<p>Did anyone else apply to this program?</p>
<p>If so, we should have a discussion here :) about the supplementary application, admission rates, medical school, etc.</p>
<p>I did, but just for the hell of it. Even if I get in I won’t go. </p>
<p>The program sends a lot of kids to professional schools, but I firmly believe that is due to the self-selection and admission process involved (similar to how Ivys send a lot of students to professional school).</p>
<p>So you wouldn’t even consider going if you got in? Why?</p>
<p>Anyone else apply? I wonder if any internationals applied (: or if it’s just us Canadians</p>
<p>Nope, wouldn’t consider even if I got in. States-side for sure. </p>
<p>I doubt many internationals applied if any. Most internationals wouldn’t come to Canada to study a science in hopes of going to medical school/professional school, doesn’t really make sense to (when studying something like Health Science).</p>
<p>I applied to McMaster Health Sciences four years ago (2007). I was accepted around May 9. I did not go, ended up at McGill University instead. Honestly, it was one of the best decisions of my life.</p>
<p>My advice:</p>
<p>Unless you want to study in a (rather useless) program that is specifically geared towards premeds, PLEASE go somewhere else. Sure, you will have all of your premed prereqs and end up with a 4.0 gpa if you keep up reasonably. My friend graduated from this program last year, now attends Queen’s medicine (so all turned out well in the end), but she was bored out of her mind. She described it as the least challenging, biggest joke of a program. She went through the motions: got research experience, got a 4.0 gpa, got humanities/English credits. When she started at Queen’s, she felt less prepared than her classmates.</p>
<p>I’m clearly biased given my own experiences. If you want a more challenging curriculum and are more confident in your abilities, attend McGill or UToronto. I was interviewing earlier this semester and last semester: believe me, if you’ve done well at either of these two schools, the likes of Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford will GLADLY interview you for medical school. When it comes to Canadian students applying to graduate/medical school in the US, the reputation of your undergrad DOES seem to matter.</p>
<p>I wish you the best of luck with your choices.</p>
<p>^Completely true. Undergrad DOES matter if you study in Canada and want to apply to US medical schools. It is undoubtedly true. McGill and Toronto always send a couple off to top US meds. And off Canada Premed forum, there was a ~3.75 and 36 (maybe 37)McGill student who interviewed at the likes of Cornell, Vanderbilt, Case Western, etc.</p>
<p>That’s why I stand by my statement that unless you truly love the problem-based learning and truly love the group work, don’t bore yourself for 4 years. You are paying for your education and the program doesn’t get you into med school; you do.</p>
<p>Hence, I won’t attend Health Sci even if I am admitted.</p>
<p>Mac Health Sci is undoubtedly gaining recognition. A relative who went to Health Sci had a friend in the program who now goes to Harvard med. He had a tough choice between that and a full ride to Duke Med. Another friend who was not deemed to be exceptionally brilliant was accepted to Brown Med. </p>
<p>Due to cost, many people in the program prefer not to go to the States for med school. Many health sci students are accepted into Mac med school after 3 years of undergrad, and can graduate from Mac Med in another 3 years… That is 6 years rather than the usual 8.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I know several people who went to Cornell, Yale, Harvard, etc for undergrad, and were not given an interview by any of the top US med schools. These people were extremely bright-- had high GPA’s and MCATs scores, but ended up in a state of panic after undergrad.</p>
<p>Perhaps the undergrad school does matter, and maybe McMaster isn’t as well-known as McGill to people outside of Canada, but the Health Sciences program itself is very prestigious. It is definitely one of my top choices. It’s obvious, though, that it’s YOU who will get YOU into medical school, not the program itself. I think the reason why a large percentage of Health Sci students do get into med school is because most of them are hard-working students who are deadset on becoming doctors.</p>
<p>True, Mac’s Health Sci program does its job well. It selects very high achieving high school students, lets them take the required medicine prereqs, gives them ample opportunity to attain a very good gpa, offers students plenty of time for extracurriculars, and gets them out in 3 years. It is a very prestigious program for high school students who want to be doctors; its prestigiousness elsewhere is less clear. I agree that Health Sci students have the single-minded goal to get into med school, and many of them do. School prestige doesn’t matter much in Canada, just gpa/MCAT and personal attributes. If med school in Canada is where you want to go, Mac’s Health Sci might just be the place for you.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you want to challenge yourself in critical thinking and explore other options, I wouldn’t recommend Health Sci. When I was 17 and applying to universities, I had no clear idea of what I wanted to do; I just knew I loved designing experiments and solving problems and interacting with people. For those who want broader options for the future - grad school at MIT? medical school at Harvard? - Toronto and McGill (and some US schools) are better choices.</p>
<p>My post above was a little presumptuous, as I’m working with a small sample size: Harvard, Yale, and JHU for me; Dartmouth and Columbia for my classmate/friend. Of these five medical schools we interviewed at this year, we encountered 6 fellow McGill interviewees, 2 Toronto interviewees, and none from other Canadian schools. I don’t mean to suggest that Mac students can’t get into top American schools; I’m merely hypothesizing that it could be easier for McGill and Toronto students, despite having lower grades.</p>
<p>Do what’s right for you, RainbowSprinkles and ViggyRam, and I’m sure you’ll be happy.</p>
<p>(: I got early acceptance to University of Toronto last week. Maybe I’ll consider going there instead… but Mac Health Sci is such an amazing program. I hope I’ll get in all the programs I applied to so I can have options!</p>
<p>I would like to attend med school in the U.S (a prestigious one), but VERY few internationals gain acceptance. It’s kind of discouraging. I also know a few Canadians who went to Ivies for undergrad, hoping they could get in a U.S. med school, but most of them did not make it (except for one, who got into Harvard med) and had to come back to Canada to get their M.D.</p>
<p>I applied, but I’m leaning more towards Western biomed. I heard that’s a good program, plus there’s ivey which could be an option for me if I realize the medicine path isn’t for me.
