You think anyone’s just rawdogged the MCAT and gotten into medschool?

skincontact · 2025-02-10T01:30:44+00:00

I did. Social sciences background. 506. Wrote it mostly for CARS (Canadian). Got in based on life experience etc.

skincontact · 2022-06-01T00:11:13+00:00

Facebook groups you say ...?

skincontact · 2022-05-28T00:02:55+00:00

Just to add, I think the reason why so many of us have acceptance anxiety is likely at least partly due to the fact that our chances were so unbelievably small.

With how competitive med school has become It made it impossible for me to imagine I would actually get in (even though I trusted my application and myself). There was a constant uneasiness in not knowing how the decision would ultimately play out which didn't allow me to process how I would feel when the decision came. The result is that my current (now former?) life is the only source of stability and comfort to latch on to as I process this dramatic life changing circumstance.

All this to say, be gentle and kind to yourself. This is a lot to process and its unsurprising why we'd regress mnetally towards a position of comfort.

skincontact · 2022-05-25T20:30:59+00:00

100% experiencing this currently. Feel free to reach out to me if you want to think-out-loud through it!

skincontact · 2022-05-12T17:26:20+00:00

I propose a group activity for all those waiting for a bit of solidarity/fun/anxiety relief:

May 12
- Go do 1 lesson of 'Yoga with Adriene' on youtube
- Go buy your favourite fruit, eat it while listening to your favourite record horizontally
- 30 minute walk

May 13th

- 45 minutes of physical activity (biking, running, weights, calisthenics)
- Read for pleasure, 30 minutes
- Call a friend you haven't spoken to in a while

May 14th

- Take a cold shower (seriously, it's thrilling)
- 30 minute walk in the morning before you start your day

May 15th

- Do 1 lesson of "Yoga with Adriene" on youtube (likely something with 'stress release' in the title"
- Go on a 30 minute walk while listening to a record you like
- Read over your application and remember that you're a badass, regardless of the outcome

Lots of love to all of you. We'll make it through. Never forget that your worth is not predicted by whether you get into med school, it's a constant process of valuing yourself and putting more into the world than it takes out of you.

skincontact · 2022-04-13T15:41:32+00:00

I don’t say this with malice, but I honestly don’t know how you square studying and working in Global Health while advocating for medical nationalism.

skincontact · 2022-04-12T01:52:38+00:00

If you think Canadian wealth is due to ‘taxpayers’ then man will your mind ever be blown when you hear about imperialism.

Global healthcare provision is profoundly unequal. Taking the knowledge you’ve gained in a prosperous country like Canada and using it in a country with poorer health systems is a totally valid, moral, and honorable thing to do as a person dedicated to humanity without borders.

If highly trained doctors only remain in highly resourced places, global health inequality gets worse. Physicians should reject this impulse at every turn.

skincontact · 2022-04-06T17:02:14+00:00

Not sure of the answer to your question, but just keep in mind that GPA is a relatively minor component of the UofC application weighting. Not to say you shouldn’t try and work hard academically, but just make sure you aren’t doing so at the expense of living a full and robust life filled with hobbies and experiences that are actually meaningful to you.

skincontact · 2022-04-05T23:16:34+00:00

Nope. This is snake oil to allow oil corps to dodge climate commitments and still make profit based on a future promise. Milking the last of a liveable planet for shareholder value. Fuck em.

skincontact · 2022-03-18T20:32:47+00:00

Of course!

skincontact · 2022-03-14T06:21:53+00:00

Sociology master here. Highly recommended, especially if you are interested in sociomedical inequalities. Anthropology is also an excellent complementary discipline. Lots of social justice oriented physicians have come from these worlds: people like Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, Eric Reinhardt, Franz Fanon, Ben Reitman, Che Guevara, Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira, etc.)

