As many of you have noticed, The Faculty of Medicine has changed the BC Residency Requirements for the MD Undergraduate Program. According to the new definition, applicants are considered BC residents if they hold a currently valid BC CareCard or BC Services Card by the application deadline.
We recognize that some of you are displeased with this new, condensed definition of BC residency and we want you to know that this change was not just for our program, but for all programs within the UBC Faculty of Medicine. In previous years, different programs determined their own definitions of BC residency and the Faculty deemed that it would be optimal to have a single definition that was simple, easy to administer and defensible. The Faculty consulted with all the stakeholders concerned and considered the needs of each program. The decision to have one common criterion of BC residency was made at the highest level, in consultation with UBC Senate and the Government of BC.
This new definition should cover the majority of our applicants, although no definition of BC residency is perfect. Whichever one we have used in the past meant that a few applicants felt disadvantaged and, unfortunately, we do know that this will be the case again. However, this is the definition we will use going forward and we will not be able to make any exceptions. We are sorry that perhaps a few applicants who met our previous definitions will not be considered BC residents under the new criterion, but we do still allow that up to 10% of our seats are available for out-of-province applicants.
So how does this work for members of the Canadian Forces, who don’t have a CareCard or Services Card, because they are taken care of by the military?
For those of you who have contacted us further regarding the change to BC residency requirements, while we respect and sympathise with your concerns, this blog is not really an appropriate place to voice complaints about our process or procedures. It is a forum to provide information and updates to applicants. Please understand that the decision to make the change to our policy on BC residency was not taken lightly and the new criterion is the one we will be using going forward. Should any members of the Canadian Armed Forces apply to our program, we would look at their exceptional circumstances, as we have always done.
Does this new criteria take effect immediately, i.e. for this current application cycle, or will it take effect next year?
The change to the BC residency requirements is effective beginning in the 2013-14 application cycle.