Admissions Blog


The latest updates from the MD Admissions team.

MCAT 2015

By Admissions on Nov 20, 2014 As most of you know, a new version of the MCAT is launching in April 2015. Different medical schools are handling the new MCAT different ways – some are requiring all applicants to take the new exam, while others will continue to accept older versions of the exam along with MCAT 2015. We have decided to join the latter group and will accept three versions of the exam for the 2015/2016 application cycle: the exam with VR, PS, BS & WS sections; the exam with VR, PS and BS sections (no WS); and MCAT 2015. Many applicants to our program will already have MCAT scores that meet our requirements and we did not want to force these applicants to incur the extra financial burden of retaking the MCAT. Our decision was also influenced by the fact that the first MCAT 2015 test date is not until April, thus limiting the number of months available to write the exam before our August 31 test-taking deadline. However, since MCAT 2015 is new and improved and is the exam version all applicants will transition to eventually, we have decided to use MCAT 2015 exam scores in our evaluation if they are available. This means that if you take MCAT 2015, we will use your MCAT 2015 scores no matter what – even if your MCAT 2015 scores seem lower than your previous scores, and even if your MCAT 2015 scores do not meet our minimum requirements but your previous scores do. We will continue to use the highest score for our purposes if only the older versions of the MCAT have been written. Our minimum score requirement for MCAT 2015 is a 124 in each of the four sections. The 7/M requirement remains for older versions of the MCAT. For more information please see our Notes for Applicants page, the MCAT sections of our Admission Requirements and Evaluation Criteria pages, and the FAQs. It is important to review this information carefully before making a decision about which version of the MCAT to write or re-write. Permalink | 2 Comments

October Update: Verifiers and More

By Admissions on Oct 29, 2014

It is hard to believe the application closed 5 weeks ago and that the evaluation period is now well under way. The Admissions office is a lot quieter as people work diligently to review your transcripts, check your BC residency status (if applicable), ensure you have met the prerequisite requirements, and read about your non-academic activities. Because there is a long period of silence from us to you, we know this part of the process can be confusing. Here are the answers to some common questions that may help you navigate the next month:

1)      When will interview notifications be sent? The first week of December. We normally send notifications in batches over the course of the week. Sorry, we can’t say exactly when the regrets vs interview invites will be sent – just know that everyone will be notified sometime that week.

2)      Will the Admissions office contact me before then? There are a number of reasons we may contact you at any point in the application period, but especially over the next month. The most common reasons are:

  1. We need clarification regarding how you meet or plan to meet the prerequisite and/or 90 credit minimum requirements.
  2. We need clarification regarding one or more of your non-academic experiences. This could be because we are not sure what you meant in your entry, the dates were confusing, the hours were confusing, or we need additional information.
  3. We need you to provide a new verifier for a specific activity- this may be because we cannot get in touch with a verifier, or because the verifier you have provided is not appropriate for the activity.
  4. We need more information about your BC residency.

We will be sending you a notification email to inform you about the process and what to expect in the near future (this won’t happen until late November).

Please respond to our requests for information as quickly as possible through the communication feature in the Online Application System. If you do so, and you do not hear back from us, what you have provided is sufficient and we are very grateful for your prompt reply. It helps immensely.

3)      How many verifiers do you check and why? We check at least one verifier (usually more) for every applicant who receives a full file review. Sometimes we check a few, sometimes we check them all. We contact them either via email or phone. Verifiers are checked both randomly and for specific reasons. This is an integral component of our evaluation process. It helps to ensure that what you have written is an accurate reflection of your experiences.

4)      What happens if my verifier does not respond? If your verifier does not respond, we often try to contact them another way. If we are unable to reach them, and we must have a response about this activity, we will contact you and ask for a new verifier.

We do not deduct points from your non-academic evaluation for non-responsiveness of a verifier unless we have tried all methods to contact your verifier and you, and we have still not been able to reach anyone regarding your activity.

5)      What if my verifier says that what I wrote is wrong? We review your application with the corrected information and if necessary will adjust your score. For the protection of your verifier’s privacy we will not inform you about your verifier’s response, even if you made an honest mistake. If they choose to contact you and you wish to write us an email about what happened, that is fine. 

