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On 7/26/2017 at 11:54 AM, carebthenarb said:

 

Totally agree. ECs definitely discriminate against poorer students moreso than GPA does. ECs are more subject to an individual's privilege than GPA is. At least with GPA students can work hard and be resourceful and raise their GPA by themselves. On the other hand, not everyone has the chance to travel abroad or volunteer in Africa or supportive parents nor have a social network in which to leverage "good-looking" EC positions.

FYI: most people who score high on ECs did not travel abroad or volunteer in Africa...

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On 7/12/2017 at 6:43 PM, Alphalima said:

On another note, to whomever thinks that a 4.0 individual "lacks social skills", please be aware that your patients aren't going to give a damn if you are able to tell them about the amazing fun you had the past weekend socializing with all of your friends, but you can be damn sure they are going to care that you have at least some damn clue about the medicine that will hopefully save their life. There is absolute merit to weighing a 4.0 individual higher than another with a 3.3, 3.4, 3.5.

Sorry if this sounded like a rant. I am just tired of seeing/hearing people say that someone who worked their behind off in undergrad to achieve a high GPA somehow must "lack social skills".

Counter point is that there are literally thousands and thousands of licensed and successful doctors who trained in the carribean or abroad for medical school before doing residency in Canada/US because they had 3.3(or lower) GPAs in Canada and couldn't get into Canadian med schools.

You absolutely, do not need a 4.0 in undergrad unrelated courses to medicine, to be a successful doctor and complete training to be ultimately licensed by the royal college. 

That is ultimately full-stop just a product of supply and demand.  

(This is not taking into account the slight about social skills, just purely GPA factor - most people i know in medical school who had 4.0s are also phenomenal in the social skills department).

 

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10 hours ago, JohnGrisham said:

Doesn't UofSask already pretty much do this? My understanding was once you hit 83% GPA, they don't consider GPA anymore.

 

83% =/= 3.3. Not even close. Western and queen's employ GPA cut offs as well but they are not low (3.7+) 

If UofA employs 3.3 as the GPA cut-off, it would serve a very small purpose in differentiating between applicants, as most applicants tend to have GPAs above 3.3. Essentially this means that GPA means next to nothing if it were to be implemented. Of the 2000 applicants, maybe 200 would be cut, and the rest are all only distinguished by MCAT, EC's, and CASPer. This implies that UofA would prioritize all aspects of an application (MCAT/EC/CASper) over GPA (and they have to make these other requirements weigh more if they want to cut applicants down to 500-600 for interviews).

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51 minutes ago, FatherFranklin said:

83% =/= 3.3. Not even close. Western and queen's employ GPA cut offs as well but they are not low (3.7+) 

If UofA employs 3.3 as the GPA cut-off, it would serve a very small purpose in differentiating between applicants, as most applicants tend to have GPAs above 3.3. Essentially this means that GPA means next to nothing if it were to be implemented. Of the 2000 applicants, maybe 200 would be cut, and the rest are all only distinguished by MCAT, EC's, and CASPer. This implies that UofA would prioritize all aspects of an application (MCAT/EC/CASper) over GPA (and they have to make these other requirements weigh more if they want to cut applicants down to 500-600 for interviews).

It depends on the distribution, and 83% can in fact be a 3.3 if you attended a school that gave out % grades.  It depends entirely on if your academic record is fairly consistent, or if you had periods of strong performance and periods of very poor performance thus making a 3.3 on the GPA scale very plausible correlated to an 83% on the % scale. 



But yes, you are right - by making the GPA cut-off, they acknowledge that they don't care about GPA past that certain extent.  As they obviously have done the math and seen that students entering their program with 3.3 or 3.5 or 3.9  still end up graduating and making it through.  Like you said, they will have to weigh other factors to cut down the number of applicants to an manageable number of interviews.

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On 7/12/2017 at 7:43 PM, Alphalima said:

On another note, to whomever thinks that a 4.0 individual "lacks social skills", please be aware that your patients aren't going to give a damn if you are able to tell them about the amazing fun you had the past weekend socializing with all of your friends, but you can be damn sure they are going to care that you have at least some damn clue about the medicine that will hopefully save their life. There is absolute merit to weighing a 4.0 individual higher than another with a 3.3, 3.4, 3.5

As a staff family physician I have to say I get super frustrated when I hear comments like this. Don't mean to derail the conversation but...

First, most patients present with undifferentiated complaints. History taking is actually a pretty complicated skill. Patients will not always be forthcoming about their symptoms. Other times they'll go off on a tangent that requires you to redirect them onto relevant information. Sure you need to know your medicine to know how to get a strong HPI, but it's just as important to be able to read the non-verbals that the patient is giving you. 

Second, it's rare that there's a single treatment for a particular condition. Often times there are several paths to try and it's critical to know what your patients values and expectations are. The idea of "shared decision making" is getting a ton of traction (and for good reason). Even things as simple as ear infections are now discussed as a "shared decision making" opportunity - antibiotics may or may not be appropriate and many kids will fall into the gray area that requires you to counsel them on the risks and benefits. Same thing goes when patients are asking for inappropriate investigations or when you're dealing with a geriatric patient who might not be a good candidate for XYZ therapy. Communication matters more than your ability to memorize a textbook in these cases.

Third, it's a misconception that you need to know everything about someones condition prior to treating them. I will frequently open Up to Date infront of my patients and review things that are a bit fuzzy. Patients definitely do now expect family doctors to know absolutely everything - however, they do rightfully expect that family doctors will know their limits and know when they don't know something. Having a textbook memorized is a futile exercise unless you can apply that knowledge by communicating effectively with the patient. 

With that said it's rare that I get a student/clerk/resident that has poor communication skills, however, the general premedicine sentiment (and the selection criteria) tends not to weigh communication skills much lower than academic criteria, which I strongly argue against. 

However, I also agree that GPA and communication skills are not mutually exclusive. Take what I said with a grain of salt, it's from a family medicine perspective. I've heard similar sentiments from the academic family medicine staff at the U of C, not sure what the rest of the profession/admissions committee thinks however. 

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On 6/20/2017 at 11:51 PM, YesIcan55 said:

According to an advisor at UofA, along with posts on this forum and others, and from people who have insider knowledge for UofA admissions....next cycle if you are IP and have a 3.3 cGPA, GPA will NO LONGER be considered for interview invites and acceptance ie. person A with a 3.3 and person B with a 4.0 are considered equal. This is absolutely unprecedented for any medical school in this country, but especially for UofA as it has been one of the more GPA-centric schools in the country. The reason they are doing this is because they would rather have a person with a lower GPA and outstanding experiences over someone with a 4.0 who doesnt have much going from them aside to grades. This make sense as medicine is a profession that is built around people skills. For those unfamiliar, for the 4th year IP pool the average accepted GPA has been steadily increasing the past 5 years (except this year) and it has been 3.88. This year the UofA Med School got a new dean who is implanting these changes, and to get an interview the average GPA was 3.80 (avg accepted probably in same range maybe +/-0.02). They also made ECs worth more this cycle than the past. Lets create a thread discussing this huge huge change in admissions. Thoughts? Comments?

My main question that only MCAT and EC and CASPER will be looked at, once GPA is past 3.3- how much of these do you think each will be worth to get an interview?

I think this new approach is really good as it allows people in the 3.3-3.5 category to have a good chance at acceptance, which was close to 0 in the past. It will also stop the flow of kids with 4.0's and weak experiences/ECs/too young. 

Do you know if it's the same for OOP applicants ?

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