Choosing between Western and Queen's

[Guest kaisermark]

Hey all,

 

I've got to choose between Queen's and Western, which is going to be very difficult because they're so similar. I was wondering if anyone can help me out. Could you please compare and contrast it to your knowledge and then list which one you would pick? Maybe I'll decide by how people "vote" on premed101, haha. I'll also post this on the Queen's forum too.

 

Thanks,

Mark

[Guest queenslatifah]

...just patrolling the boards and thought I'd add my view. While admittedly biased, I strongly recommend Queen's. Kingston's a great place to go to school - and the med school is fantastic. People are great here! It's a perfect place to spend a few years. I was struck by your question b/c I had the same choice to make (did my undergrad at Queen's and MSc. at UWO)... but I've been v. happy with my choice to come back to K-town. I know a lot of people don't like the idea of the rural component that UWO mandates.... Good luck... hope to see you at Queen's!

[Guest TimmyMax]

Hey,

 

I had the exact same choice when I was applying, but I chose UWO. I based this on more of a gut call than anything, but to be perfectly honest, I chose UWO because the people there were nicer than the people at Queen's. When I went for each school's respective interview weekend, both school's students were happy and eager to promote their school, but I got the feeling that the UWO students genuinely wanted you to get in and come to UWO while the Queen's students seemed less genuine to me and were only there because it was the "proper" thing to do. Now this may not have been your experience, but it was the current medical students at UWO that sold me on the school- people like UWOMED2005, therealcrackers and that crowd that vaulted UWO to the top of my list. There were other reasons why I chose UWO (see below), but the people there were what sold it for me- you can get a good medical education anywhere in Canada, but I wanted to go someplace where I would fit in and be happy- I have not regretted my choice for a nanosecond!

Other reasons why I chose UWO- didn't like the Queen's semestered curriculum (too much to study at once!); preferred Western's systems-based approach to teaching medicine (having two cracks at the can is a lot better than learning something once and having the rest of pre-clerkship to forget it!); Kingston is smaller than London- all the best cases get sent to Ottawa or Toronto while London is THE centre for SW Ontario, a catchment area of a good million people, so lots to be seen here; UWO had a happy, unified medical student body while Queen's seemed happy as well, but a bit cliquey and snooty for my liking (not as bad as the undergrads at either school, but still a detectable vibe); both schools are beautiful, so nothing to choose there aside from the fact that I had already gone to Queen's for one year of undergrad and hated it there; the rural component at UWO offered AWESOME learning opportunities and freedom (what's the deal with people not liking the mandatory rural component- rural placements are FAR superior to city placements for learning and actually getting to DO something as opposed to watching it); UWO's curriculum is set up such that you have finished all of your clerkship and electives before the CaRMS match so you'll have a better idea of what you would like to do for the rest of your life and be able to customize your electives to give you an optimal chance of matching to said field instead of doing alll of your electives at the beginning of your clerkship when you have no idea what you'd like to do other than what you THINK you would like to do (and trust me, what you end up doing is rarely what you initially think that you will end up doing at the beginning of clerkship); I felt that UWO matches better than Queen's overall; and, the clerkship at UWO was simply superior- 'nuff said!

So there are a few of the reasons I chose UWO for medicine over Queen's. There were other factors playing into my decision as well (ie: better music program at UWO than Queen's, a bigger intramural program, the chance to play on the UWO Meds Flatliners ice hockey team and of course, the chance to drink with UWOMED2005 on a weekly basis), but those were some of the major academic reasons why UWO was (and still is) the best fit for me. Hope it helps!

 

Best of luck!

Timmy