Considering the decisions for healthsci are released after the date to lock in with a US college, I’ll most likely choose one of the US colleges I applied to. I got a likely from Columbia College; chose chemistry as my potential major. Does anyone know if an undergrad from Columbia is “prestigious” enough to have a good shot at getting into top med schools? I’m talking Harvard, Stanford, etc.</p>
<p>^wow congratulations!</p>
<p>@theEnigmaaa, yeah I applied to Western Biomed and got early acceptance. I also applied for Ivey AEO status, but decisions for that isn’t released until March (first wave) and on.</p>
<p>Congrats to the Columbia likely! Yes, it definitely is prestigious enough. Any Ivies or any other top tiers (e.g. Stanford) that are not Ivies is good. Med schools don’t put TOO much emphasis on undergrad prestige, although it would be nice. It’s not your school that gets you in, it’s YOU. However, going to a good school for undergrad would present you with a lot more opportunities to do cool things! You could get lab experience and etc. that way.</p>
<p>Thanks for the support, guys! Wishing you all the best come March 30th. :)</p>
<p>Just curious, are any of you from the Toronto area?</p>
<p>Okay, I felt the need to chime in here. I’m a Health Sci Grad of '09. Now I’m attending Dental School at an Ivy League University in the USA.</p>
<p>Health Sciences at Mac is a great program. But if you, a highschool student, think you know what the program is about = you are fooling yourselves. Noone really understands the program until you are in the program, and even then it takes a while to really “get it.” Some students may go through all four years and still not understand it, and that is a shame but the nature of the beast. Even now, I am pretty sure I understand the basis of the program, the goals and purpose, but it’s likely I am missing a component. It’s truly very different from any other program and oftentimes hard to explain to those outside. </p>
<p>Health Sci was great to me. It allowed me to do what I wanted with my 4 years at McMaster. Yes, there were a lot of easy classes, and yes it was easy to keep a high GPA, but frankly, you learn in this program that marks are irrelevant anyways. Many of my classmates who wanted to (almost all) are now in some professional school (mostly medical school, but some in dentistry, nurse practitioning, law). At the same time, there were some hard classes. 2nd and 3rd year Inquiry classes were incredibly challenging (as was my 4th year thesis project). There were a lot of nights staying up late working as a group, and there was a lot of scientific article reading involved. As a group, we were basically teaching ourselves biochemistry. Our true colors came out, when we all knew we were going to get A’s or A+'s yet still tried really hard in inquiry. Yes, we learned a bit about biochemistry, but we each learned so much more about the process - how we worked in a group setting, researching on PubMed, presenting our findings to peers, how we dealt under pressure, how well we could motivate one another, being able to judge for ourselves when our research was thorough, identifying gaps in what we know, etc. There’s just so much - the process of Inquiry is so much ore active than reading a blasted biochem textbook and regurgitating some information on an MCQ test - forget it, for the rest of your life you’ll be taking MCQ tests if you go into any professional school. We learned valuable skills in Health Sci.</p>
<p>We learned a lot about evidenced based medicine in BHSc, there is a class you can take in 3rd/4th year called Communication Skills where the program hires standardized patients for you and your group of 4 once a week and you look for evidence-based communication skills. You practice going thru a clinician-patient interview and tape it so you can watch yourself and reflect on what you did well and poorly. What other program can offer you this? We don’t even get this in Dental school! Health sciences required us to take very few Hth Sci classes - you have a lot of choices as to what you want to do with the rest of your credits. Many of the basic science courses I would take were because I needed them as pre-reqs for different programs, but I had a lot of room in my schedule to pick interesting classes about religion or English. Other classes I chose to keep my GPA high and keep up my extracurriculars as learning outside the class is equally as important as learning in class during college (or atleast that is my belief). I was able to be really involved on the college campus. Some of my dental school interviewers even asked me if it is normal to be as involved as I was, or if it was just me. There’s a lot of opportunity in college, and it would have been a shame if I had taken the hardest physics and biochemistry classes to only forget it a year or two out and start again as a naive, ill-motivated, uninterested high school student. My involved in college really opened my eyes, and now in dental school, I am similarly quite engaged and enjoy it.</p>
<p>A practicing dentist/part-time faculty recently came in to talk to my dental school class. He told us about how his daughter wants to do dentistry and asked him what college major she should take. He said, the best major would be theatre or drama. Because frankly, you learn everything science related you need to know in professional school. It’s the non-science stuff that separates the good dentists from the bad dentists (how you treat your patients/staff/peers, if you are likable, if you can market yourself and your skills, etc).</p>
<p>There’s so much more to the program, but frankly, each student’s experience will be different, so I hope this atleast wet’s your appetite and you give the program a shot. Every once in a while (actually only twice) I would run into a science student at Mac who would tell me he/she got into Hth Sci, but tried to justify why he/she chose Science instead. I would listen, but at the same time the more he/she spoke the more I realized how little he/she knew about Hth Sci and how wrong he/she is. Anyways, I hope this helps.</p>