Canadian DS-The Hoopla over "HIGH" Admission Stats-Part II

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I'm kidding, friends to the north. Don't use this comment to fuel emotions when responding to the original post. Insightful work here.

This does not mean much at all since Canadian and U.S. education systems differ. Obviously other factors come into play and vary between universities in each country and between each country - quality, format, grading schemes, policies etc. My friend went to university with me in Ontario and switched to a U.S. school after 2nd year and had no problem adjusting and receiving similar if not higher marks. The fact is, an 80-84 may be an A- but how difficult it is to obtain that 80-84 may differ between Canada and U.S. where in one place it is worth an A- and in another it is not.

This issue has been discussed before and there is no point in diving into it again as at the end of the day people will just be throwing opinions back and forth.

Yikes! I didn't look into the posted .doc, b/c the info is not pertinent to me.
However, I feel like comparing GPAs between American students are the same way with so many variables coming into play (i.e. difference in... majors, course load, time taken to complete undergrad degree, schools, work/volunteer schedules, etc...). Thankfully the dental schools look at the whole application and not just the GPA #s.. phew!

dymm said:

Yikes! I didn't look into the posted .doc, b/c the info is not pertinent to me.
However, I feel like comparing GPAs between American students are the same way with so many variables coming into play (i.e. difference in... majors, course load, time taken to complete undergrad degree, schools, work/volunteer schedules, etc...). Thankfully the dental schools look at the whole application and not just the GPA #s.. phew!

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I did not open it either, because comparing Canada and U.S. schools via their grading scales doesn't mean much.

And yes that is why I said "vary between universities in each country" - aka within the U.S. and within Canada

And yeah thankfully for the U.S. they look at the whole package but in Canada they do not - usually no letters of rec, EC's do not play a role, masters may get you a "bonus mark" - essentially you are numbers, put into an excel sheet - not sure if it is the best method to select quality future healthcare professionals...!

Am I missing something? This doesn't really seem any different from a lot of the science classes I took, where an A- was pretty much anything that was one st dev above the mean. An 85 would get you an A- at the least a lot of the time.

Having gone to a large Canadian institution I can tell you right now that those results are generally useless. All the courses I took until 4th year were curved with class averages set to a 69 which was a B-. My transcript has all the class averages on it, the lowest being 1.5 (Calc) and the highest being a 3.2 (300 level genetics). The normal class average for the majority of the classes is a 2.7. And yes, these are all science classes.

Edit: And I went to the U of Alberta, got a 93% in an uncurved 300 level micro class and got an A, not an A+. I don't know where they got their table from (90-100 being A+, anything over 80 being in A territory) but I promise you I never had a syllabus with a grading scale on it that looked like that.

Grading scale for my university is also incorrect. Every class Ive had so far, 93+ gets you an A+, while on the spreadsheet, its listed as 90-100 (University of Windsor). 85-90 gets an A, while on the spreadsheet, once again, its incorrectly listed as 80-100. Not really sure where these numbers are coming from.

since you are overzealous about collection data i'm surprised you didn't include the requirement links to each Canadian dental school. In general, we don't often use letter grading and the conversion jumps from percentage to GPA. The only reason I had a letter grade conversion was for the purposes of AADSAS GPA calculation.
Did you even look at some of the incoming stats for Canadian schools? My province uses the OMSAS conversion where 90-100 is a 4.0 and 85-89 is a 3.9. Some schools even accept 94-100 as a 4.0. My closest dental school accepts students based on percentages. The recent incoming class averages an 89.15%. Other Canadian schools arent any less stringent.

There are 8 dental schools in Canada. The seats are like 30-50 per school. You don't stand a chance for out-of-province acceptance. It's not hoopla, its competitive as hell.
you usually post really informative and helpful stats, why are you assembling misleading data to devalue us?

wzhu said:

since you are overzealous about collection data i'm surprised you didn't include the requirement links to each Canadian dental school. In general, we don't often use letter grading and the conversion jumps from percentage to GPA. The only reason I had a letter grade conversion was for the purposes of AADSAS GPA calculation.
Did you even look at some of the incoming stats for Canadian schools? My province uses the OMSAS conversion where 90-100 is a 4.0 and 85-89 is a 3.9. Some schools even accept 94-100 as a 4.0. My closest dental school accepts students based on percentages. The recent incoming class averages an 89.15%. Other Canadian schools arent any less stringent.

