It is only two days before site preference forms are due and we understand that some applicants are still somewhat uncertain about site selection and if the sites they rank will affect their chances of admission. This has come up before in previous years and to confirm, site selection does not affect your admissibility to the program. Although we have always said that, it appears that there are doubters. However, to reiterate, admission and site placement are two quite separate processes.
The site preference form you submit is not made available to the Admissions Selection Committee, who are also blinded to applicants’ names and gender. The decision to admit someone is based on committee consensus after discussion of all the various components of the file (in no particular order: academic ability, performance on the MMI, reference letters and so forth).
Following final selection meetings, the Admissions Office goes through the list of accepted applicants and places them to sites within the program. This second step is where your site preference comes in to play. Our commitment is to try to offer admissible applicants a position in our program at a site where they will be happy studying and living. How site placement works is like this: When we (the Admissions Office) moves through the list of applicants and comes to your name, we look at your first site of preference, if it is full, we put you at your second site of preference, if that is full, third, etc. If you are placed at any site other than your first preference, you will be wait-listed for your preferred site(s). If we cannot place you, and you have been deemed admissible, you will be wait-listed.
Even when the committee is deliberating about who is admissible to the Northern Medical Program, they are blinded to site preference. What could be an issue is if you highly rank the Northern Medical Program (NMP) but you did not complete the Rural Training section of the application. As stated in the application help guide, “The NMP is seeking applicants with a genuine interest in learning medicine in the context of rural, remote, and northern communities.” If you didn’t fill out the Rural Training section of the application, you will not be considered for the NMP, even if you rank it as your first choice.
We would also like to mention here that students admitted to all the distributed sites are comparable in terms of their academic and nonacademic abilities. There is absolutely no basis for the perception that perhaps it is “easier” to get in to one of the sites if you have a lower academic average.
If you are still trying to decide how to rank your preferences and wondering if there is some “strategy” you should use, please, do not do so. It is a mistake to try and second guess the process or rank the sites in any order other than the one you truly prefer. If you absolutely do not want to, or cannot go to one of the distributed sites, it is very important for you to indicate “no interest.” Understand that after the deadline applicants will not be permitted to re-rank sites, irrespective of any change in life circumstances.
Is there a separate pool for the NMP?
Only in the sense that only those applicants who complete the Rural Training section on the application are considered for the NMP. Sorry for the late reply on this, by the way!
Hi!
Not sure where the appropriate place to post this is. I was just looking at your in province criteria. Is there any expectation of it changing back to previous years? I grew up in BC and only left the province for the past year and a half to work in Alberta. I still considered myself a BC resident in many ways as my home address is there with family still living there. However, I gave up my BC MSP as that is what is expected when you reside in another province for a period of time. It just feels unfair that someone could live in BC for a few months, obtain a care card and apply as IP. Had I known I would have kept my BC MSP coverage and paid the premiums just to keep this IP status.
The current BC resident requirement was conceived in the highest levels of administration and was implemented to harmonize residency definitions among all Faculty of Medicine programs (please see this post for more information). At this time we do not anticipate a return to our previous definitions, but we do review the definitions periodically so they may change sometime in the future.
As to your specific situation, while most applicants remain BC residents under the new requirement, any change means some people are advantaged while others are disadvantaged. It’s unfortunate you fall into the latter category, but please note that we expect applicants to be honest about their residency situation both with us and with MSP. We do not endorse maintaining MSP coverage to gain in-province status if you do not actually meet the eligibility requirements for MSP.