Admissions Blog

Receipt of documents

By Admissions on Jul 29, 2011 As the August 15^th application deadline is approaching fast – and it is a strict deadline – for those of you who have not yet submitted – please submit soon! We are receiving a huge number of transcripts and other documents in our office every day and we do our best to update them as received as soon as we can, within 48 hours if possible. If they are not showing as “received” on your on-line application, please be patient and don’t email or call us asking if we have them – it could be that they arrived in our office that morning and not yet processed. Given the volume, it is too time-consuming for staff to try and search for a particular document that has not yet been filed. If you are unsure if your transcripts have reached us, it may be best to request another copy and to have them couriered to our office to ensure you have confirmation of delivery by the deadline. Permalink | 2 Comments

Non-Academic Section – Verifiers

By Admissions on Jul 22, 2011

Please make sure that for each non-academic, employment, research and rural entry, you provide the contact information of a person who can confirm details about your involvement in the activity. These verifiers can be contacted at any time during the application cycle and, where possible, please include both the verifier’s e-mail address and phone number. It is not advisable to use one contact for verification of numerous activities. Family members or close friends should not be used as verifiers except where appropriate (e.g. solo travel experiences). 

Remember that if you don’t clearly provide a verifier, or if there are discrepancies between the details in your application and those confirmed by the verifier, notes are added and may affect your file – and you don’t want that! Please review your details carefully and double-check your hours, dates, etc with the verifier if necessary. In addition, make sure your verifier’s contact information is accurate before submitting your application.

Some applicants have noted that there aren’t sufficient characters within the contact information box to be able to provide the complete email for some verifiers who have unusually long addresses. If this is the case, you can add this information in the description box for the activity.

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Misinformation

By Admissions on Jul 14, 2011

Whilst understanding that applicants to our program want to try & find out any nuggets of information that they think might possibly help them to get into the MD program, as we have said before, there is a lot of misinformation around. People who were just admitted to the program may be well intentioned in offering advice and feel they know “the formula”, but that is not necessarily the case. By all means research as much as you can, but remain a little sceptical. Read or listen to someone and then check with us.   Can’t tell you the number of times someone has said to us: “I’ve heard that….”, “my friend got in and says that…” and then it proves not to be accurate at all. 

If you have any questions about our evaluation process, if you are wondering about prerequisites, don’t rely on what you read on the premed forum – we have read some misleading and even completely wrong statements there. One of the reasons we started this blog was that so that people can ask questions here. If you can’t find the information you need on our website, contact our office (through the on-line application if you are a current applicant) or attend one of our Information Sessions. We can’t tell you what non-academic activities might “look better” but are here to help as far as we can.

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$1000 Deposit Transferred for MED 2015

By Admissions on Jul 04, 2011

MED 2015 students, the $1000 acceptance deposit has been transferred to your tuition account and should be updated in your SSC Financial Summary.  A few transfers are still outstanding for students who were recently accepted to the program, but these should be taken care of by the time registration opens.

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Application Questions – July 4

By Admissions on

Update: We have removed the sorting feature to avoid confusion.  Please enter your non-academic activities and employment history in the way that is easiest for you.

We’ve been getting some questions about the application.  Hope this helps to answer them!

Employment History – The Help Guide says to complete this section starting with your most recent position first because that is what is easiest for most people.  However, the system will automatically arrange your entries in chronological order, so if you want to enter them in a different order, that’s fine.

Non-Academic Activities – You can enter your activities in the order that is easiest for you.  Because of the entry limits it might be easiest to enter them according to category, but if you prefer to enter them chronologically or some other way, you may.  The system will automatically arrange your entries in chronological order.

Activities completed before post-secondary – This year, we have removed our previous guidelines about including secondary school activities.  We want to see your most significant activities and are leaving it up to you to decide what those are.

MCAT status – It’s ok if you see “MCAT not found.”  Please check your MCAT status starting July 11.  As long as you correctly released your scores on or after June 1, you don’t need to re-release them.

Proof of BC Residency status – This will be available online starting July 11.

Update: Please remember the blog is for general comments and questions.  We will not respond to questions pertaining to your particular situation or application here.  For these types of questions, please email us through the online application system instead.

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