There are 8 dental schools in Canada. The seats are like 30-50 per school. You don't stand a chance for out-of-province acceptance. It's not hoopla, its competitive as hell.

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Precisely

wzhu said:

since you are overzealous about collection data i'm surprised you didn't include the requirement links to each Canadian dental school. In general, we don't often use letter grading and the conversion jumps from percentage to GPA. The only reason I had a letter grade conversion was for the purposes of AADSAS GPA calculation.
Did you even look at some of the incoming stats for Canadian schools? My province uses the OMSAS conversion where 90-100 is a 4.0 and 85-89 is a 3.9. Some schools even accept 94-100 as a 4.0. My closest dental school accepts students based on percentages. The recent incoming class averages an 89.15%. Other Canadian schools arent any less stringent.

There are 8 dental schools in Canada. The seats are like 30-50 per school. You don't stand a chance for out-of-province acceptance. It's not hoopla, its competitive as hell.
you usually post really informative and helpful stats, why are you assembling misleading data to devalue us?

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Doc Toothache, it is extremely hard to get 4.0 in Canada!!!

I have experience at many universities in Canada ...

If you would open your kind you'd realize what it's really like, I attended a private university in Canada that modelled it's course outlines and grading scales from American Universities and it was far easier than the public schools here in canada.

...most schools use the OMSAS GPA scale.

Ex #1
Now I've attended the University of Calgary a few years ago and the typical grading scale goes like this 95-100 = A+ 90-95 = A 85-90 = B+ ---this doesnt seem to hard right? WRONG; using the OMSAS a U of C A is not a 4.0 it's a 3.9 - on the AADSAS system you get a 4.3 for an A+ but at the U of C you get a 4.0
P.S. at the U of C if you take a harder science course then your grades may be curved up 3/4% but in that case there is no possibility for an A+, just an A (which means 3.9 is the highest you can get for it) and also the % needed for C doesn't change in that class so it realy only helps the better students

Ex #2
another University I've attended had a grading scale like this: 98+ = A+, 94-98 = A, 90-94 = A- ... this university fell under the same column on the OMSAS chart as UofC so for me to get a 4.0 there I had to have 98%+ for my courses

same can be said about american schools, im sure grading is not uniform throughout the states and that some schools are easier than other. The fact is that the number of canadian professional schools is limited, and competition is very high.

parham3 said:

same can be said about american schools, im sure grading is not uniform throughout the states and that some schools are easier than other. The fact is that the number of canadian professional schools is limited, and competition is very high.

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I agree, I mean even the difficulty of the same course within the same university can vary largely between professors even . . . from my experience though, professors do all seem to try to keep create a spread with a certain percentage of A's B's C's... but even if all professors did this the same way, you could be stuck in a class full of geniuses and try hards....

In the End there is only one constant fact - this is very hard to argue about

Judging by his last couple of anti-Canadian posts, I'm going to safely assume that Doc got rejected from all the Canadian schools.

Their schools are extremely difficult to get into for them and nearly impossible for internationals - that's just a fact. There's a reason why 130% of BU and NYU is composed of Canadian students - most, if not all, of whom did not get into a Canadian school. There are too many competitive applicants, and not enough seats (for their in-province kids...forget about out-of-province...don't even think about out-of-country). Canadian schools also genearlly just look at a couple DAT sections and GPA for pre-interview, so extra-curriculars have nothing to do with admission until the interview. Actually, the interview is scored based on 7ish standardized questions, so extra-curriculars/dental experience/all that junk don't even really matter. Thus, it's not so easy for anyone to get an interview at a Canadian school. Accept it and move on.

doc toothache said:

A+; 94-100
A; 85-93
A-; 80-84

Still not clear?

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From what I saw in your data, no, not really.
Really though, Canadian and American schools are probably roughly equal in terms of GRADES when you factor in things like curves, how professors mark, grading scales, etc.
However, in terms of COMPETITION, Canadian schools are most definitely harder to get in to. Way less schools=way more competition, and that cannot be denied.

doc toothache said:

Hard to take anyone seriously who cannot be bothered to ascertain the number of schools in the country.

