Northern Medical Program’s Admission Standards May Be Different, But Not Inferior
Prince George, BC- One of the key advocates of the Northern Medical Program at UNBC is in utter disbelief over suggestions the program’s admission standards may be lower than counterpart programs in Vancouver, Victoria and Kelowna.
Dr. Bert Kelly was one of a handful of rural physicians in Northern BC who banded together back in 1999 to demand the provincial government address the shortage of doctors in the region…it was the spark that ignited the flame that led to the momentous health rally in Prince George in 2000 and generated UBC’s Northern Medical Program at UNBC in 2004.
According to a report by CBC News, documents provided by an anonymous source show that applicants to the NMP don’t have to meet the same requirements as those applying to the southern campuses. The report says they are not required to complete medical entrance exams, only six of last year’s class of 32 ranked high enough for the other medical school locations, and a student’s suitability for living in the north outweighs academic achievement in consideration for a spot in the NMP.
Dr. Kelly, the Executive Director of the Northern Medical Society, says, "Our medical school has been a blinding success and I cannot conceive of anything that would detract from that success."
"You know, the admission criteria may be different, but I cannot understand that it would be inferior." Kelly says, "Our medical school was set up to fulfill a need to supply physicians to northern and rural Canada and such physicians may have different characteristics than the ones who inhabit the major cities, but I have no knowledge of them being inferior. I would be astonished if our entrants were inferior to anyone else’s entrants."
He adds that a lot of physicians across Northern BC have worked extremely hard to make the program a success and he says the ‘return-on-investment’ has yet to be fully realized as the first class just graduated in 2008 – with roughly 50-percent going on to do specialty training of between 5- and 7-years, he says it’s only in the next year or two that we’ll know how many will come back to Northern BC.
Kelly emphasizes, "The thing about our medical school is we have set it up with a preference for those who will practise in northern and rural Canada, but if our graduates settle in northern Quebec or rural PEI, do I regard that as a failure? I certainly do not. We’re a Canadian medical school."
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“You know, the admission criteria may be different, but I cannot understand that it would be inferior.” Kelly says, “Our medical school was set up to fulfill a need to supply physicians to northern and rural Canada and such physicians may have different characteristics than the ones who inhabit the major cities, but I have no knowledge of them being inferior. I would be astonished if our entrants were inferior to anyone else’s entrants.”
The documents provided to the CBC would seem to indicate otherwise. Saying that the admission standards aren’t ‘inferior’, but ‘different’ is not much of a defense, imo.
It appears that the one respect in which the standards for the northern program are lower is grade point average. It is an open question whether this means that the northern students are “inferior”. They still have to pass the same courses as other students, and to be licensed they still have to pass the national MCC exam. Being a good physician involves many factors other than academic ability, and in any case GPA is not a particularly reliable indicator of academic ability. It depends on such factors as what university the student attended, what courses he took, and which instructors he had. Indeed, those of us who have taught in American universities generally find Canadian universities’ heavy reliance on GPA in postgraduate admissions puzzling.
We certainly want the students admitted to the Northern Medical Program to have the knowledge prerequisite to the medical courses and generally to be of sufficient intellectual ability to become good physicians, and low GPA is a contraindicator, but students within a broad range of GPAs have the necessary academic background. Which ones will make good physicians, and of these, which will be willing to live and work in the north, requires attention to other factors.
Academic factors are but one criteria …. I believe that the system works similar to applying for a job. One is shortlisted for an interview based on a number of critera and is accepted by a panel based on a combination of inteviews, references, undergraduate and graduate degrees along wwith the actual typses of courses taken.
Architecture at UoT, as an example, used to be similar. GPA on its own is not a good indicator at all.
It is too bad that there are no exit metrics available. Ho graduates, who does not, waht residencies do they go into and, most important of all, how ell do they do in the field of medicine after they have been in practice for 5 to 10 years …. THAT is the real evaluator that counts. I am sure some people would be surprised if all those metircs were seen. It might get people to get out of the box and thnk a bit differently about how to select candidates to enter ANY kind of professional program.
I’ve known this about UNBC for a long time. I think what is more important to UNBC is how much money a student can bring to the institution, and not so much their scholastic abilities.
This is the same institution that admits people to its MBA program without undergrad degrees. Tell me that isn’t about profit motive and trying to make the program viable, at the expense of providing a reputable education. I’ve worked with UNBC MBA’s and their business abilities aren’t worth a cent to me, and yet they pay over $30k for these pieces of paper I believe. That’s alright though, it won’t take long for this information to get out there and employers will start questioning the UNBC credentials. I know I do. Anyone who brought me a resume with an MBA in their list of educational credentials without an undergrad to go with it would hit the trash.
