The latest updates from the MD Admissions team.
FAQs for applicants not invited for interview
By Admissions on Nov 15, 2011 For those of you who unfortunately did not make it to the interview stage, we do realize how disappointed you must feel and recognize that many of you may have questions. The Admissions Office is unable to provide any further information about our evaluation process, but here are answers to some of the most frequent questions we are asked at this stage. I received a Regrets, No Interview letter with my academic and non-academic scores. Can I get more information on the definition of these scores? We cannot provide any further details or specifics regarding the results of your file evaluation. There is detailed information on our evaluation criteria, including non-academic scoring, listed on our website: http://www.med.ubc.ca/education/md_ugrad/MD_Undergraduate_Admissions/Evaluation_Criteria.htm You may also find it helpful to review the Interim Statistics on our website to assist you in determining the competiveness of your file: http://www.med.ubc.ca/education/md_ugrad/MD_Undergraduate_Admissions/MD_Undergraduate_Admissions_Statistics.htm I was not invited for an interview; can I talk/meet with someone to discuss my application? Due to limited resources, we regret that we are not able to offer any feedback advising to applicants who were not granted an interview, nor can we provide any further information about the evaluation of your file. It’s obviously not as satisfactory, but you may wish to attend any of the small group information sessions offered at all of our distributed sites (dates, times & locations are listed on our website). Although these sessions are generally geared to prospective applicants, those considering reapplying may also find them helpful. I think that there has been a mistake in the academic evaluation of my file. This year, with the new on-line application, the academic evaluation was based on the credits and grades entered by applicants. If you believe that there has been a specific error, please send an email via the on-line application detailing what you believe the mistake to be. Please note that some applicants entered wrong information – eg. did not include all courses, excluded failed courses or used letter grades instead of percentages. In these instances the Admissions Office had to correct these mistakes by verifying courses and grades on official transcripts. Therefore, there may be a discrepancy between averages calculated by an applicant & the grades as they appear on the Application Status page of his/her application. The calculation of the AQ Score is automatically performed by the online application system, so as long as your OGPA or AGPA (if applicable) is correct, your AQ Score is also correct. Your AQ Score might seem low, but if your OGPA or AGPA is right then your AQ Score is right, too. As an additional note try not to compare your AQ score to the one you received last cycle – remember that this year there is no Last 60 credits component, and the score is out of 50 this year rather than 25, so it’s not a very useful comparison. I thought I should have been eligible for the Adjusted Academic Average to determine my academic score, but it does not seem to have been used. The AGPA was calculated based on the courses & grades entered by applicants. The on-line system automatically determined (a) the lowest academic year which could be eliminated and (b) if this year could be dropped (i.e. that there were still 90 remaining credits). The Admissions Office verified that grades had been entered accurately by comparison with the official transcripts. My overall is slightly below the cut-offs posted but I still feel my non-academic experiences are very strong and should have been reviewed. Although we look for excellent non-academic qualities, these must also be accompanied by very good academic qualities to demonstrate an applicant’s ability to successfully handle the rigorous MD Undergraduate curriculum. It was determined that a lower AQ score (below 75% for BC and below 80% for OOP) cannot be offset by a strong NAQ score; hence these files were not reviewed. I attended a university that did not use percentages for its grading scheme. How did UBC calculate averages from universities with different grading schemes? Please see information on our grade conversions: http://www.med.ubc.ca/education/md_ugrad/MD_Undergraduate_Admissions/Evaluation_Criteria.htm] I am not happy with the non-academic score I received, can I request another review? We appreciate that you may be dissatisfied with the scoring of the non-academic portion of your file, but would like to assure you that the non-academic portion of your application was reviewed and evaluated fairly and consistently. We will not re-evaluate the non-academic section of your file. At the beginning of each cycle, with guidelines provided by the Admissions Policy Committee, we establish a profile of an average applicant