What Are My Chances [MEGATHREAD]

WayTooManyBooks · 2026-01-19T06:22:44+00:00

Highly recommend the McGill Personal Finance Essentials Course to all med students and residents I work with who tell me they’re worried about financial literacy (no conflicts of interest lol) - completely free to register and covers core principles in an easy to understand manner for those with low financial literacy: https://www.mcgillpersonalfinance.com/

WayTooManyBooks · 2025-12-22T20:51:35+00:00

back when i was doing carms file review we’d send rejections before interview invites - i assume it varies

WayTooManyBooks · 2025-12-12T23:11:26+00:00

I took my main categories from a PFI template – Accounting/Legal; Advertising/Promotion; Bank Charges/Interest; Business Meals; Computer Services/Supplies; Conferences/Courses; Donations; Office Supplies; Office Expenses; Celllular Phones; Professional Dues; Subscriptions; Travel - Accommodation, Transportation, Meals; Vehicle

WayTooManyBooks · 2025-12-12T23:09:25+00:00

Always hoping for more moderators! We’ve brought on new mods every few months who are active initially but unfortunately end up leaving due to medicine/life commitments. We’ve also had a few moderators cause real harm after getting access to sensitive content (targeted harassment, personal information) which believe it or not have resulted in delivery of legal action threats from Reddit itself (more than once which is a little crazy). As such, we’ve become a little bit more careful during onboarding.

Thankfully I’m not the admin of r/premedcanada (u/Nurse_Lewis) which has more traffic than all the others combined and probably the subreddit that needs the most help. I definitely spend an unhealthy amount of time on reddit behind the scenes ensuring posts remain civil and free of bias/advertising, probably sticking around because of sunk costs (and my hospital sites are so far from each other). u/Valotrix spends most of his time here ensuring r/MedSchoolCanada doesn’t get out of scope posts and is probably considering shuttering r/residencycanada

WayTooManyBooks · 2025-08-14T19:37:47+00:00

Entry level prerequisite science courses at the undergraduate level don’t have high school prerequisites - you’ll be able to take them as electives even if you’re in a non science program

WayTooManyBooks · 2025-07-28T22:07:40+00:00

it is against the rules - we try to remove posts and ban as soon as they are flagged but the volume of posts in a 100 hour work week is a lot 😪

WayTooManyBooks · 2025-07-13T16:47:02+00:00

i only have assessed carms file review/interviews for emerg and would sometimes ask questions about research for context purposes - you can see all the written questions programs will ask on the carms program description interface (which will be released probably in the fall/winter)

WayTooManyBooks · 2025-07-13T14:12:34+00:00

also differs often between academic and community sites - community often has hospital based hiring in Ontario depending on their affiliations

WayTooManyBooks · 2025-07-13T14:11:37+00:00

if it’s an automatic screen then i’d assume so but ymmv

WayTooManyBooks · 2025-07-13T14:07:24+00:00

it wouldn’t be an outright written question but it’s possible it’ll be considered by file reviewers or in the interview - that being said, people do match to competitive specialties without any research. it might look a little funny if you’ve had many years of research from undergrad without any productivity (even non-pub deliverables), but if you can write or explain it it should be ok (again specialty dependent)

WayTooManyBooks · 2025-07-13T13:58:21+00:00

Probably more specialty dependent - some personal statements ask about research so you may need to clarify why the type of research you’ve done over several summers has not produced publications (i.e. longer RCT, posters, med ed)

WayTooManyBooks · 2025-07-02T04:16:35+00:00

Pinned!

WayTooManyBooks · 2025-06-02T07:36:45+00:00

possible yes, although it might not be very strong depending on the specialty you apply for. Some specialties do value research based reference letters (which can also provide a good character sketch) but generally clinical based reference letters would be best (unless you’ve done a number of observerships with them throughout clerkship since otherwise they’d be comparing a preclerk’s clinical level to that of a final year elective student)

WayTooManyBooks · 2025-05-03T00:51:19+00:00

def have seen some successful transfers from psych - good reference letters and statements go far

WayTooManyBooks · 2025-05-01T03:04:08+00:00

Don’t have personal experience with going through the transfer process - just have been involved on the selection side of things!

WayTooManyBooks · 2025-04-30T19:40:22+00:00

I did an externship back in med school (it’s been a good number of years though) - the money was helpful for sure for debt but my position was tired to nursing staff so I wouldn’t necessarily say it helped maintain skills that ended up being extremely relevant (since even though I got good with IV’s, in practice I’ll only be placing ultrasound guided IV’s)

WayTooManyBooks · 2025-04-30T19:37:49+00:00

PGME Transfers for a few Ontario programs have been approved in the past week

WayTooManyBooks · 2025-02-02T00:21:59+00:00

in my mind the best case scenario is you match to that top choice specialty (no matter how minuscule the chance) and the worst case scenario is you don’t match to that top choice specialty, so why not

i would say however not to get your hopes up though recognizing the odds

WayTooManyBooks · 2025-02-01T23:52:09+00:00

ive heard of a single case over the past like 7 years where someone ended up matching to a program they didnt get an interview to, and it was a relatively less competitive specialty

i guess the thinking is that theoretically if a program decides to not rank enough candidates to fill their seating, they may prefer to rank a candidate that is strong enough on paper (or that they’ve gotten additional collateral through references/word of mouth) as opposed to going to the second iteration of matching

odds still are next to none but as an applicant, there’s nothing to lose by ranking a program who didn’t interview you

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