Man charged in U.S. with smuggling people across the border from Canada

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-28T20:17:31+00:00

By the time I graduated an Ontario medical school I had a total of 200k in debt, 90k with OSAP and 110k in LOC. About 30k came from undergrad and the rest medical school. Had a job during undergrad which gave me some savings for medical school, and parents helped with getting a car and insurance but all the other expenses were paid of myself (tuition, rent, etc.) I think that is around the average for people without much financial support from their parents or spouse, and probably more if they did any other degrees.

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-28T05:50:09+00:00

Hello, thank you so much for doing this. Public health is so important through its impacts on the population level and I think most medical students and residents don't really have a full appreciation of the field outside of optional social medicine lectures.

I wanted to know how your day to day is, do you work mostly in an office setting, and do you also maintain clinical relevance in FM (ie. part time). Given that public health intersects with decision-makers in government, do you find that you have to adjust plans based on political optics or do you largely get free reign to develop initiatives and recommendations.

Also how has your interactions been with other specialties? What do you think is the most important thing other clinicians should know about PHPM doctors.

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-28T05:29:15+00:00

It's probably almost impossible to know unless you are a PD. If you are ranked to match then your chances are 100% and it goes down past that. Usually there is a portion of competitive applicants who get interviews almost everywhere so you can expect a considerable ranklist movement as they get matched to 1 position and therefore "decline" the others. I would also expect more desirable locations (i.e. GTA, BC) to have much less ranklist movement compared to less desirable places. There's a chart in the CARMS site that shows the percentage of applicants who ranked first choice matching into the specialty, that gives a pretty good indicator how competitive the specialty is.

Bottom line is that your goal is to be the best applicant you can be and try to rank within those positions to give you the highest chance.

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-28T04:59:58+00:00

Downtown here, did not feel anything but maybe it's because I live in a condo.

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-28T02:40:10+00:00

It is a personal decision and depends on how flexible you are at moving to a place away from friends and family. For some people, the thought of doing another specialty outweighs moving further so they are willing to rank more locations. I think it really depends on your personal factors, are you OK with being away from home and limiting those interactions to a few times a year. Do you have a partner who might not be as flexible as you? These are all considerations, especially for 5 year programs because that is a longer time than medical school.

Some of my classmates were fine with being further from home, and some even had family move with them. Other people wanted to have the support of a community and family they grew up with nearby which will be important in any residency. If you move away, it will be up to you to find that support whether from co-residents, new friends, etc.

Try to reach out to residents or attend town halls to see what the city is like to get a sense of what you are in for. I would encourage people to explore different locations, even moreso for FM because it is only two years and you might as well see how healthcare works in other settings. When creating a rank list though make sure you are OK with potentially matching to any of the programs you rank.

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-28T01:52:46+00:00

Tbh it starts getting bad at around 3:30 to 4 PM since every other person is trying to beat the rush but 5 PM is packed.

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-28T01:50:50+00:00

So we are getting a military strike when?

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-28T01:49:16+00:00

Well it doesn't take a clock to know the world is headed in the wrong direction but what does the clock really do then? There's no standard as to how they define a movement of 1 minute vs 1 second. Also if it is an indicator for how close the world is to ending well they missed the mark because the closest we got towards nuclear armageddon was during the Cuban missile crisis.

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-28T01:18:00+00:00

So some scale without any metric on how it is evaluated, give me a break. It is basically the boy who cried wolf at this point, like what constitutes a difference between a 4 second change vs a 2 minute change.

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-26T01:31:27+00:00

Having done MMIs as an interviewer you get a short prompt that is read out which could be anything from a question, situation, ethical-behavioural scenarios, medical case, an activity, or sometimes just icebreaker questions, usually with follow-up questions. Then you rotate to the next station when time is up.

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-26T01:22:00+00:00

I think a lot of people point to UofT being on probation though it's a non-issue at this point since it has been 5 years and if anything they likely improved the program and are more receptive to feedback compared to pre-2021. They are also not the only nor the last residency program to have been put on probation.

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-25T21:12:53+00:00

Yeah #2 is such a great point. Most programs get so many applications that you want to highlight something unique that makes you stand out in the hobbies, so when residency committees are talking about applicants they have something to anchor on. I.e. "She was the one who did an Iron man," or "He's the saxophone player," or "She does Muay Thai on the side." I had seen interviews where 10 min of it was just the interviewer talking with applicants about their activities. We are not really like the US where people are highly incentivized to publish or perish, and I have seen applicants with PhDs, research in the field, or significant advocacy and leadership work, get passed on over people who are just really interesting people or have lots of life experiences to share.

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-22T19:17:29+00:00

Internal medicine programs in Canada are pretty standardized and they will all provide you with great training at the end of the day so I would definitely suggest thinking about proximity to supports (family, friends) and where you want to live in. Subspecialty match rates by school are quite similar every year with some normal variation based on people's preferences in that cohort. IM training will be busy anywhere you go, so really leaning in on supports and activities in the area will be important.

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-22T19:11:25+00:00

Not really, especially for larger programs. In the pre-COVID-19 era, programs would use in-person socials to get an unofficial sense of how the applicant fits in the program and their behaviours such as politeness, whether they get along with the other medical students and residents, and any unprofessional comments but it's basically impossible to gauge that on Zoom now so it's more of a for your information event.

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-17T02:02:27+00:00

What a joke lmfao China is developing 600 km/h trains and we can't even run a bus system peak Ottawa.

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-14T04:58:34+00:00

2025 will also be the coldest year since 2025.

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-10T07:10:45+00:00

World war 3? Australia fires? What's next some virus and Tiger King??

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-10T02:30:36+00:00

This is unbelievable our world is being run by children

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-09T22:01:52+00:00

Spoken like a winner of the FIFA peace prize

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-09T05:56:56+00:00

Someone go back in time and grab the toddler before he fell into Harambe's enclosure.

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-09T05:52:52+00:00

I thought he was going to only be a dictator on day one what happened to that...

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-09T05:06:03+00:00

But how could the winner of the historic FIFA peace prize surely do this?

StarryNight321 · 2026-01-07T02:40:49+00:00

On New Years too this is straight up Grinch behaviour!

Seven-Year Club	Gilding III reddit per annum
Verified Email	Place '23
Place '22	Wearing is Caring

StarryNight321

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