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there are 8 dental schools that English native speakers can apply to. Laval and Montreal are French only. Hard to take anyone seriously who's a royal douche.

doc toothache said:

When a grading scales dips to 80 (and occasionally 75) for an A, the claim of superiority cannot be taken seriously.

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I don't think you understand how grading schemes work...

A's are fairly standardized (ie. They're difficult to achieve, and only a certain percent of the class is smart enough to achieve this grade). So, if you need only 75% to get an A...there are more trick questions and more complex questions to keep the curve consistent. If you need a 90% to get an A, there are fewer trick questions and more simple questions.

Get over the fact that it's more difficult to get into Canadian schools.

This thread is funny. Who cares. Our Canadian GPAs aren't superior...the whole application process in Canada is just different. And to make the adcoms job easy they base the majority of the decision on GPA, so naturally sky high GPAs get accepted and average (ie 3.5s) hardly stand a chance. That's all. How we compute our GPA is pretty irrelevant... and there is information out there about applicants/acceptances. UWO last year was 595 applicants for 56 spots... U of A was 383 for 32 spots. So about 1:10. Who knows how many of those are applying to both places, however.

i'll come off as biased but meh

our courses are either designed/belled to yield 65-69 avgs

i have a good prof friend who told me every time she gets out of this range she has to write a letter explaining why the course was too easy or too hard

now if we wanted to not be slacker canucks and adapt your superior conversion scale where <60 is a fail, we'd be failing kids who get 5% below class average

that's a lot of kids

doc toothache said:

Oh right. The two schools don't count since they are "foreigners". They should be thankful they can actually pursue dentistry and we might even call them docteur when they graduate. The Canadian Aboriginals might take issue with "English" and "native" used in the same sentence.



Those standardized grading systems are so hard to understand.



The number of applicants per school is known; what is not known is how many of the applicants apply to multiple schools, thereby skewing the actual number in the applicant pool. The applicants/enrollees ratio can be deceiving.

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I'd like to see what happens if you would post something like this on premed101

here's the link: http://www.premed101.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=7

please do it

Bottom line is that there's 10 schools in Canada. There's also a lot of applicants. This drives up the GPA to sometimes crazy numbers depending on the school. Some schools don't need to have a 3.9 or 4.0 average, but some do. Those that don't, admit students almost strictly from their own province. I'm just happy I'll be at UdeM next year so I won't have to be forced to pay ridiculous tuition prices.

glassbowl said:

Bottom line is that there's 10 schools in Canada. There's also a lot of applicants. This drives up the GPA to sometimes crazy numbers depending on the school. Some schools don't need to have a 3.9 or 4.0 average, but some do. Those that don't, admit students almost strictly from their own province. I'm just happy I'll be at UdeM next year so I won't have to be forced to pay ridiculous tuition prices.

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I would love to go to U de M, I just wish my French was better! do you know what the situation for OOP is?
congratulations by the way!

doc toothache said:

Do they brag as much as pre dents on how "insanely difficult" it is to get into a Canadian med s?

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I haven't seen so much bragging as informing on either site, but I can assure you that you would get very interesting responses. I don't see what an individual would be proud of by saying that their Country has a flawed system that makes it impossible for them to get into dental school

cheers

MOUTHLOVER said:

I would love to go to U de M, I just wish my French was better! do you know what the situation for OOP is?
congratulations by the way!

cheers

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I think it is very difficult to be accepted into UdeM or Laval from OOP. I've applied to both, with no success. UdeM, for example, doesn't look at your DAT nor do they conduct interviews -- it is almost purely GPA. On the one hand though, if you have good grades, you'll get in for sure.

I once had a joint job to do with a Canadian crew and they were such SLOW and INEFFICIENT workers. It was like they were out to tea the entire time or something. I think there is a different mentality between the US and Canadians. They just take life a little slower and easier so I would not be prized that their grading system was less rigorous.

doc toothache said:

Do they brag as much as pre dents on how "insanely difficult" it is to get into a Canadian med s?

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Doc, you have not been in our shoes because you are obviously not Canadian, it's not bragging, it's simple straight fact. We don't have as many dental or med school as the states, but obviously you believe what you want.

