  After all, UofT is one of the largest, if not the largest, universities in Canada.  I've also found that most people who live and attend school in downtown Toronto want to stay in downtown Toronto.

Also that school has no regional bias so people from other schools are more likely to some other school (swomen are more likely to go to western or Windsor for instance and end up at western med later on as an example)

 

It isn't enough to know how many go to school A - as people with an early interest in med tend to go to different schools. Waterloo is a top rated school but not for biology for instance. Not surprising fewer people at waterloo want medicine in the end and ultimately get in.

[xkittens]

Let's use quantitative numbers to compare students (rather than qualitative, since the latter is influenced by more factors).

 

The admission average for Grade 12 students into Biology at York and UofT are both between low to mid 80s. 

Assuming the top 5% in Biology at both York and UofT have a GPA of >3.9 and they all apply to medical schools, why is there significantly more UofT students than York students? 

York hands out something like 80-100 biology (I mean all of the biology streams) degrees each year. I have a feeling UofT's program is much, much bigger (even though York's total population size is comparable with UofT's)

[ballislife123321]

York hands out something like 80-100 biology (I mean all of the biology streams) degrees each year. I have a feeling UofT's program is much, much bigger (even though York's total population size is comparable with UofT's)

80-100? Doesn't it start off with 800 or so? Wow that many people dropped out or switched huh?

[011235813]

Of the few York students I know that got into UofT (Different years), all were Psychology majors. (to back up MeGusta's anecdotes and speculation from September 10)

[seeking1]

In this sub-forum, can we just create a stickied thread titled "Most Medical Schools Do Not Care About Undergrad Program/University Prestige" and then explain the exceptions? These threads keep coming up, its getting silly now.

[Savac]

In this sub-forum, can we just create a stickied thread titled "Most Medical Schools Do Not Care About Undergrad Program/University Prestige" and then explain the exceptions? These threads keep coming up, its getting silly now.

 

Unfortunately that's probably not going to help very much

[xkittens]

80-100? Doesn't it start off with 800 or so? Wow that many people dropped out or switched huh?

I have like... 30-50 people in my 4th year classes

[ballislife123321]

I have like... 30-50 people in my 4th year classes

how many people do you think have a 3.9 + gpa?

[ballislife123321]

Also my friends at york. He was wondering what gpa do you need to get an nserc? I know it varies year to year but what's approximate?

[xkittens]

Also my friends at york. He was wondering what gpa do you need to get an nserc? I know it varies year to year but what's approximate?

3.85 is the bare minimum. I heard a bunch of people with 3.9ish GPAs didn't get NSERC this year so yeah

[Robin Hood]

So if I went to a prestigious school with a challenging major ie: UBC Sciences (where only 3% of the first year Chemistry class gets 90%+, and 0.6% of students in any first year English class earn 90%+ according to their grades distribution website), and ended up with, say, a 3.5 GPA, would I be worse off (from a medical schools admissions purposes) than going to an "easier" university, such as Capilano, and earning a 4.0 GPA? 

 

Isn't there a flaw in that logic? Does the university's prestige truly not matter? Does this only apply for Canada, or is it also applicable for the States as well? 

 

Thanks in advance. 

 

Unless you are applying to French schools, a 3.9 in basket waving > a 3.8 in dentistry.