Western Ot Vs U Of T Ot Program

[potobori]

I got accepted to both but leaning towards Western because its a smaller city plus the program has Intensives (id love Hand Therapy/Upper Extremity).

 

Can anyone give me some insight/help on choosing 

[BoopityBoop]

I'd strongly suggest you go wherever you want to live/find a job afterwards.

OT/PT/Nursing is not like medicine where you have residency and fellowship to look forward too. Your school time and clinical placement is job-prospective and networking time.

[ToBeOTThatIsTheQuestion]

Current UofT OT1 student here. I was trying to choose between Western and UofT last year and ended up going with the latter.

Here are some thoughts I shared with a student in a similar situation on another thread. I'm not sure if it's the greatest breakdown of UofT's program or not but it's a start. When I was choosing, I went to UofT's open house and had a few lengthy conversations with the program supervisor at Western and found both resources to be helpful for me. After speaking with some OT2s, I think you can ask for placements in places like hand therapy but I'm uncertain as to the effectiveness of doing so. What I do know is that you'll never know what you like until you try it so try and keep and open mind when going into your placements    Western's campus is beautiful but I preferred UofT's Rehab Sciences Building. That being said, Western's was under construction at that point and may be pretty spiffy by now, who knows? 

 

In a nutshell...
PRO: UofT offers a wicked catchment area (no moving required, all accessible via transit), good research opportunities, a highly respected staff (some of the books you'll use are legitimately written by the staff here - e.g. "Enabling Occupation II"), facility isn't half bad either, and Toronto's a pretty cool area.
CON: Housing can be expensive (though you can find reasonable places to live that won't blow your budget out of the water too) and UofT is big on research and theory, so if that's not your thing, you may feel yourself getting a little bored sometimes.
 

Curriculum is 24 months straight with the exception of holidays and you get August off during first year.

 

When I was trying to decide, I got my, sister who's actually an OT (went to Queens), to print off the curriculum and schedule of the universities I was considering and then redact any university identifying information so that I could try to evaluate each program in as unbiased a way a possible. We went through each, labeled pros and cons of each and then started looking at university specific things like the catchment areas, housing, and the general vibe of the city.
Maybe this technique could help you with your decision?

 

On the thread "Accepted 2017: Occupational Therapy @ University Of Toronto" (http://forums.premed...ity-of-toronto/) we've answered a few more questions so, perhaps, that could help you learn a bit more about UofT as well.

 

Best of Luck and Congrats!

[potobori]

BUMP