as a benchmark and points are allotted accordingly. Reviewers are trained and files are cross-checked. Although there cannot help but be a degree of subjectivity involved, we feel the standardized process keeps this to a minimum. I was not invited for an interview and would like to appeal the decision. We realize the importance of your application and appreciate that the results may be disappointing. Please be aware that we do our best to ensure that our evaluation practices are fair and consistent. Files are often double and sometimes triple checked to ensure accuracy. While we are unable to discuss your application over the phone, you may email Admissions through your on-line application if you have any specific concerns regarding your file evaluation. Please note that we will not re-evaluate the non-academic section of your file. We will not make appointments with the Dean, Associate Dean, Director or an Advisor/Coordinator to discuss your application. I’m not sure if I am seeing the right thing under the Scores line on my Application Status page. The scores you see depend on your application status (refer to the interview decision email you received if you aren’t sure about your specific application status). Applicants whose files are ineligible and applicants invited for an interview don’t see any scores, so their Scores line says “no scores found.” Applicants whose application status is Partial File Review can see their OGPA, and if they are eligible for it, their AGPA. Applicants with an application status of Regrets, No Interview see several scores: OGPA, AGPA (if eligible), AQ Score, NAQ Score, and TFR Score. You may also wish to review the FAQ section on our website: http://www.med.ubc.ca/education/md_ugrad/MD_Undergraduate_Admissions/Frequently_Asked_Questions.htm Permalink | No Comments
Interview notifications are quickly approaching
By Admissions on Oct 31, 2011
As you may or may not have noticed, the application timeline has recently been updated. The interview notifications (invites and regrets) will be sent during the week of November 14-18. Your application status can change at any point throughout the day (8:30-4:30 PST). We wish we could give you a specific date/time, but there are many checks that must be completed before we email the letters to you and we don’t want to get your hopes up in case something is delayed.
If you are one of the lucky 640 applicants to be invited for interview this year, in addition to your invitation letter, you will receive information on how to book your interview, specific information relating to the interview and special events, and how to complete the supplemental application by the Feb. 15 deadline. This year you will be able to book your interview online through the online application system. Interviews are scheduled on a “first-come, first-served” basis, no exceptions. All applicants invited for interview will have access to the booking system at exactly the same time. If you have exceptional circumstances determining when you can interview, make sure that you schedule your interview early. We will not be able to give you a different date or time if the dates you need are already full. The deadline for booking an interview is November 28 at 12:00 (noon) PST.
For more information relating to the style and format of the interviews, please see the “Interviews” page of our website. It has also been updated and will give you a good idea of what to expect this year.
Good luck and we’ll be in touch in a couple of weeks!
Permalink | No Comments2011-12 application cycle update
By Admissions on Oct 12, 2011
This has been (and continues to be) a very busy time for the Admissions Office evaluating files for this current cycle. We are very pleased that so many of you want to apply to our program and we thank you for your effort filling out the application, especially the Transcript section. We know it was quite a task for some of you! Regarding grades, as a reminder we are now converting each letter grade into a percentage, based on Table 1 or Table 2 as applicable. Percentage grades are not converted
There is another change this year – the AQ (Academic) and the NAQ (Non-Academic) Qualities scores will each be out of 50 instead of 25, to give a combined score out of 100. This will mean the TFR (Total File Review) score to determine which applicants will be invited for interview will be very different from last year. The AQ score will be based solely on applicants’ Overall Academic Average or Adjusted Academic Average (if applicable). We cannot yet say what the cut-off for interview will be. MCAT scores and the prerequisite average still are not factors at this stage in the process.
The Admissions Statistics for the 2011 entering class (MED 2015) have been posted on our website: http://www.med.ubc.ca/education/md_ugrad/MD_Undergraduate_Admissions/MD_Undergraduate_Admissions_Statistics.htm
As you can see, we continue to attract and admit applicants with very strong academic backgrounds.