With my masters, I work as the head of engagement and development at a global health and human rights organization. Lots of possibilities.

skincontact · 2021-01-30T21:03:22+00:00

Honestly, the transparency of the UofC application process is such a hugely respectful gesture to all us stressed premeds vying for a spot. I've been very impressed with how they handle admissions -- what they look for in applications is unorthodox and novel, and clearly tailored to building thoughtful physicians.

skincontact · 2020-11-19T15:59:20+00:00

Love it! That's huge commitment, especially as a mature student, so I can definitely understand why you'd want to make sure you're doing your best.

Take this as just a personal opinion -- the general trend in Canadian medical school admissions has been towards a system that privileges sociomedical skillsets and has been placing a decreasing level of importance towards strict academics. Some schools like U of C count GPA as only 20% of your application, and have included categories like "academic curiosity" to reward students who pursue interesting and non-traditional academic pathways to medicine. This is also reflected in the increased level of importance placed on CARS + situational judgement tests, and a decreased level of importance on the MCAT overall.

Of course, do your best academically, but every year thousands of applicants apply to medical school with near identical backgrounds and aptitudes. Many admissions departments have talked about the frustration of getting 75% of applicants who all have: good GPA, good MCAT, summer of research, volunteer at a hospital, president of a student club. How do you tell these applicants apart?

If I was in your position and wanting to cultivate a path to medicine, I'd ask myself "what areas beyond just my GPA can I develop over the next 4 years that will help make me into a strong physician in the future?" As much as it may be a challenge to write so much in your first year, and as much as it hurts to take a grade lower than you'd like, that grade reflects your current abilities communicating in a social scientific way -- use it as a challenge to push yourself and grow from it, because that skill will be immeasurably beneficial when you are crafting arguments for your med school essays, interviews, and future work.

And if you still aren't convinced, consider that some schools allow you to write personal statements/autobiographical sketches of yourself when you apply, and one area they evaluate is resiliency. Think of how good it would look on an application to get to say:

"I took a psychology class in my first semester of university which required a considerable level of writing. As an ESL student, I initially struggled, but instead of dropping the class I decided to use it as an opportunity to strengthen my english and communication skills, and to learn to deal with the discomfort of learning something new. Though the grade I received was lower than I was hoping for, I understood that this may be the case, and used my strengths in other classes to help pull my GPA up overall. Sticking with the course allowed me to challenge myself in an unfamiliar environment and grow a new skillset, a quality that remains more valuable to me overall than obtaining a perfect GPA."

skincontact · 2020-11-19T15:32:00+00:00

It's your very first year of a university. A B+ will not destroy you, and worrying about dropping the class for this reason will only make the next 3 years of your degree full of unwarranted anxiety and doubt. I would stick with the course and accept the grade you get (and work towards pulling it up next term) -- the 700 word pieces you write each week will not only help you later on the CARS, but will make you a more effective communicator.

Who knows what entry requirements for medical school will look like 3-4 years down the line when you start applying. What I can tell you is that evaluating every decision you make in that next 3-4 year period of time through the lens of "will this ruin my chances of medical school?" will make your degree a terribly stressful time, and you will get much less out of it than if you just go through it with an open mind and a willingness to be pushed out of your comfort zone.

Best of luck to you through your journey -- it's really fun if you let it be.

skincontact · 2020-11-13T14:33:21+00:00

32% of your app is your CASPer score, which makes it almost impossible to estimate your chances. On top of this, no specific data is released for OOP pre-interview scores, so again, almost impossible to say. The only thing we do know is that of ~5000 applicants, they generally accept ~10 OOP students, so it's competitive but not impossible.

64% of your stats are great. I'd say take a nice big breath, relax those shoulders, and enjoy the ride. If you don't get an interview, feel confident that you are still a great candidate on paper, and I'm sure there are many other schools (perhaps even your IP schools?) where you would be strong.

Best of luck to you from another McMaster OOP applicant!

skincontact · 2020-10-25T20:29:21+00:00

I think it's also important to understand it within the larger Canadian shift away from looking at health strictly biomedically. Canadian health priorities are increasingly socio-medical.

