Medical school admission requires diverse experiences

Sabina Shah, Meds ’25, always had medicine in the back of her mind whenever she considered potential career options.

Shah completed a four year undergraduate education in psychology at Queen’s, where she entertained several different career paths in the early years of her degree.

“In my first year, I did just general sciences and then I ended up doing a double major in biology and psychology and then I majored in just psychology because it was a subject that I really enjoyed. Whether I did medicine or something else I wanted to spend my four years doing something that I was really interested in,” Shah said in an interview with The Journal.

Shah is one of the approximately 140 people out of the more than 5,000 applicants, an extremely competitive acceptance rate, who was able to gain acceptance to Queen’s University’s School of Medicine.

According to admissions statistics for this year’s first year class at Queen’s University’s School of Medicine, medical students enter their studies from a diverse range of ages and educational backgrounds.

In the class of 2027, the ages of students ranged from 19 to 41. Sixty-three percent of the class only has an undergraduate education while 35 percent have Master’s degrees, and two per cent have PhDs.

From cultivating the perfect resume chock full of diverse extracurriculars to maintaining immaculate transcripts, hopeful medical students face several pressures when vying for some of Canada’s most highly sought after postsecondary programs. To learn more about the various pathways into the School of Medicine, The Journal spoke with three students about their experiences.

Shah believes her undergraduate education prepared her well when it came to communication in the medical profession and in her interviews. However, she experienced significant learning curves in areas like the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) an examination she chose to write twice.

“For my MCAT, I had to self-teach a lot of things because I wasn’t from a medical sciences background. I never took organic chemistry, I never took anatomy,” she said.

Shah mentioned not having many friends who were applying for medical schools, which is something she attributes to her not taking the traditional “pre-med” courses. As a consequence, she didn’t have many peers with whom she could exchange ideas or prepare for interviews.

At the same time, she experienced much less stress when applying to medical schools because she had fewer peers applying as well.

In terms of the transition from undergrad to medical school, Shah appreciates the ability to stay in Kingston.

“I absolutely loved my undergrad at Queen’s and I was actually nervous about studying [at Queen’s] for med as well because I didn’t know what the experience was going to be like. I didn’t want to compare the two much or feel like I was replacing my undergrad experience. It feels separate enough, the undergrad experience and the med experience, that I feel like I had two different, but positive in their own way, experiences.”

From an academic perspective, she’s enjoyed the greater focus on learning the material—rather than just getting high grades—in medical school as compared to undergrad.

Over the summer between the end of undergrad and the start of med school, Shah took the opportunity to relax.

As for the advice she has for students who may be coming from a similar background as her, Shah advises them to prioritize their passions when joining extracurriculars. She believes this approach will lead to greater personal satisfaction and stronger medical school interview performances.

Alex* is currently in the first two years of the Queen’s Accelerated Route to Medical School (QuARMS) program—a six-year program that allows 10 high school graduates each year to enrol in a compressed two-year undergrad paired with four years of medical school.

They started considering QuARMS in grade 11 after it was brought to their attention by a guidance counselor.

Alex noted that they hadn’t shaped their time in high school around applying to QuARMS.

“I had already been doing extracurriculars, research, and various competitions that you would expect from a pre-med student for any pathway,” they said in an interview with The Journal.

“I was already looking at the other not pre-med, but medicine-oriented undergraduate programs like health sci at Mac, or health sciences here. So, I already had the experiences that would lend themselves quite useful in the QuARMS application.”

Alex remembers the application process being quite lengthy—they received an interview invitation in the winter with their final offer coming in mid-spring.

Prior to entering QuARMS, they had no expectations for what the program would look like. Nonetheless, they were surprised by the diversity of life experiences among the students.

“The QuARMs students that they put together, each and every student is incredibly different from the other nine. The personalities and attributes in each of the 10 eventual medical students really goes to show that there isn’t one perfect pre-med student or one perfect physician.”

Due to the program’s competitive admissions, they advise applicants to differentiate themselves as much as they can.

“Everyone will have the same base accomplishments. They’ll be the president of whatever pre-med club, they’ll have the marks, they have done some work with some nonprofit and have done lots of volunteering work. Everyone has them so in order to make your application memorable, you need a ‘spike’—some sort of attribute or activity that is unique.”

Gilmar Gutierrez, Meds ’22, is originally from Ecuador and came to Canada in 2013.

Since he lacked Canadian permanent residency status or citizenship when he first applied to medical schools, he was considered an international student.

Gutierrez mentioned the paucity of spots for international medical students in Canada—something that posed a significant challenge for him when he was applying.

“I had to work quite hard in order to have the grades, make sure that I got the right score for the MCAT then of course figure out which schools actually accept international medical students because there is a total of between five and 10 international medical student spots in Canada,” Gutierrez said in an interview with The Journal.

Finances were also another significant barrier for Gutierrez—the cost for international medical students can be up to triple the cost for domestic medical students.

Gutierrez felt fortunate he received financial support from his family and friends as well as through loans.

Without permanent residency status or citizenship, he had to account for an additional consideration in all his long-term planning: immigration.

He eventually received permanent residency after working for two years following his graduation from medical school, allowing him to recently be matched to a residency program.

As for advice for medical school applicants in a similar situation as his, Gutierrez recommends getting familiar with all the steps involved in both applying to medical school and immigration. He also recommends getting comfortable with taking risks.

*Name changed to protect source’s identity.

Tags

Admissions, medical school

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