Hyperalgesia Posted April 20, 2015 Report Share Posted April 20, 2015 Congrats! This is an amazing and exciting time in your life, so enjoy this feeling! I am making this thread for anyone who might have burning questions about any topic related to starting med school this July and may be a little too nervous to post in the massive facebook group. More than happy to answer as many questions as I can using my personal experience, and I am sure that any other 2017-ers on this forum will pitch in where I can't! So excited to meet everyone in July, and until then I will try to answer any questions as quickly as my schedule allows! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphonegalaxy Posted April 21, 2015 Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 Can you comment on how a 3 year program impacts residency? I really want to come for the 3 year program but I've noticed a lot of people seem to list 3 years as a disadvantage. Is that true, in your honest opinion? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyperalgesia Posted April 21, 2015 Author Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 Can you comment on how a 3 year program impacts residency? I really want to come for the 3 year program but I've noticed a lot of people seem to list 3 years as a disadvantage. Is that true, in your honest opinion? Just want to clarify: Do you mean the impact of a three year program on obtaining a residency spot, or the impact on how well you do as a resident? Just want to make sure I'm answering the right question haha. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphonegalaxy Posted April 21, 2015 Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 Both! Sorry to bother you just it's my main worry! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redpill Posted April 21, 2015 Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 Just want to clarify: Do you mean the impact of a three year program on obtaining a residency spot, or the impact on how well you do as a resident? Just want to make sure I'm answering the right question haha. I'm particularly interested in how the 3 year program affects your ability to secure a very competitive residency, especially in the more competitive locations (i.e. Vancouver, Toronto), given that you have one less year to complete research and other app building activities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amichel Posted April 21, 2015 Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 My colleague and I are both in second year so may not be well placed to answer that (although if you are who I think you are then you have someone you can ask?) but what put my mind at ease when I was deciding between three and four year programs was to poke around through the statistics on the Carms website and see how we match compared to other schools . As for the second question, there's a page on the U of C website where they asked residency program directors to rate the residents who did med school at U of C. A fairly large majority of them said at or above average. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyperalgesia Posted April 21, 2015 Author Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 Haha I think I am who you think I am. I agree with everything amichel has stated above. Doing a three year program is only a disadvantage if you don't use your time wisely. While people in other schools have the luxury of summertime to explore the options and figure out what they want to do with their lives, at UofC you have to get started ASAP. That means shadowing on the weekends and during IST (independent study time) to figure out if you are interested in some of the more competitive options, and then starting to plan your life accordingly. The match rate of UofC students is usually similar to most Canadian schools every year, and there are students from every class matching to things like ENT, plastics, derm, optho, etc. However, we have to work a little harder on our own time in first year to make that big decision. If that seems a little daunting, then a four year school might be more your speed! Specifically for competitive locations, I don't think there is much disadvantage as long as you are able to obtain an elective in that city. All the residents I have talked to that do CARMS interviews say it's really 90% 'Can I work with you?' and 10% 'What's on your resume?' So if you truly want to go to Toronto, you need to get some face time in with Toronto MDs, which all comes back to using your time wisely haha. Figure out what out want you want to do EARLY (pre-clerkship, even pre-second year if you can), and then organize your electives/research/etc to reflect that passion! (Also, just a quick sidebar - doing a competitive speciality in a competitive city is extremely challenging no matter where you go to school.. If you are seriously interested in doing something like ENT, for example, where there are only 34 residency spots across the country, you realistically have to be willing to go to whatever school will have room for you. It's not a pleasant thought, but unfortunately it is the reality of residency these days.) @iphonegalaxy - you are definitely not bothering me.. I wouldn't have posted if I didn't want to answer questions haha! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jess24 Posted April 21, 2015 Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 Thanks for the above answers they were super detailed! I essentially have the same concerns. I know most people don't prefer 3 year schools because of the no summers (frankly doesn't matter too much to me!). My concern is about knowing what you want to do in a compressed time period as you mentioned above. My follow-up question is then, did both of you know what you wanted to do specialty wise before you went into medical school? Did you feel you had decent levels of exposure to assess all the options? Especially with the new mandated rural training (where circumstances may be different then in competitive centers) I am wondering how this affects that evaluation of options process. For those like me keeping my options opened, I wanted to really make sure this was not the issue and from your experiences, the pressure to choose quickly, and somewhat superficially without having a full understanding. Thanks guys for taking the time out to address our concerns, we really appreciate it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amichel Posted April 21, 2015 Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 Thanks for the above answers they were super detailed! I essentially have the same concerns. I know most people don't prefer 3 year schools because of the no summers (frankly doesn't matter too much to me!). My concern is about knowing what you want to do in a compressed time period as you mentioned above. My follow-up question is then, did both of you know what you wanted to do specialty wise before you went into