I just did my course-based Master's Degree in the U.S... and while I obviously can only speak based on my experience at one institution, I can assure you that you are looking at your stats in the wrong way doc toothache.

First of all, within both Canada and the US there are hard universities and there are universities where, regardless of the % you need to get an A, it's considered easier. Basically, there is such a wide variation within each country itself that it's dangerous to just compare overall difficulty between the two.

Secondly, the letter grades are more important than percentages. Just because at my Canadian university I needed an 80% in my class to get an "A-", doesn't mean it was easier to get it. At the U.S. university I just graduated from, a "90%" is an A- and in my courses it was just as achievable as it would be in Canada (A- was 80%). I can't remember a single science course I took at McMaster that didn't have a class average in the low 60's (C-)... but I have yet to ever see a professor at Tulane allow a class average to be in the low 60's. It's the letter grades you need to compare. How much of each class = getting A's?

Thirdly, it's not just the lack of dental schools in Canada that is the issue. It's that they take relatively no out-of-province (aka out-of-state/international) students (they are funded by the government!). Thus, if you're like me and you're from the province of Ontario... your only 'realistic' options are the 2 dental schools that are in this province (UofT and UWest). There are 13 provinces/territories in Canada and Ontario (just 1 of those), houses over 30% of the Canadian population. So if each dental school in Ontario has 50-60 seats, you can see where the competition comes from. It's a numbers game at the end of the day.

I'm not here to say U.S. schools are not hard (hell, I can only speak from personal experience and I only attended one). I'm not here to say that Canadian schools are not hard. It's a damn spectrum in both countries. The grading scheme for essays, the way multiple choice tests are made, the curves... it's all different. You're not going to automatically get a class where half the students get away with getting an "A-" in Canada just because it is an 80%, that's madness. At least not at the university I attended (maybe at York Uni, j/k).

I'm only one example in this giant spectrum, but my final year of a bio bach. degree in Canada I was able to achieve a 3.85 at McMaster. I'm graduating with a master in cell and molec biology at Tulane with a 3.97 (I was in a program of ~30 with only one other Canadian; the rest were from all over the U.S.). If it's so much easier to get A's in McMaster, why did I excel in my first and only year at Tulane? You could argue that Tulane is an easy school and I could also argue that you don't know which professors I had so that would be a general and inaccurate statement for someone to make.

In conclusion, spread peace and love.

Canadian love.

yappy said:

I once had a joint job to do with a Canadian crew and they were such SLOW and INEFFICIENT workers. It was like they were out to tea the entire time or something. I think there is a different mentality between the US and Canadians. They just take life a little slower and easier so I would not be prized that their grading system was less rigorous.

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I can't speak for other universities since I went to McGill, but I don't think you understand how challenging and rigorous undergrad is over here. They make the grading scheme like that because the programs are extremely hard. Not only that, but there's serious grade deflation in the faculties of arts as well as management. The atmosphere is cut throat to say the least, and it doesn't help that everyone wants to be doctors or dentists.

yappy said:

I once had a joint job to do with a Canadian crew and they were such SLOW and INEFFICIENT workers. It was like they were out to tea the entire time or something. I think there is a different mentality between the US and Canadians. They just take life a little slower and easier so I would not be prized that their grading system was less rigorous.

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That's quite a generalization. I mean, judging all of Canada based on some kind of crew???? The Canadian culture varies greatly within itself. One province would commonly have a "mentality" completely different from the next. Just look at ontario and Québec, its like a whole different country.

One time this American friend from NYC asked me where I live, I said Vancouver and he was like oh I'm coming up to Toronto this weekend, wanna meet up for lunch?

Another time, I went on a relief trip down to the Caribbean. Most of my group was American. We were having a meeting and the guy next to me was asked to read something out loud. HE COULDN'T! It was horrible, these were all young adults who have graduated high school. I have never steen thuis bepote in Canada.

Should I think that all American beleive in teleportation or just suck at geography? Am i suppost to beleive that all Americans are illiterate?

doc toothache said:

Hard to take anyone seriously who cannot be bothered to ascertain the number of schools in the country.