6)       I haven’t heard anything from you or my verifiers. Is this a bad sign? No, it’s not. We have not evaluated all applications yet, and you may not hear from us or your verifiers at all during the evaluation process. Verifiers are under no obligation to keep you updated when we contact them. They may choose to do so, but that is up to them. Additionally, we will only contact you for one of the reasons listed above (if necessary), in late November to let you know about the process for the upcoming interview notifications, and in December to let you know that a decision has been made about your application. Also, keep in mind that because UBC has a 50/50 evaluation process where 50% of your total file review score (TFR) is based on your academics and 50% is based on your non-academics, we are not able to determine who is invited for interview until we have evaluated all applications. We invite applicants for interview based on their TFR score.

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Typical Problems

By Admissions on Sep 03, 2014

The application deadline is coming up soon! We are hoping for a smooth transition at deadline time and are busy updating transcripts, transferring documents, and answering questions to make that happen. Here are some common problems applicants typically encounter from now until the deadline passes – please look them over to make sure the deadline passes smoothly for you, too.

Transcript issues: We require that all transcripts be received at our mailing address by the deadline, not just requested or sent by the institution. It’s getting pretty close to the deadline now, so if you have not yet ordered your transcripts, you should do so as soon as possible and probably send them by courier. This way you will have proof that the transcripts were delivered to the right address on time. Our mailing address is listed in the Help Guide and on the Contact Us page of our website. This is the address where all transcripts should be sent.

Overlooking requirements: We do not want you to waste any more time and money on the application if you aren’t actually eligible to apply this cycle. Please review our requirements for prerequisites, MCAT, BC residency, transcripts, and WES/ICES evaluations. All application fees are non-refundable.

Ignoring/skimming the Help Guide: The Help Guide has a lot of useful information in it. Please check and double-check it before you email us to ask a question, and trust that if the Help Guide says something, it is true. However, if you genuinely need clarification on something, we are happy to help – we just want to concentrate on answering questions rather than saying “Please read p. X of the Help Guide” repeatedly.

Application issues: The application takes a while to fill out – don’t leave it until the last minute. You may encounter something you hadn’t planned on, such as needing to find a verifier for all of your activities or having to request a transcript for that online course you took three summers ago. Please try to submit your application before the morning of the deadline. If you wait until the last minute and run into technical issues with the application or payment, we probably won’t be able to get them resolved before the deadline, and we will not extend the deadline.

Also regarding the application, please proofread it carefully before you submit it. You can change the phone numbers and email addresses of your verifiers after you submit the application, but nothing else. We in the Admissions Office cannot change anything either. If you do discover a mistake, please email us through the application system so we can print the email for your file.

Finally, as a reminder, you must pay the application fee after you submit the application. Your application is not complete without the application fee and it must be received by the application deadline.

Transcript Statuses

We’ve been getting several questions about transcript statuses.

Transcripts carried forward from last year: We manually take the transcripts from your old file and put them in your new file before marking them as received – the system doesn’t update this automatically once you check the box on the application. As long as you have checked the appropriate box, though, you can consider them received. These transcripts are low-priority for us since they are all already in the office.

BC Residency: Similarly, we manually update the status of your proof of BC residency to Received. It does not happen automatically. As long as your BC residency proof is uploaded by noon on Sept. 15 it will meet the application deadline and you can consider it received. Please remember to upload the front and back of your CareCard or Services Card. You can either scan the front and back or take a picture of the front and back.

Transcripts sent to us: We have been updating them within 24 hours of receipt at our physical address (there is a one-day delay between our mailing address and our physical address). If you have delivery proof that your transcript was delivered to the right address, please give us 2-3 days before contacting us about your transcript. If you don’t have delivery proof, we will update the transcript status to Received as soon as we receive it, but in the meantime it’s up to you to decide whether or not you should send another copy.

UBC transcripts accessed electronically: As long as you have marked the applicable box on the application you can consider your UBC transcript to be received.

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MED 2018 Class Full

By wong79 on Aug 25, 2014

Today is the first day of orientation for MED 2018, which means the class is officially full. Although those of you who were on the waitlist and received a regrets letter today had probably accepted the fact you wouldn’t be joining the class this year, it is still disappointing, and we want to congratulate you on making it so far in the application process. We thank you for your patience and welcome your applications for the 2014/2015 cycle

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Waitlist Shortened

By Admissions on Jun 17, 2014

We have shortened the waitlist. If you received an email from us today about this, please take heart in the knowledge that you made it very far in our highly competitive admissions process, which is something we hope you can be proud of. For those of you who did not receive any news from us today, you are still on the waitlist. However, realistically, we anticipate that there will be only a few offers from this point on out so it is probably in your best interest to consider making other plans for next year, including starting another application to our program if you still wish to pursue medicine at UBC.

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