I love the part where he says “Our medical school has been a blinding success”.
Very funny stuff. What a joke of a school.
To Sine Nomine::
Although I don’t necessarily disagree with what you are saying regarding UNBC and MBA program, I feel it is a little unfair to paint all people with the same brush. Education isn’t the sole indicator of ability or competency.I would argue that professional experience in conjunction with education and a passion to really continue to develop oneself is vital in becoming well rounded. There are some absolutely terrific professors at UNBC in all departments teaching students. It is unfortunate that you have had some bad experiences with UNBC students.
With med school students, they all have to pass licensing exams after the end of the program and go through varying lengths of residency training. I think I would prefer some of our doctors who want to be here and understand culture and people up here rather than the extreme book worm who has no personality or bedside manner. I would like to point out that being able to have a high gpa really means very little between doctor to doctor when anything they really need to remember is easily accessible via databases and google! And I’m sure ubc is not accepting students with 65-70% avgs. Perhaps the average is slightly lower but I’m sure they aren’t accepting dummies.
Sine Nomine: Do you know what criteria UNBC is using in place of undergraduate GPA for admission to the MBA program? And are they accepting people right out of secondary school, or are these students with experience in business?
I care more about exit standards than entrance standards.
When one talks about the medical programs in BC we need to try and understand why it was necessary to have some of these people attend Victoria, Kelowna, and Prince George.
My understanding is that the doctors in the greater Vancouver area, were overloaded training students over the past 20 years or so. In fact if I understand the issue correctly they basically told the Government that they would no longer continue with the huge workload attached to teaching doctors, because it impacted their ability to do their own jobs. As a result we ended up having students attend Universities in Kelowna, Victoria, and Prince George. This reduced the workload of doctors in the greater Vancouver area, as these students now train in the regional hospitals.
Students have to apply to UBC, and its the UBC board, that decides which students go where. In other words you can make application to attend UBC, however you may end up in Victoria, Kelowna, or Prince George. UBC will not tell you what criteria they use to determine who goes where, however no doubt, some of what was mentioned above comes into play.
Contrary to popular beleive many people in the greater Vancouver, Victoria, and Kelowna, area actually dread the thought of coming to Prince George for 4 years, and there is a great sigh of releif when they find out that they didnt get picked for PG. Others actually want to be here, and they of course get their wish. In the end they are all issued a diploma by UBC, not the other Universities.
So that is part of the issue. The balderdash that we in Prince George were somehow responsible for getting a medical program here is only partially true, because there were other factors at play.
Our famous slogan **Train them is the North and they will stay in the North** is only partially true. We could say the same for Victoria. **Train them on the Island and they will stay on the Island** **Train the in the Southern Interior and they will stay in the South**
As indicated above we will soon be able to determine whether in fact we have more doctors practicing in the North because of the program. We do know however that the problem of overloading doctors in Vancouver, has been resolved to some degree.
Have a nice day.
I am not sure what the heck N. Clancyâs beef in her previous CBC segments is about with the Northern Medical Program.
The little stupid tables that Clancy shows in her report means absolutely nothing. As a scientist that routinely examines data, I would say these tables ridiculous and no one should give them any weight what so ever. They are merely a bunch of columns, data has been rearranged, no context as to where these numbers came from, or at what point was these numbers were relevant in the application process. Oooooohhhh. And she would have us think that there is something scandalous going on.
Knowing a little about the application process is half of the story that should have been reported. Why not tell every one the real facts- the known ones? Go see for thy self on UBCâs admission page. There is also statistics for several previous years and the mark breakdown on those accepted and rejected.
While glossing over the process I would like to draw attention to a few facts.
One, the application process:
To apply an applicant must have nearly ¾ of a degree finished at the least. Many however, have a full degree, and some have masters and doctorates.
The applicants will have done the MCAT in advance and some candidates will study a whole year ahead for this 8.5 hour exam.
The application is a lengthy (15 pages when I did mine) process and there are three critical time points candidates face in the application after it has been submitted. (Mine was submitted in Sept, I was notified the following May).
The first checkpoint weeds out disqualified applicants: those with missing documents, missing prerequisites, missing MCAT â aka âentrance examsâ in the Clancy article. The committee flags the liars and cheaters. For every activity listed there must be a person listed to verify the activity and hours completed and the committee and starts calling random people on about the 2000 applications they receive. Ultimately, they assign a cut off on numbers for academic grades, and have an algorithm they award points for the extra curricular (gold medals in Olympics, research, publications in science journals, scholarships and awards, volunteering in anything). There are specific areas that UBC looks at – such as community service, leadership, rural/remote activities, activities of self reliance, sports, research, publications, etc. Of course, the higher you function any area the higher the points you get (i.e., knowing a second language, vs. volunteering your time to teach inner city kids that language).
