U of A vs. Western for OT

[MultipleMeltdowns]

I am feeling really torn between Western and U of A for OT and I am running out of time to decide. I would love to hear opinions from a number of people in order to get a more representative sample of the student experience.

[lp1000]

I can only speak for uofa so let me know if there's anything specifically you want to know about. I like the school and plan on working in Alberta. That's often a big deciding factor for people because you are more likely to make connections in the province you go to school in thus have better job opportunity there. But obviously there are exceptions to this. 

 

[MultipleMeltdowns]

I have a couple questions, if you wouldn't mind answering.

1. How have you found the professors? e.g. good lecturers, fair markers

2. Do you have any complaints about the program?

3. Is there a large representation of students from BC?

[lp1000]

1. This is tough to answer, I think all of the professors vary greatly. Within any program you will have some that are amazing and inspire you. Others leave more to be desired. I would say overall that the professors are good at what they do. 

To answer the next part of your question, again it's hard to generalize. I think a big thing that I learned this year was that there often is not clear cut criteria for marking (I would say this is more evident in second term). This is intentional albeit frustrating at times. The program emphasizes that you won't always have a guideline and I was challenged by this because it was much different than my undergraduate experience. With that being said, this style of teaching and some ambiguity helps you start to learn how to 'think' like an OT, and how to use clinical reasoning. 

Final point to all of this above is that although they say grades don't matter at this point, my grades I would say have been about the same as my undergraduate degree. So I think for the most part they mark fairly especially understanding and marking to the stage of the program we are in. Ie) the quality of  first term chart notes would score a lot worse in second term because there is an expectation for learning/improvement. 

2. I guess one of my complaints is not knowing about fieldwork placements early enough in my opinion. We don't usually find out where our placements are until about 6 weeks (I think) before you start. Which is not a lot of time to organize for housing if you need to go rural or to another city. 

They do really try to take into account our feedback and we had a townhall to give suggestions for change. 

Another thing that you will need to get used to which suck are 3 hr classes. Again this was the worst mostly in second semester, we had multiple classes that were 3 hrs once a week. I don't think that will change unfortunately. 

This isn't a negative but to speak about your earlier comment about profs and if marking is fair... We have A LOT of guest speakers that come in to teach us about their speciality topics. Especially for 583/584 (human systems or something), this is great because you get working OTs that are experts in their field coming to lecture. BUT the crappy thing about that is the finals are compiled content that is done by the course coordinator and feel a little disjointed. But to add to that, any tests or questions that don't preform well, the profs or department will add marks if it is deemed a bad question. So don't stress! They want to see us all succeed, even though it's stressful when a test doesn't go the best, at the end of the day you will graduate and be an OT! 

3. So MANY PEOPLE ARE FROM BC. haha we have tons of students from there I'd say like 30-40% of the cohort but that's a guess. I think it's important to know that it is VERY expensive to try to enter the lottery system to go to BC for a placement. Last time I heard it was almost about $500 (rounding up) to even get your name on a list to get a BC placement and it's non refundable and no guarantee. I don't even think you can put your name down for a specific town or city(i could be wrong on that). I think that was a major disappointment for people hoping to go home. 

Whether you go to uofa or western this will likely be the same, the only people that really can get BC placements that won't cost a lot of money are UBC students. This could change but it seems like every year it is getting more expensive and less opportunities to do placement there. 

 

PHEW. That was long, hopefully it answered your questions let me know if you have anymore, I am happy to help. 

[lp1000]

In case anyone in the future reads this, currently bc application is $375. You are on a lottery system to get an application and can rank different cities that you would be able to go to. So don't worry if you do get the chance to go to bc they will only send you to one of those towns.