commuting to Mac

[Guest mn]

Hi,

 

My question is for Mac med students: Is it possible to commute to Mac for med school if one is living in, say, Oakville? What about commuting during residency in Hamilton?

 

I'm married and my husband works in downtown Toronto; we currently live in Toronto. I'm most interested in Mac's program, but we want to know whether a move to somewhere halfway between Toronto and Hamilton, and presumably very close to a GO station, would work for both of us. Ideally we wouldn't want to have to move from Toronto at all, but I'm presuming that a Toronto-Hamilton commute might be too much, timewise.

 

The other factor is where I would do residency (I will most likely do family practice). If I could get a match in Toronto, maybe we wouldn't need to move at all, we could keep our kids in the same Toronto schools for the whole time, and I could just do the longer commute. What experiences or thoughts do others have on this issue?

[Guest Ian Wong]

As someone who knows very little about Ontario in general, let me keep my comments to residency alone. Residency is something that it's important to plan for, but is really difficult to do in practice. There's just so many variables (housing, student debt, personal interest and motivation, having good preceptors, spouses and dependants, job outlook, etc) that I think it's very difficult to know that Toronto Family is what you want to do.

 

However, if Family is your goal, and Toronto your ultimate destination, you could probably maximise your chances of matching there by spending time working with those faculty members during your med school years. I'd just caution you that the vast majority of my classmates and myself have changed their mind several times regarding specialties. Many others (especially the less settled ones) who were initially looking forward to matching in Vancouver to stay in BC are now entertaining thoughts of going elsewhere for the additional learning experiences.

 

Ian

UBC, Med 3

[Guest mdjoe]

I am a MAC student who commutes in from Kitchener everyday. This is roughly a 50 minute trip. Because we don't have a formal lecture schedule I have yet to have a problem with the commute. I suspect when I get into clerkship I will have to find a spot locally for the Surgery and Internal Medicine rotations (on-call alot) but others in clerkship still do commute.

[Guest gucio93]

Hi there!

Although I don't commute myslef, many of my classmates (incl. MDJOE ) commute to Mac. Some come from Mississagua, some from Oakville, I think a couple from Toronto. During first year it is almost definitely not a problem. The schedule is rather flexible, and a lot of work is self-directed (i.e. on your own time). Once clerkship starts (partway through 2nd year), depending on the rotation, a closer location may be a bit more desirable for part of the time. The elcetives during clerkship can be arranged anywhere the student finds someone willing to take them on. Many go to cities where they have family, or where they're hoping to do their residency. Hope this helps somewhat.