medical school? Did you feel you had decent levels of exposure to assess all the options? Especially with the new mandated rural training (where circumstances may be different then in competitive centers) I am wondering how this affects that evaluation of options process. For those like me keeping my options opened, I wanted to really make sure this was not the issue and from your experiences, the pressure to choose quickly, and somewhat superficially without having a full understanding. Thanks guys for taking the time out to address our concerns, we really appreciate it! No, I didn't know. I still don't, really. I think the important thing is to narrow it down to 2-3 things early, so that you can reasonably check them all out via shadowing, preclerkship electives, etc... Basically you only really have to know when you pick your clerkship tracks and electives, which is something like half way through second year. The exception is if you want to do something super competitive (deem, optho mostly), which you have to figure out pretty quick, but that's basically the same in a four year school. How much pressure you feel to choose partly depends on your personality, to I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Borborygmi Posted April 21, 2015 Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 Have you found that there is adequate time to investigate more than one specialty at a time? I am torn between family/rural medicine and neurology. Are the IST blocks to be used as we see fit? Or is there some structure to these blocks? I can't believe I'm able to realistically think about these things...... such an amazing feeling. Thanks very much for answering our questions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyperalgesia Posted April 21, 2015 Author Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 Good questions! Coming into med school, I had a decent idea of the things I didn't want to do, but less so what I was interested in pursuing. There are things I ruled out from conversations with MDs, some from exposure, and some just based on the fact that I know myself, and know I need to be in a specialty that works with patients, (ie: no pathology for me! haha) and something where I can have a life outside of work. I am still deciding between three specialties, all of which have common themes. What I have done, however, is rule out almost all of the competitive specialties, so there is a little more breathing room with the things I am interested in. As for whether or not we have enough exposure.. It depends. If you are really keen and willing to do a lot of shadowing, you should be fine. We do get a fairly decent amount of time to pursue shadowing opportunites, and most of the programs put on a 'career day' lunch, where they come and talk to you about their every day. We also have a lot of early clinical exposure with our clincial correlations program - so far we have spent time with GI, heme, ortho, rheum, cardio, and respirology docs, in their clinics/following them around the wards. As well, we have a mandatory family medicine placement in year one and two, where you get to spend a half day with a family med doc in their clinic. We definitely don't get exposure to everything however, and if you are truly interested in physiatry, or plastic surgery, or medical genetics, you will have to pursue those programs on your own time. It can be a bit challenging to fit everything in, espeically in Course 1 when you are adapting to the medical school course load, but it is feasible. @s3lf - There is a ton of family med exposure here (and a rural shadowing program, which is awesome!), so you can probably focus most of your IST shadowing time on neurology. IST is unstructured, do whatever you want to do time, so you can use it for sleeping, studying, appointments, shadowing, playing video games, or whatever you want haha. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jess24 Posted April 21, 2015 Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 Can you guys shed more light on the rural mandated training or maybe on doing some of your clerkship outside of Calgary (like BC or Toronto?) Is it feasible and can you be successful at it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyperalgesia Posted April 21, 2015 Author Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 I'm not exactly sure what you mean by rural mandated training. Are you talking about the UCLIC program? (Uofc longitudinal integrated clerkship) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sportmed90 Posted April 21, 2015 Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 Hey there, Thank you so much for being so willing to help and answer our questions. I have another question for you: I have heard from a couple of people that one issue with U of C is that some of the elective time for clerkship is before your core clinical rotations. I check on the U of C website and this seems to still be the case. The problem with this is that some schools will not allow you to do an elective there if you have not done the core rotation at your home institution first (ex. UBC and Toronto). As I am sure we are all well aware, elective time is crucial if you want a competitive residency and sacrificing a few weeks of it might mean you do not get to show your face for the program in as many schools as possible. Would you be able to comment on this? Do you know of anyone who has had a problem with this or are there ways around it? Thanks in advance! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jess24 Posted April 21, 2015 Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 I'm not exactly sure what you mean by rural mandated training. Are you talking about the UCLIC program? (Uofc longitudinal integrated clerkship) So the UofC webite now says that as of this year students should expect to spend 5-10 weeks of clerskhip or pre-clerkship working in rural locations. I am assuming this is new so I don't know entirely how or what the expectations are? I was just curious to see if anyone here knew about this. I might have to ask admissions directly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyperalgesia Posted April 21, 2015 Author Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 So the UofC webite now says that as of this year students should expect to spend 5-10 weeks of clerskhip or pre-clerkship working in rural locations. I am assuming this is new so I don't know entirely how or what the expectations are? I was just curious to see if anyone here knew about this. I might have to ask admissions directly. Ahhh, just reading that now. Unfortunately I have no idea about this change, as it must be brand new for this year! I am not sure anyone on here would have your answers, so contacting admissions or the rural family med department might be more fruitful. @sportsmed We do have a lot of elective time at the beginning of clerkship (8 -10 weeks, depending on your track), but there is also more elective time throughout clerkship that you may be able to do electives in trickier locations. I don't know many people that have had issues with this, but I will ask some clerks and see if I can find anything out! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amichel Posted April 21, 2015 Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 Hey there, Thank you so much for being so willing to help and answer our questions. I have another question for you: I have heard from a couple of people that one issue with U of C is that some of the elective time for clerkship is before your core clinical rotations. I check on the U of C website and this seems to still be the case. The problem with this is that some schools will not allow you to do an elective there if you have not done the core rotation at your home institution first (ex. UBC and Toronto). As I am sure we are all well aware, elective time is crucial if you want a competitive residency and sacrificing a few weeks of it might mean you do not get to show your face for the program in as many schools as possible. Would you be able to comment on this? Do you know of anyone who has had a problem with this or are there ways around it? Thanks in advance! I am almost positive that those schools make exceptions for 3-year schools. I know the Narwhals (2016s) have definitely been doing electives at those schools in the last few weeks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amichel Posted April 21, 2015 Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 So the UofC webite now says that as of this year students should expect to spend 5-10 weeks of clerskhip or pre-clerkship working in rural locations. I am assuming this is new so I don't know entirely how or what the expectations are? I was just curious to see if anyone here knew about this. I might have to ask admissions directly. Yah, go ahead and ask them. My suspicion (which is completely unfounded on any real information) is that they put that on there as a sort of disclaimer, incase they have to place you at a "rural" location (i.e. lethbridge) for one of your rotations due to space issues. But I have no idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fly Posted April 21, 2015 Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 Does anyone have a quick link to the residency matches for UofC? i.e. where each student has matched and for what specialty? Thanks to upper years for answering these questions. It is greatly appreciated!! Enjoying the feeling right now and looking forward to meeting everyone! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyperalgesia Posted April 21, 2015 Author Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 Does anyone have a quick link to the residency matches for UofC? i.e. where each student has matched and for what specialty? Thanks to upper years for answering these questions. It is greatly appreciated!! Enjoying the feeling right now and looking forward to meeting everyone! The Carms website does a ton of stats on all of the matches, so it's a great resource! Here's a link: http://www.carms.ca/en/data-and-reports/r-1/ And here's a link to the stats from last year based on school and program: http://www.carms.ca/assets/upload/Match%20reports/2014%20R-1%20match/EN/Table%2027%20-%20Match%20Results%20of%20CMGs%20by%20School%20of%20Residency%20-%20Discipline_English.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amichel Posted April 21, 2015 Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 Does anyone have a quick link to the residency matches for UofC? i.e. where each student has matched and for what specialty? Thanks to upper years for answering these questions. It is greatly appreciated!! Enjoying the feeling right now and looking forward to meeting everyone! http://www.carms.ca/en/data-and-reports/r-1/reports-2014/ There's not really one link, but you can poke through those. It doesn't show where and in what each student matched, but it does show how many people got their first choice speciality and first choice location. You can go back to 1972 haha, but two or three years should suffice. EDIT: You beat me to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fly Posted April 21, 2015 Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 http://www.carms.ca/en/data-and-reports/r-1/reports-2014/ There's not really one link, but you can poke through those. It doesn't show where and in what each student matched, but it does show how many people got their first choice speciality and first choice location. You can go back to 1972 haha, but two or three years should suffice. EDIT: You beat me to it. Thank you amichel! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fly Posted April 21, 2015 Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 The Carms website does a ton of stats on all of the matches, so it's a great resource! Here's a link: http://www.carms.ca/en/data-and-reports/r-1/ And here's a link to the stats from last year based on school and program: http://www.carms.ca/assets/upload/Match%20reports/2014%20R-1%20match/EN/Table%2027%20-%20Match%20Results%20of%20CMGs%20by%20School%20of%20Residency%20-%20Discipline_English.pdf Great thanks Hyperalgesia! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jess24 Posted April 21, 2015 Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 Can either of you shed some light on the teaching and learning styles at UofC? Is it more self-directed, PBL, small group, lecture based etc. This is probably published but I just wanted a student opinion! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyperalgesia Posted April 21, 2015 Author Report Share Posted April 21, 2015 Can either of you shed some light on the teaching and learning styles at UofC? Is it more self-directed, PBL, small group, lecture based etc. This is probably published but I just wanted a student opinion! Learning styles are a large combination of things! We have lectures, we have small groups (in which we do case-based learning), we have even smaller groups (core groups) that we learn physical exam/communications/clinical core with. You can do self-directed learning if you want; the vast majority of lectures are podcasted, so you can work from home, at your own pace if you want, which is awesome! Basically, however you like to learn, UofC probably has something that will work for you haha. As a bit of an example, here's my week: Monday - Lectures 1:30 - 5:30 Tuesday - Lectures 8:30-10:30, Small group 10:30-12:30, TBL (team based learning) for our evidence based medicine course 1:30-3:30. Wednesday - Lectures 8:30-10:30, Small group 10:30-12:30, Lectures 1:30-5:30 Thursday - Lectures 1:30-5:30 Friday - Lectures 8:30-12:30 That's a fairly standard week, not including communications/physical exam/all the other courses we learn concurrently. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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