Rise in competition last 5 years

[sleepyhead20]

6 hours ago, Coronaxtra said:

Mac life sci has grade inflation too. A friend of mine took 12 environment science courses that were bird (natural disasters, water??) and had a 3.94 gpa. Sure he worked hard but with courses as simple as this, it’s no wonder gpa keeps going up year after year. And mind you, you can complete pre reqs like orgo and physics over the summer not factoring into your gpa in most schools when applying for med/dent/etc

Interesting... and that is a good point that you bring up. There are ways for students to get around prereqs without those courses affecting their GPAs. This probably speaks more to how strategies used have only helped to contribute to the grade inflation. 

[Snowmen]

8 hours ago, marrakech said:

MED-P didn't but University level did for sure.  There are very few OOP spots, so any changes there wouldn't be a big deal.  It definitely did improve accessibility and also as a result GPA became more important.  In general though, MCAT seems to be less important in Canadian admissions recently.  

I'm pretty sure IPs with an undergraduate degree could write it and it would be considered if it improved their chances but wouldn't otherwise and it wasn't mandatory. It's been that way for quite some time.

[Haribo7173]

^That's the case now. Prior to 2010, it was mandatory. 

http://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/node/16215

[NutritionRunner]

20 hours ago, goleafsgochris said:

I legit did not know the PT entrance average was that high.  Don't get me wrong its a good career...but its more than a little bizarre to think that an extra 0.1 GPA can be the difference between 60-80k/year and 200k/year, EVERY YEAR FOR LIFE in medicine (after residency obviously).  Like think about that, your lifetime earnings will likely triple based on...0.1 GPA.  (I'm sure someone will respond to this that "there are some ppl just passionate about PT over medicine", which is honestly a dumb argument although I know it will be made)

It’s not a dumb argument.  Plenty of people in allied health are very happy with their careers and never considered medicine at all (obviously some of them did consider medicine, but either didn’t get in or changed their minds).  I’m one of those people who changed their minds, mainly due to three factors: 1. Suffering not one, but three severe concussions, and no longer able to handle sleep deprivation well at all. 2. Talking to attending physicians, residents, and clerks, and realizing that I would not actually enjoy either the training process nor the uncertainty of where I would end up for training and then my first job after training (geographically limited due to family commitments). 3. Finding an allied health career that I was passionate about, and paid plenty enough to keep me living very comfortably, living debt-free, being able to afford my hobbies, and being able to take vacation twice a year.  You don’t need $200,000 year to live very comfortably in many places in Canada.  $60-80,000 per year is more than enough, especially if you are married to someone who makes just as much (or more) and if you don’t have children.  Now, if you have children, that’s another matter, as raising kids can be very expensive, depending on where you live. But not everyone wants or has children either.  A DINK (double income no kids) couple, each making $80,000 per year, can live very comfortably in smaller cities (i.e. not the GTA or Vancouver, but somewhere like Kingston, Kitchener, London, Halifax, etc.) Oh, and some of us actually prefer smaller cities. I could never live in a place like Toronto or Vancouver - too large, too many people, too much noise, too crowded, etc.  Even Ottawa is getting too big for my tastes!  Not everyone wants the same things out of life, and not everyone in allied health was gunning for medicine.

[Fakedoctor]

there's really no "one" reason, its a multitude of factors that are making it more competitive; increased access to information (internet etc), better high schooling and a weaker job market for new graduates in other fields and increased demand for HCP have all caused people to want to go into something thats stable and secured. @PhD2MD is also totally right people are playing the GPA game way more/better then before, not that there's anything wrong with striving to be more competitive but it has consequences when it comes to entrance averages.  

To add another example, I know that the average for interviewed applicants at uoft for dentistry has also gone up by around 0.02 every year for the last couple, thankfully I got in this year because if the averages keep going the way they are I don't know if I would still be competitive in 2-3 years time.  

[Edict]

On 3/30/2018 at 0:39 PM, jna1929 said:

What happened in the past 5 or so years?

How come admission to all medical/health based programs (medicine, PT, OT, etc...) keeps getting more competitive, at least in Ontario?

Look at UofT PT.. in 2008 entering class GPA was 3.77 and in 2018 it is 3.89... McMaster OT.. cutoff was 3.59 in 2014 but 3.72 in 2017..UofT medicine... entering class average was 3.92 in 2012.... 3.96 in 2015...

What is happening here? What changed in the past 5 years for this radical rise in competition? It has not been happening with law.. only medical/health programs.

As far as I know there has been no significant change in immigration patterns, so why has it got so much more competitive?

it is ridiculous. with today's GPA requirements for OT/PT, one could have gotten into medical school just a few years ago.

What is happening that there are so many more qualified undergraduate students?

I mean it is still reasonable though, except for the top medical schools. You don't need to be a genius to get a high GPA, just above average intelligence. You also need to choose your undergraduate school and major carefully, know how to study effectively and interact with those grading your work properly, and put in the hours.

Personally I fulfilled all the above and ended up with a 3.92. If I studied my absolute best perhaps I could have reached a 3.94, but I think 3.94 is the most you can "guarantee" by doing your part (all of what I listed above). To get above 3.94, you either need luck or you need to be exceptionally intelligent. A 3.94 will get you in almost any program (assuming your other components are sufficient), except the top medical schools such as U of T (but apparently as early as 2014 it was sufficient).

