Oop And Residency Opportunities

[DK03]

Hi there, 

 

I am from Ontario and interviewed at U of C and, after my interview experience, am seriously considering attending U of C should I be accepted. I'm a little worried though that, being in another province, I may be compromising my ability to match at a residency in Ontario later down the road if I choose to attend UofC med. I was wondering if somebody attending UofC would be able to comment on whether graduates from the program have a more difficult time matching in Ontario, or if the location of the medical school you attend doesn't hold significant weight in the match process? I would love to attend the school and am thrilled to commit 3 years to living in Calgary, but I am not sure if I want to commit to living in Calgary for good (maybe, maybe not, hard to know this early!) and am just wondering if I would be closing any doors back to Ontario by attending UofC med. 

 

Thanks in advance for your insight! 

[carazadie]

I am not from UofC, but you won't be closing any doors as long as you are willing to travel to Ontario for some electives during clerkship. There are a few people in my class who left Ontario to attend our medical school and who managed to match to their desired specialty back in Ontario. In CaRMS it is quite normal for applicants to interview across the country. Residency programs don't care where you trained as long as you can demonstrate that you are interested in coming to their program (through the location of your electives and the statements in your application and interviews).

 

Of course it might be tough to match in Ontario if you want to do something very competitive, but that would be true even if you went to medical school in Ontario. For most programs, it will not make a significant difference where you do medical school as long as you play the CaRMS game right. 

 

More importantly, you should consider whether a 3 year program is the right choice for you.

[DK03]

Thank you so much! That's really encouraging.

[carazadie]

The caveat to the above is that, for a variety of reasons, it may be easier to match one's home school than other schools (though this is program dependent), so I suppose by training in Calgary you would be giving up that "home school advantage" which would be in your favour if you trained at a school in Ontario. But that advantage would only apply to your particular school, not really to the other Ontario schools. 

 

So you might be giving up a small advantage, but I don't think you'd necessarily be closing any doors.

[sleeping_sickness]

As a general rule, I don't think the match algorithm really cares where you're from. Sure, you might have a better chance matching where they know you better but so long as you do electives, you have a good shot at returning to ontario. The match is a bit of a crapshoot and nothing can ever really be guaranteed. 

 

One thing that would stress me about U of C, and please feel free to correct me if I'm way off, is the fact that it's a 3 year program. My opinion of 3 year programs is that they really force you to choose a specialty early, make it difficult to re-orient if you feel that you're on the path toward a specialty that you may no longer be interested in, and limited pre-crams elective time. If you're looking to go back to Ontario, you need to show your face, and impress, as much as possible prior to interviews.