The purpose is to whittle the 2000 applicants UBC gets to about 600. These people get to go to the interview stage. Meanwhile, the reorganized list goes through another round of scrutiny â academic marks are shuffled around to look at different aspect of the applicant â have they been consistently high, has the student failed a few at the beginning and picked up their marks to be consistently high there after, has the student had a few excellent marks at the lower levels and struggling with more complex courses? They factor in other issues like the difficulty of the courses, how many courses the student could handle a year and so on.
Over the course of the decision process academics will be shuffled various ways to look at the overall averages, to look at the last 20 or so courses, to look at strength in prerequisites.
More verifiers are called on the application, and the applicant must find 3 letters of references â one academic one from a professor, and two others â I believe at least one must be a community service and cannot recall the third criteria at the moment. Of course, none of the referees or verifiers can be related or be a friend in case you were wondering.
The second check point is the interview. The interview comes along in February and interviewees must excel at the interview. At this point, they are asked to rank the sites of study so that UBC can attempt to make as many students happy as possible. That 600 odd list will be cut into about half â with about 250-ish getting a spot and a few others being offered a wait list. The year-to-year stats are on UBCâs admission site.
After interview, the third stage happens when the committee reviews interview scores, reshuffles the academic a different way again, re-evaluates the non-academic qualities, looks at the reference letters, and looks at a section of the application by which they determine if a person is better in the city or rural. Their decisions are then readjusted if necessary when compared to studentâs wishes. I may add that some students still get sent to site they may not have asked for.
A letter is sent out May 15th to notify an applicant that they have been successful and where they are to study for 4 years.
As for the 70odd percent that N. Clancy made such a huge deal of in her article:
Between the data from UBC admissions website and applicants stats on Premed 101, I would argue that a few low GPAâs (Iâll pick the 70-79 range arbitrarily) get in every year. The 2012 class had 54 such students and they cannot all have gone to the Northern Medical Program. From the âpremed forumâ however it sounds like these exceptional cases have amazing life characteristics for the Non-academic Qualities. Just a quick scan of this and previous years posts on the premed boards, it looks like the majority of these âexceptionsâ end up inâ¦â¦gasp! Vancouver!!
Again, what the article/clip doesnât show is whether students (regardless of what site they end up at) with overall GPA of 70 had lower combined score because of initial struggles in undergrad, only to overcome some failed courses and ace the remaining 40-50 plus courses that it takes to finish an undergrad. It doesnât show that a student may have excelled in every aspect of coursework and had a few low marks in upper level calculus/nuclear physics/what have you. The overall trend is more important than a single number, and in my example, proportion also provides perspective.
What N. Clancy wants you to believe after showing the world a single number on a manipulated table, is that the North has a special sub-standard. What I would have you think is that it is a UBC wide affair to find the most qualified applicants for their programs. I would also point out that the process is very complicated and very holistic even if you consider just the application process itself. It isnât always perfect or fair â but they try their darned best. Remember, there are 2000 potential applicants, of which 600 have super marks, even if they may have a low one in a single category. You really think UBC and anyone in the North for that matter would pick the weakest candidate – for what purpose would that serve them?
As a UBC medical student studying here I will say I had to do the âentrance examâ, which I assume is the MCAT or else my application would have been disqualified. I worked my rear end off for years to get into medical school trying to excel in all areas of my life, and although I was competitive to go to other schools I was accepted to UBC and I will graduate with a UBC diploma, regardless of my site.
I will also say that I continue to strive for excellence in my program. I still strive for good marks amongst my 250 odd classmates, I am published because I want to contribute to the academic community, and I spend my free time volunteering as much as I can because I want to belong and give back to this community. I am devoted to my patients and spend countless hours at the bedside, and when not there I am learning as fast as I can through my books so I can help the next person.
This article is an insult to myself, my colleagues who have all succeeded to join this program, and strive as hard as I. I joined this program to learn, and support it, and soon to be a part of their community and faculty. The province wide UBC distributed program is unique in this world. I did not join this program to be referred as a substandard physician because I am in the Peeg. Other institutions have studied our academic model and excellence, including our performance in PG. The PG campus holds it own when compared to all the sites in BC, to other universitiesâ medical program whether Canadian or Ivy League American and this is evidence also by board exam performances, licensing exams, and the competitive residencies we consistently secure.
The residents of the North are NOT second class citizens and every patient here should reassure they have competent and compassionate care. The Clancy article is irresponsible to suggest that we are anything less to our patients who come to us in need.
No way to edit but I would have liked to have said…
It isnât always perfect or SEEM fair. ooops.
No way to edit but I would have liked to have said…
It isnât always perfect or SEEM fair. ooops.
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