ANALYSIS | Queen’s Medical Admissions: Chance or Choice?
Photo Credit: Queen’s University
Starting with the 2025 admissions cycle, Queen’s University’s MD program will adopt a lottery system that randomly selects qualified candidates for interviews in a bid to increase equitable access to the program.
Dr. Jane Philpott, dean of the Queen’s Health Sciences (QHS) department, stated on the QHS website that this is due to a massive volume of qualified applicants applying for the program. In the previous system, there was a large emphasis on extracurricular activities in choosing candidates that put certain groups at a disadvantage.
In the 2024 admissions cycle, there were over 5,000 applicants competing for 139 spots in the QHS MD program. Out of these 5,000 applicants, 638 interviews were offered, with the final 139 students having a GPA of 3.76 out of 4.00.
“We have thousands of qualified medical school applicants each year who would make excellent doctors. Our new admissions process will give them equal opportunity to be selected for the interview stage,” wrote Dr. Philpott. She believes that this change will help “level the playing field” for prospective students.
Queen’s decision to implement this system follows the success of its undergraduate-level predecessor, QuARMS, a streamlined pathway to QHS’s MD program that was modified in 2020 to be offered to black and indigenous high school students.
“We are hoping to reach individuals who may not have considered […] the medical profession otherwise,” said Dr. Philpott on the Queen’s admissions website.
The new QHS MD Program application cycle will establish thresholds for GPA Grade-Point-Average (GPA), Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) scores, and Computer-Based Assessment for Sampling Personal Characteristics (Casper) scores that all applicants must meet. With these standards met, applicants are then randomly selected to proceed to the interview cycle, effectively removing the consideration of extracurriculars at the initial stage of the admissions process.
However, this does not mean that QHS will not review an applicant’s extracurricular history. According to The Globe and Mail, a ‘file review’ will take place throughout the admissions process, where a candidate’s work, volunteer, and extracurricular activities will be considered by the school, with a ‘final evaluation’ at the end of an applicant's assessment.
Furthermore, applicants with access to opportunities such as additional education, travel, and work placements were shown to be favoured by the previous admissions system.
“There are lots of young people out there who have perhaps had some socio-economic struggles,” said Dr. Philpott. “They need a chance to be able to get into medical school, and we want to give them that opportunity.”
As of April 2024, QHS’s MD program is unique amongst Canadian universities in its decision to restructure its medical school admissions process around a lottery system.
However, this is not the first time students faced a random selection process in university applications.
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, McMaster University’s Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine received over 5,000 applicants, with around 552 individuals passing to the interview stage. After realizing that virtual interviews could not be conducted with all 552 individuals, McMaster offered admission to the top 100 pre-interview candidates along with about five to 20 Indigenous candidates.
The decision received fierce backlash online, with users from platforms such as facebook and reddit questioning whether the process was fair to its applicants. Some students felt that they had wasted over four years of their lives preparing for this application, only for it to be decided by a lottery.
As of late April 2024, there has not been a significant outcry from the public and the graduating class of 2025 regarding the implementation of a lottery-system in Queen’s University’s MD program.