Med Students

[Guest aneliz]

Well, you obviously didn't fail the first year OSCE...seeing as they let you into second year! :b

[Guest lcloh]

Good grief.. I'm impressed by the whole thread of "Who has the most interesting story in getting into med school" deal here...

 

My personal story.. I signed up for the MCAT for fun.. didn't realize it was an 8 hour test... and miraculously signed up for it after my second-year... who woulda thunk that was the right time to do it...? I didn't think I was going into medicine.. at a bar one night, drunk, my friend and I, he jotted down OMSAS's website on a napkin and when I came to after an alcohol-induced nap that night I decided to check it out.. discovered wow, there are online applications for this thing. signed up for a user ID and promptly forgot about it.

 

MCAT rolled around... i started doing tons of practice tests after taking an "oh-my-god-you're-a-gonna-die" weekend course courtesy of Oxford Seminars... then throughout the rest of the application process i relied on my friends to tell me when the deadlines were and exactly what to do, since i had no idea what i was doing... no Black Book of Canadian Medical Schools for me and no Ian Wong's forums either!

 

i got interviews at Mac, Queen's and Western later that year.. didn't even know the programs.. i didn't know Mac was a weird interview, i just thought it was gonna be a four-hour day for.. well.. no reason whatsoever? i show up... get shown this video.. i'm like what is this? huh?.... being Western centric it was odd that I was surprised to learn that there was a medical school two floors below me (i used to live on the third-floor in the biochemistry department)

 

I never went to any of the tours or social events, I never talked to any of the upper-year med students (not because I'm socially inept, but because I didn't see the point - damn man, I had exams to study for and council work to do!), I didn't e-mail my med-student contact... I was pretty much the token anomalous interviewee who showed up for the info session, off to the interview, and out of town 10 minutes post....

 

with everything considered i think it was pretty amazing i actually got first-round at Western and waitlist at the other two... i really blundered through the application process but somehow made it!

 

anyway... me posting this story in relation is to highlight something.. whether we intend to or not, we medical students have a tendency for shameless self-promotion and all of us are no exception... UWOMEDS2005 pointed that out... even in failure, hardship, difficulty... we look to show how well we've failed!

 

but anyway, i do agree.. you can't make sweeping generalizations that everyone in med school planned to get in that way... in fact i would much argue the opposite... those who planned med school for their whole lives could potentially be the most likely to fail, because they've thought of all the things that could go wrong and it might be a self-fulfilling prophecy...

 

that having been said, i just broke my own logic.. you can't make generalizations, full stop. 'nuff said.

 

Cheers!

 

Edited to add "No forums either!"