[MMI Prompt] Ex-convict

You are a major of a city, and a high profile rapist who finished his jail time is going to be released from prison next month. He is deemed to be of high risk to reoffend once he is free. The word is that he is considering relocating to somewhere near your city and possibly adopt a new identity.

There is tremendous public pressure to increase police surveillance on him, make his new identity public, or at least warn the public of his imminent release.

What would you do?

[MMI Prompt] Bullying

You are a third year medical student doing a clinical rotation in surgery. The surgeon you are working with is abusive towards everyone, constantly yelling at patients for disobeying his orders, criticizing nurses for failing to "do things my way in my OR", and having unreasonable expectations of you then calling you an idiot who shouldn't be in med school.

You feel offended, humiliated, and lost. What would you do? Your rotation is coming to an end and your evaluation is in one week.

[MMI prompt] ski trip

After a long school term, you are excited about the winter break. You planned ahead for a ski trip with some friends, and you booked a condo for 8 people who confirmed that they are coming with your own credit card. They agreed to pay you later.
At the last minute, however, one of your friends suddenly called you and said he couldn't make it. To make matters worse, he was one of the drivers. Now you are not only short on people paying rent, you have to figure out how to get another 4 people on the mountain possibly at a higher cost than agreed upon.
What are you going to do? What do you say to this friend?

Interviewees for 2011 entrance

Welcome! You will find that I’ve written a bit about the process, and if you pay attention to the posting dates, you will also find that I have not updated this blog in quite a while.

Truth is, I will not be able to continue actively helping applicants and interviewees prepare for the daunting grill of med school application. Which sucks, because I know how hard it is and how much of a difference a little help can make. (At least for me, being in med school is hard, but trying to get into med school was much harder.)

What I could recommend though, is a visit to www.premed101.com/forums/ (which I am sure 99% of you have been to). What many of you might not have done is joining the conversation in a constructive way. Don’t just freak out about minute details or stats – that will only stress everyone else out even more. Instead, help each other. Form practice groups. Answer some questions. Calm people down.

Yes, people on there are applicants and therefore competitors. But I think applying to med school is more like driving on the road. You don’t need to road-race everyone just because they are driving in the same direction. A little courtesy can not only help make the drive less stressful, it would probably help you get to where you want to be.

Feel free to use this blog as a forum too!

Waitlisted for med school?

A reader who's a waitlisted Out of Province (OOP) applicant asked me how the waitlist generally works. I asked my friends in med school and the general consensus was that

1. OOP and In-province students have 2 separate waitlists, and


2. the OOP waitlist moves faster than the in-province one.

We thought about why that might be, and decided this was probably because the number of accepted OOP applicants is fixed (12 seats this year?) and it would only make sense that for every OOP applicant who reject the invitation, one OOP will be bumped up from the waitlist.

For point 2., we thought that OOP applicants are more likely to have applied elsewhere and choose to attend med school elsewhere. This means that they are more likely to reject the acceptance from a particular school, thus freeing up space for waitlisted applicants more quickly.

However, noone knows the exact numbers except for the admissions folks, so we could only speak to our observation and guesses. If you want hard numbers, your internet research would be as good as anyone else's.

What I would say is: you've demonstrated that you are capable and quite qualified, and you came really close in being accepted. The chances of you getting into med school are great. I remember someone from admissions telling us before the interview: "once you have come this far (to the interview), if you don't get in this year, chances are you will get in next year. So congratulations!"

I think that's the attitude you should have going into the summer :)

[MMI prompt] Brian McKeever

The story of Canadian Olympian and Paralympian Brian McKeever has touch many during the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. He was the first ever to qualify for both the Olympic games and Paralympic games, but at the last minute, the Olympic skiing couch decided that Brian has a smaller chance in winning than his teammates, so he did not get to race.

If you were Brian's friend, what would you do when he found out he couldn't race in the Olympic games? You knew that his Paralympic games would take place 2 weeks after the Olympics.

[MMI prompt] Senior's driving right

Statistics have shown that effects of advanced age such as changes in vision and response time may adversely affect elderly drivers' ability to drive safely. As a matter of fact, many doctors discuss the issue of stopping driving with their older patients as a precaution for the safety of theirs as well as the public's.

Do you think older drivers have to give up driving when they reach a certain age?