Why You Should Choose OttawaU Meds

[kaykiddo]

Having had my interview at Ottawa, I'm super excited and can't wait to hear back - been spending (an unhealthy amount of) my free time looking up things about UOttawa - but one thing I'm having trouble finding online is info on student life /associations / groups that we can get involved with.
For example, is there a medical students association, and how do you get involved with this? What are the types of things you can get involved with on campus, outside of the medical curriculum?
I'm also curious about the campus - do we have 24 hour access to the main medical building, are there study rooms/lounges for the medical students within the main building or is our study space the main library?
I'm just curious as to what our space is like - for example, I have a friend at Mac's Waterloo campus, and they essentially have a building to themselves, where they have lectures and classes, but there are also lounges and study rooms dedicated for their use in between, or after hours.
Any insight would be awesome!
Thanks all!

[green_eggs_and_ham]

The Medical Student Association is the Aesculapian Society. You get involved in first year either by running for class president, or else by applying for one of the other positions. Don't worry, there is no shortage of things to get involved in. Most people play on intramural sports teams, participate in special interest groups related to their area of interest, or in other activities (e.g. right now we are preparing for medshow, the annual first year student show). I am fairly certain I could fill up all my time just doing these things, without ever doing any homework.

In terms of campus space, I honestly don't know if we have 24 hour access because I have never tried to come late at night. There is a student lounge, where we generally hang out/eat lunch, as well as study rooms (both in the library and the rooms we do small group learning in). We have our own library on our campus (shared w/ the other programs that are at our campus of course), but some people still prefer to go to the main library (which is at the main campus).

Hope this answers your questions!

[kaykiddo]

Thanks! that does help.
Also just have a few technical questions about Ottawa's curriculum as well, for anyone who doesn't mind answering.
What's the difference between CBL and PBL?
Are classes pass/fail at UO, or are they assigned marks?
I also keep reading a lot about how there are "afternoons off" during the week - is this a trade off for more independent study..or is this just a myth all together?

Thanks!

[green_eggs_and_ham]

Since I have never done PBL, I can't directly comment on this, but I'm pretty sure that in PBL you are not given objectives that need to be accomplished during the session, and must spend time coming up with them yourselves as a group. In CBL, we get a list of the objectives that should be covered, so if they are not completely covered by our discussion of the case, we can go back and discuss them after.

You get a mark back for exams, but only you will see that mark. All of the marks for the semester are calculated into a final mark, which determines whether you pass or fail the semester. Your transcript will just indicate a pass or a fail.

If you are applying to the English stream, you pretty much do get afternoons off. In first year, we are done at 12:30 every day except for Thursday (when we have clinical skills in the afternoon). I wouldn't say this is necessarily a "trade-off" because we cover the vast majority of required material in class, but it may happen at a faster pace than you are comfortable with and may then require more background reading. I choose to spend most of my afternoons studying, but I have a lot of classmates that spend a lot of their time doing 10-hour electives.