How to Become a Doctor in Canada: Free Workshop for Grades 8-11

Most families plan for medicine as a grades problem. Grades matter, but they are not the whole file, and at some schools they are not even the largest part of it. The University of Alberta scores personal activities at 35 percent of its selection formula, above the 30 percent it gives cumulative GPA. What goes into that part of the application is often not what families expect. UBC says shadowing a physician will not raise its non-academic score or improve an applicant's chances. It says paid employment is highly valued, including retail, service, construction and trades jobs, and that longer commitments count for more than short ones. The University of Calgary asks applicants to list every paid job they have held and warns them not to treat early or short-term jobs as trivial. The University of Toronto says no specific activity gives an applicant an edge, and there is no required number of hours. Schools also check what applicants write. Each activity on an Ontario medical school application names a person the school can contact, and U of T says it runs random checks. UBC treats an activity with no contact information as unverifiable and disregards it, and says a mismatch between what an applicant wrote and what the contact says can have a serious negative impact. We will cover what this means for a student in Grades 8 through 11: how to choose a few commitments that last, why a first part-time job is worth more than it looks, why the adult who supervises an activity matters as much as the activity itself, and why schools including U of T and Calgary will not accept family members or family friends as references.

Parents and students in Grades 8-11 are both welcome. The session is live on Zoom, and we email the link and a short summary after you register.