Saturday, December 5, 2009

Recent Articles on Med School Admissions

Saturday, December 5, 2009
http://www.cbc.ca/news/citizenbytes/2009/12/doctor_shortage_a_medical_stud.html
[In a nutshell: Girl thinks it's too competitive to get into a Canadian med school, goes off overseas to go to med school. Worries about not being able to come back to Canada to practice. B***hes about it.]

http://www.globecampus.ca/in-the-news/globecampusreport/perfectly-qualified-but-cant-get-in/
[In a nutshell: The Globe and Mail talks about how hard it is to get into medicine nowadays. How you have to be super smart as well as really well-rounded. They cite an example of a World Champion Jump-Rope Skipper in Dalhousie.]

My thoughts: Yes, they are both correct that med school is actually insanely difficult to get into nowadays. There is more than certainly a balance of luck, academic intelligence, charisma, and extra-academic qualities that must be fulfilled. People miss admissions by a sliver every year.

The upside to all this: Yes it is ridiculous to get in; however, once you make it in, you get to work with and learn from a group of amazing peers. Working with each other for the next 4 years will give you an opportunity to learn all that your colleagues have learned and thus make you a better doctor. When you pack in 100-200 of people like this into a classroom and allow them to work closely with each other for 3-4 years, you'll be surprised as to the amount you will learn from each other and the things that you will achieve. For example, in every med school throughout Canada, not only do the students learn how to be doctor, but if you check it out, med students are really well involved. They run ridiculous amounts of charity work and extra-curricular activities.

I really have been noticing that my classmates are very well-rounded people. I mean this in the sense that, had they not gone into medicine but rather into business, or law, or research, they would also have led very successful careers. I think that med school admissions have become more-so like this since the late 90s and it will truly be interesting to see what these people will bring into the world. Many of these doctors are finishing up their residencies now and beginning to become fully fledged doctors, it will be a wonder to see what these emerging doctors will do in our society. (You can see much evidence of it now already, for my fellow med students out there, I'm sure you've noticed a lot of the people involved in your medical education are actually fairly young and were admitted around that time frame. Many of them go onto do research, or fight for policies, etc).

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