A heads up for next year – the application deadline will be later, September 17, 2012 and as so many applicants have attended post-secondary institutions outside of North America, next year we will require a WES or ICES evaluation for everyone, even if you were just on an exchange. This is because evaluating foreign transcripts can be a very time-consuming business and also it can be advantageous to have a WES or ICES evaluation done, as they convert all grades, from whichever country, to a North American scale, which is a very helpful comparison for us.
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Transcripts
By Admissions on Aug 12, 2011
Less than 4 days left before the application deadline! (Try not to panic!) As you can imagine, we are receiving 100’s if not 1,000’s of documents each day and therefore need some time to process them. Please be patient!
Since we know that many of you will be sitting in nervous anticipation about whether or not your transcripts have been received by the deadline- here are a few ways you can check yourself:
1) You couriered them and the status of the slip says, “received/delivered” (double check the address, and if it is the same as the one in the help guide, you are fine). Please don’t contact us. We probably just haven’t had time to update it yet. If we haven’t updated your document’s status by Thursday the 18th, please contact us with the receipt and proof of confirmation, and we’ll work together to try to figure out what happened.
2) You delivered them in person. There is a rumor out there that we don’t accept hand delivered transcripts. That is not true. We accept hand delivered transcripts as long as they are in a sealed envelope from the original institution. To hand deliver something, please go to the address listed in the help guide and give it to the receptionist. Please be nice to her!
3) You checked the “application status” tab and it states that all of your documents have been received. (Make sure you aren’t missing anything, like a college course you took for fun, or an exchange university. But if the system says we have everything and you’ve included everything, it’s ok, it’s all here).
***Please note that we DO NOT accept electronic submission of documents in any form (email, fax, etc).
Take a deep breath and inhale/exhale. This part’s almost over!
Permalink | 2 CommentsEmailing Admissions: Current Applicants
By Admissions on Aug 05, 2011
Hello current applicants! T-10 days until the application deadline! As you can imagine we are receiving a lot of questions regarding the application, documentation, etc.
In order to help us respond to your emails faster, when you contact us through the OAS please include: your first and last name as stated on your application profile.
To speed up response time we will NOT be responding to the following types of emails:
1) Inquiries regarding whether we have/have not received all of your documents. The status of transcripts, BC residency documents, other required documents, etc. are being updated daily. Please check the “application status” page of the OAS for the current status of your documents. If you sent in your document and its status states, “not received,” one of several things could have happened: 1) we have not received your document and you should probably send a new one; 2) when we received your document you had not completed the corresponding part of your application, so we could not update your document’s status- please make sure that you enter in all of the institutions you have attended, your BC residency status etc. We go through the stack of documents we have received that were not entered in to the OAS every few days. This means there is a delay in processing time of your documents; 3) If you are a UBC student and you requested that your transcript be accessed electronically and the email can be seen in the “communication section” of the OAS we have officially received your transcript. We are updating the status of your documents as soon as possible, however, it is more important for us to inform the applicants who need to request paper transcripts that their documents have/have not arrived because they will need more time to request a new one if it got lost in the mail. Please be patient.
2) If you’ve emailed us about a transcript, BC residency, or MCAT and your status has since been updated.
3) If you’ve informed us that you have updated the transcript section of your application. Please see above (2) for how we process documents we’ve received that did not have institutions, etc. listed when we received them.
4) Emails asking if a certain verifier is appropriate. As we’ve stated before, please use your best judgment. Bear in mind, if we can’t contact the verifier because they no longer work with an organization, have moved, are from a foreign country, etc, they are probably not a good verifier. We need to be able to contact someone who will be able to discuss your involvement with an activity and who will appear to be a credible source of information.
5) SISC Transcript Requests. Please see above (3) regarding why.
If you have other specific questions or concerns regarding the application/ application process, please read through the help guide and website first. If the answer is not there, feel free to contact us and we will be in touch with you as soon as we are able.
Good luck and we look forward to receiving your application!
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