We know that many of you are eagerly waiting for us to announce COVID-19 related policy adaptations for this admissions cycle, as well as when the application will be open this year. We are incredibly grateful for your patience during this time. We are sorry to say that due to systems beyond our control we are delayed in making these announcements. At the present time we are hopeful that we will be able to open the application and inform you of policy adaptations in early July. We will update you as soon as we can.
In the interim, we encourage you to begin collating the materials you will need to apply. One piece of information that can take a long time to collect is verifier information. For the non-academic activities, employment history, and rural and remote suitability sections of the application, you will be asked for the contact information for someone who can verify your experiences. This includes their name, their title as it relates to the activity listed, their email address and phone number. For example, if you were the captain of a basketball team in university, you will need to collect the contact information for your coach. We highly recommend that you contact all of your verifiers in advance of submitting your application and ask them if they would be willing to verify your experiences.
Another way to begin preparing for your application is to list your activities as they fall into the following categories:
- Leadership experiences (maximum 3)
- Service experiences (maximum 3)
- Experiences highlighting your capacity to work with others (maximum 5)
- Experiences highlighting your hobbies, interests, or talents aka “diversity of experiences” (maximum 10)
- Awards, rankings or honours in an “area of human endeavour” (maximum 3)
- Employment activities
Additionally, if you are interested in applying for one of our northern or rural positions (all 32 positions at the Northern Medical Program, up to 10 positions at the Southern Medical Program, and up to 2 positions at the Island Medical Program), we encourage you to begin compiling your list of activities/experiences/people that relate to these sections of the application:
- Activities relevant to northern, rural, and/or remote living (maximum 10)
- Ties to a northern, rural or remote place (these are people—like spouses, parents, siblings, friends, and other relatives that live in a northern/rural/remote community) (maximum 3)
- Role of a mentor in your decision to pursue medicine (maximum 3)
We know this information might be a bit confusing, particularly for those of you who are new to the process, so please feel free to email us at admissions.md@ubc.ca while you wait for the application to open. We cannot answer your policy questions, but we can answer questions related to the activities and sections mentioned in this post. We will also be providing a comprehensive help guide with information about how to complete each section of the application, once it opens. In the interim, you are welcome to review last year’s help guide, to give you a sense of the information we will be looking for (though there will be updates this year, so do not rely on it once the new application system opens).