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HILARIOUS!!! There are 9 podiatry schools. ahhahahahaha.

doc toothache said:

By this logic, it should be a heck of a lot easier to get into one of the 137 medical schools in the US and much harder to get into one of the 8 podiatry schools.

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Both the US and Canada have similar applicants to seat ratios. In fact, from the POV of having the opportunity to attend dental school, I'd say Canadians have an advantage in being able to apply to Canadian AND US schools!

JasenClaisen said:

Both the US and Canada have similar applicants to seat ratios. In fact, from the POV of having the opportunity to attend dental school, I'd say Canadians have an advantage in being able to apply to Canadian AND US schools!

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US students can apply to Canadian schools...

The simply logical fact that us canadians are applying to american schools for a reasonable chance is enough to conclude that american dental schools are easier to get into considering we are accepted as international students

dskies said:

US students can apply to Canadian schools...

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And we'd have as welcoming a reception as Canadians do in the US? Well let's say I've a 4.0 and a 24AA DAT. Would I be able to get into a Canadian school? People who win the numbers game in the US can't get into Canadian schools but people who lose the Canadian numbers game can apply for a good chance of getting into American schools.

JasenClaisen said:

And we'd have as welcoming a reception as Canadians do in the US? Well let's say I've a 4.0 and a 24AA DAT. Would I be able to get into a Canadian school? People who win the numbers game in the US can't get into Canadian schools but people who lose the Canadian numbers game can apply for a good chance of getting into American schools.

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well, there are some Canadians with those stats that don't get into Canadian schools, so why should an American?

I think the major thing is that America has big private schools. If you took into account, only that state/government schools then Canadians and Americans would have a more similar cross boarder situation.

Japie said:

well, there are some Canadians with those stats that don't get into Canadian schools, so why should an American?

I think the major thing is that America has big private schools. If you took into account, only that state/government schools then Canadians and Americans would have a more similar cross boarder situation.

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Absolutely right Japie!

Japie said:

well, there are some Canadians with those stats that don't get into Canadian schools, so why should an American?

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There are Americans with good enough stats that don't get into American schools, so why should a Canadian? These schools, public and private are funded in part by OUR tax dollars. The US and Canada have similar seat to population ratios. The only difference is in Canada they focus on the numbers game and here we're big on ECs. I think you guys are just looking for an excuse to double dip.

I'm a little confused as to why any of this matters and doc toothache's motives behind it. Disregard his ad hominem attacks and overly-sarcastic tone; it seems as though he's hell-bent on discrediting Canadian applicants for some reason.

I didn't bother looking at the stats he put up since he's been wrong, and he has previously grossly misinterpreted them (which probably sent him on this feverish quest to stand atop his misplaced ivory throne and claim, "I'M RIGHT!"... see here). I understand my own reality and the process I had to go through; I know that for me, it was far easier to gain admission to numerous American schools than it was to even a single Canadian school (one that I am in-province for, even).

The American application process was more involved, but it was less demanding of both my academic record and my ability to perform in an interview setting. One could simply chalk this up as "Well, the schools look at different aspects of an applicant," but in an applicant's experience (mine, at least), it is reduced to the fact that achieving admission on one side of the border was far easier than achieving admission on this one.

I've always wondered where doc toothache finds the time in his busy DDS/DMD life to come on here to berate, belittle and besiege the intentions, hopes and dreams of some young adults, all in the name of "helping."

Draw a line somewhere, toothache; you're more incendiary than informative.

Great post doc.

You are right, but far less of your tax dollars are for those private schools which also accept more of us internationals. Also, we would have to pay an out of state tuition which would compensate for that lack of tax dollar.

The fact is that America has a far better way of choosing their students. For America you have to be an intelligent person and for Canada you need to be a robot.

I believe that Americans can double dip just as much as we can to your state schools. Just think for a sec, how many predents actually have the stats needed to get into canadian schools (a very small percentage) and how many would even want to go to Canadian schools and apply ( an even smaller percentage.

I can assure you that an american with a A + in every class, 30s on that DAT and a perfect score on the MMI will definitely get into a Canadian school.

If anything we get screwed over since we are paying HIGH taxes so that our schools can be cheaper but in the end we have to pack up and go to a private/expensive! Institution in another country because we aren't robots!