Killing Time

Three questions:
1) Does anyone know how many people were interviewed this year?
2) Any ideas about the number of spots available for this fall?
3) Does anyone have a time machine or a chrystal ball I can borrow to see what will happen in the 1st week of June :eek ?

Hi Melissa:

1. Approximately 400 -- according to www.fhs.mcmaster.ca/mdpro...ssions.htm -- but that link also says a class of 100-110. I'd bet they interviewed a few more this year because the class is going to be larger.

2. The rumour I heard was: 138 (last year it was 128 - www.fhs.mcmaster.ca/mdpro...s_2004.PDF ).

3. I'm looking for a crystal ball too! If you find one let me know.

Cheers!

i heard the magic 138 being spoken this year too - big enough for mac to need to look around for a lecture room with greater capacity.
+ schools normally send out extra acceptance letters (under the rightful assumption that many applicants will accept elsewhere)
+ of the waiting list letters, many will get in
= 200+ acceptances
so just looking at the stats, we probably have more than a 50% chance at this point!! of course, this number will change for each person depending on how strong you feel your application is. for those who also interviewed at queen's, we worked out the probability to be about 50% when i was up there talking with the 1st years. queen's has a slightly smaller program than mac but it's more likely you'll make it off the waiting list.

The latest "unofficial" news I am aware of is that the class size should be 138 (10 more than this year). Contrary to the reasonable assumption that more students would therefore be interviewed, this infact is not the case. I believe that the number of people interviewed this year was very slightly below 400. Good luck for all of you out there who are waiting. I know how horribly anxious those next two months are going to be, and there is nothing anybody can say that will make them less so. However, try to stay positive, and keep your mind on other (more pleasant things) as much as you can. Cheers.

Gucio93:
Could you please tell me if med school at Mac is very unstructured, relaxing, not competitive atmosphere, lot of PBL and "it is really up to you" attitude? Thx.

Jennifer - Even though your question was to Gucio, I can try to answer as well...

Nothing is really absolute... Your Mac experience if very dependent on how you learn... It is more unstructured than many of the traditional schools but definitely has a lot of structure and a lot of evaluation exercises and a can be very busy -- depending on how you decide to use the opportunities here. Some fill the nonscheduled time with lots of electives, some fill it with research and others fill it with all sorts of other activities, everyone fills it with a heck of a lot of studying because you need to do a lot of work outside of these structured activities in order to learn the basics behind medicine... So while it looks like there is a lot of "free" time, it usually gets pretty filled up

I have found the programme to be relaxing because it allowed me to learn the way I like to learn as opposed to the stress of learning in a large classroom by lectures (which always drove me batty!)... Others find it very anxiety-provoking as there isn't someone telling you exactly what you need to know and what you don't... so it does depend on how you like to learn

Competition is really dependent on who you talk to. As you really depend on your fellow students at Mac for a supportive learning environment and are working closely with them, a non-competitive atmosphere is fostered. I have heard a couple of people say that there is some subtle competition between people gunning for some of the more competitive surgery specialities, comparing experience in the OR, which staff they have worked with etc --- but I'm not interested in surgery and haven't run into it at all, so it is really hearsay...
I have not experienced very much competition amongst my classmates at all - completely the opposite.

Lots of PBL? Definitely - the whole programme is PBL - in order to get into Mac you need to demonstrate that you really understand the concept of PBL as it was designed here (note: don't talk to people at other schools as PBL means something very different to most other schools)... I would check out some of the the articles listed on the admissions webpage -- it will give you a better idea of what PBL at Mac is all about...

If you have more questions, please feel free to post!


Hope that helps.

Well said Carolyne! I completely agree and only wanted to add that I also find the atmosphere to be very collaborative and non-competitive. People freely share resources and on the whole you can rely on your colleagues to help you learn. There are a couple of "competitive" personalities in our class, but I'm sure that would happen in any school and it's the overall picture you want to look at. I also wanted to emphasize Carolyne's point about the relaxaed/anxiety-provoking learning environement. You really have to do some serious introspection and make sure that you are the type of person that is very comfortable with self-assessment and self-evaluation. You have to rely on yourself and your knowledge of own strenghts and limitations in terms on what depth you go in to when learning new information. Usually, there is nobody there to look over your shoulder and tell you that you definitely need to brush up more on specific topics - it is up to you. So if you do rely on external standards for evaluation -Mac will probably be anxiety producing, but if you rely on internal standards, you'll probably experience some mild (motivational) anxiety, but on the whole you'll have a wonderful med school experience.

I've always been under the assumption that Mac would need to send out a relatively low number of extra admissions offers compared to the other Ontario schools, due to its reputation. It seems to me like if a student gets multiple acceptances, U of T or Mac tend to be the most common choices, due to reputation (deservedly, or not is purely subjective). Because Mac has such a unique program and probably is fairly efficient at selecting those interviewees who truly want to learn from such a program (rather than those who are applying to Mac as an ill-conceived backup), I would imagine that they must interview a large number of students who have Mac as a first choice. Not that there is anything wrong with any of the other Ontario/Canadian schools, but to the undergrad student, Mac and U of T seem to have glistering reputations with unique qualities that we can clearly understand, whereas some of the other schools may not be as well appreciated for their respective strengths, and therefore need to accept a higher number or students to fill each seat. Anyone else know if this is somewhat true?

A comment to Onionsneakers, you mentioned that Queen's students suggested that you had a nearly 50% probability of being accepted. How was this justified? From the stats on the Queen's forum, it seems more like a 30% probability or so. Is there something I'm missing?

Hi m:

I think many <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--> do<!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> apply to McMaster as a back-up. One person I interviewed with told me they'd probably go elsewhere if they got in elsewhere, because they'd prefer a more structured learning environment.

50-50 seems reasonable. I don't know the exact numbers for McMaster--but I do know the numbers for U of T (which I read somewhere on a U of T web page has a high number of acceptances per offer). Last year U of T made 271 offers for 198 seats. If the offers to acceptances ratio for McMaster is the same they should be sending out about 189 offers ( 138*(1 + ( 271-198 )/198 )=188.88 ) this year. That works-out to 47% chance (189/400*100%=47.25%), if you assume there were 400 interviews.

Take Care, medwant2b

HTML Comments are not allowed