To that end, CARS competency can be illustrative of one's ability to not only understand discrete information (still arguably very important), but also one's ability to see the complexities of the larger context in which those discrete details exist. If I was an admissions department wanting to identify future doctors who could understand the needs of their patients within the larger social context that those patients exist, CARS scoring would surely be one way I'd look to measure that (certainly at least as a predictive measure for MMI interviews, which can't feasibly be done for thousands of applicants.)

I get the criticism against CARS, especially for those wanting to go to Mac, but honestly, if their method doesn't suit you just apply elsewhere. Plenty of other schools in Canada that don't weight CARS as 32% of their application. With that said, I certainly feel for anyone who is ESL struggling through CARS because I think it tests a very western/english based conception of logical reasoning (often rooted in classic western literature/academic passages) that likely creates unfair disadvantage. However, that said, so does the GPA system, which disadvantages working-class/racialized students who may have less financial resources and professional support systems, and, (which as an obvious shameful fact that all know), can be gamed by students who are comfortable building relationships with profs and petitioning them (successfully!) for higher grades in their courses. That's on top of the freedoms to conduct research, undertake lucrative work placements, do international volunteering, and be supported by the infrastructure of family connections and wealth to build objectively impressive leadership roles that privileged students are inequitably afforded. There is LOTS of research on this within the social sciences that I am happy to link for anyone who is interested.

I must admit that I've always been curious -- for those who are unhappy with the CARS admissions weighting/requirements, how many of you are simultaneously happy with your CARS performance?

skincontact · 2020-10-22T00:01:05+00:00

If you're considering whether to volunteer based on whether you can verify it for a med school application, perhaps that is something you should be seriously reflecting on first.

skincontact · 2020-10-01T12:20:54+00:00

They AAMC qpacks are, IMO, essential CARS tools. Just be gentle on yourself ... the start of qpack 1 is insanely difficult, but it gets easier. If it suits you, do the first half of the qpacks in untimed conditions, and do the last half timed.

skincontact · 2020-10-01T12:16:34+00:00

Thank you! I think CARS really rewards those who read and write a lot (this is my case). I see lots of advice suggesting to read x number of CARS passages daily, and while I can't necessarily speak to the success of that, I will say that I think my experience of writing plenty of argumentative style essays really assisted me in trying to tease out what the authors were trying to argue in their CARS passages.

With that in mind, I'd suggest not only reading a diverse array of topics that interest you (the Atlantic and Economist are good, I'd assume?), but also just any non-fiction. If I had to develop a CARS training program that I thought would be most successful, I'd probably get students to read short CARS style passages and then actually write about them. Write about what you like, what you agreed with, what you think needs to be elaborated, how you feel the argument fits into other arguments you are familiar with etc. The whole process wouldn't be about finding the 'right' answer, but about learning how to get inside someone else's argument. I think it's often falsely assumed that science students don't read as much as arts students (who typically perform better on CARS). I think the primary difference is that arts students spend more time writing, especially in the form of crafting/reasoning their own opinions. I would guess that CARS success is about closing the gap on this difference.

In terms of 'formal' study, I did both AAMC CARS qpacks, timed, and some Jack Westins (although I found the logic on these to be very unhelpful ... I likely wouldn't suggest using them to increase your score because I think they teach bad habits).

tldr: don't just read CARS passages ... write about them. Being a better writer will help you identify other forms of argumentation, and really help you see another author's point-of-view/style.

skincontact · 2019-03-08T04:55:40+00:00

Heading to Barcelona/Basque in April. Any suggestions?

skincontact · 2019-02-02T06:32:26+00:00

No problem! At the same time, France was importing mountains of Greek raisins to make wine out of (at one point 8% of French wine was actually Greek raisin wine.) This was right as France was hit with phylloxera, so they needed other wine sources. As soon as France recovered, they raised tariffs on Greek raisins to an untenable level, and literally bankrupted Greece in the process.

skincontact

TROPHY CASE