I am just wondering what the entering class averages were in the 90s and early 2000s? Does anybody know? I bet U of T medicine required like a 3.8.

Applications have been dropping though. They peaked in 2015. The GPA rise is probably due in part to grade inflation. Grade inflation is rampant in high schools and now it is hitting universities. 

Even GPA while rising has been pretty stable last two years. 

The other thing to mention is that we are at the peak of the echo boom, 2012 had the highest number of high school students graduating from Ontario high schools ever. 

[silver_08]

My issue with grade inflation is that it has eroded the meaning of objective standards now, and has just simply raised the competition. A GPA of 3.9 used to be extremely impressive and set you apart from your competition. Now factors like GPA become less objective when essentially everyone has a 3.9+, the range of grades applying for professional schools has now narrowed. If universities aren't brave enough to tackle grade inflation, there's really no other way to resolve this issue other than to introduce more subjective criteria for admissions (much to the chagrin of many applicants).

What irks me as well about something like medical school, is the devaluing of the MCAT for admissions, and the shift torwards GPA (look at UofT having low cut-offs and McGill eliminating it as a requirement). If anything this is a standardized test written by all applicants to medical school, everyone is subjected to the same stress and circumstances under extremely controlled test conditions. GPA has now become so subjective. Recent efforts by schools such as UofA and UofC to focus less on GPA and evaluate life experiences is promising. UofC even has a section for their admissions criteria called Global Academic Assessment, which looks at the quality of the degree you took, and what sort of courses you took, and the rest of your MCAT (because they look at CARS separately). Anecdotal story, but I know a friend who likely missed admission to UofC during one of the years he applied because he had an extremely low score on this section (because he decided to take a bunch of 'bird' courses in the year leading up to his potential admission). 

At the end of the day, grade inflation just hurts us all, and devalues the meaning of a postsecondary education. 

[jna1929]

On 4/4/2018 at 2:29 PM, silver_08 said:

My issue with grade inflation is that it has eroded the meaning of objective standards now, and has just simply raised the competition. A GPA of 3.9 used to be extremely impressive and set you apart from your competition. Now factors like GPA become less objective when essentially everyone has a 3.9+, the range of grades applying for professional schools has now narrowed. If universities aren't brave enough to tackle grade inflation, there's really no other way to resolve this issue other than to introduce more subjective criteria for admissions (much to the chagrin of many applicants).

What irks me as well about something like medical school, is the devaluing of the MCAT for admissions, and the shift torwards GPA (look at UofT having low cut-offs and McGill eliminating it as a requirement). If anything this is a standardized test written by all applicants to medical school, everyone is subjected to the same stress and circumstances under extremely controlled test conditions. GPA has now become so subjective. Recent efforts by schools such as UofA and UofC to focus less on GPA and evaluate life experiences is promising. UofC even has a section for their admissions criteria called Global Academic Assessment, which looks at the quality of the degree you took, and what sort of courses you took, and the rest of your MCAT (because they look at CARS separately). Anecdotal story, but I know a friend who likely missed admission to UofC during one of the years he applied because he had an extremely low score on this section (because he decided to take a bunch of 'bird' courses in the year leading up to his potential admission). 

At the end of the day, grade inflation just hurts us all, and devalues the meaning of a postsecondary education. 

It varies based on the university/program/course. I have a 3.92 GPA and it DOES mean something because all of my classes had averages of C+ and at most some had B. I don't think I ever had a single class in which more than 20% of the class got higher than B+, usually it was around 10-15%. That is not grade inflation. However, I saw the transcript of a friend who was in another program and I noticed that several of their upper year courses had class averages of B+.

Also, there are some courses/profs that inflate grades. I know people who got A+ in several subjective essay based courses in other classes/other universities. Yet I finished with an A and when I talked to my prof I was told that I got the highest percentage grade in the class, but I was also told that nobody had ever been given an A+ in that course. I also know people who got 100% on big assignments in some upper year courses. How could you possibly demonstrate 100% perfection on a large 20 or 30% of the course project?

[Wartortle]

I agree with Edict.

[immortal.milkboy]

I agree with jna1929. There are too many confounding factors to say for sure that grade inflation, the Flynne affect, amount of high-school graduates, job prospects, etc. contribute in any meaningful way. At this point, all we have are speculations. The statistics show nothing else but upward trends. I'm not saying that it's wrong to speculate, I really enjoyed reading other people's guesses, but we don't really have much to go on.

 

It is an interesting topic of discussion though. Makes one think.

[Crash Bandit]

On 4/10/2018 at 5:28 AM, immortal.milkboy said:

I agree with jna1929. There are too many confounding factors to say for sure that grade inflation, the Flynne affect, amount of high-school graduates, job prospects, etc. contribute in any meaningful way. At this point, all we have are speculations. The statistics show nothing else but upward trends. I'm not saying that it's wrong to speculate, I really enjoyed reading other people's guesses, but we don't really have much to go on.

 

It is an interesting topic of discussion though. Makes one think.

Agree with this completely.