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It would be essentially impossible to get a residency in Canada, as virtually all residency positions in Canada are restricted to Canadian citizens and permanent residents.
Possible, but you would now be (technically) a US grad educated outside the US medical system. You would have more trouble getting US clinical experience (which is vital for matching in the US, since you won't match in Canada); again, not impossible, but more difficult than it needs to be. To US PDs, you would be coming from an unknown-factor medical school, with predominantly unknown-factor electives, for unknown reasons.
It's too many "What the hell is this guy up to?" red flags for your average, KISS PD (no offense to the PDs out there!)
I'd apply in the US.
Average Canadian entrance standards for Canadians are, in general, far higher than those at average American schools for Americans. Beyond that there are only a few schools that accept a very limited number of non-citizens as students. If you're still interested in looking into it, McGill in Montreal is one. Competition amongst non-Canadians for these very, very few spots is (as you can imagine) INSANE. IF you could get accepted at a Canadian school as non-citizen, then you could also get accepted at very high-tier US schools.
The axiom is: Study where you want to ultimately work. If you really, really, really want to live and work in Canada, then the first step is to become a citizen / PR.
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Virtually all Canadian residencies (ALL of them regardless of specialty) are limited to Canadian residents / citizens. You HAVE to be a Canadian citizen / PR - end of story. Being a citizen / PR would also make it 10,000x easier to get into a Canadian medical school (even though it is still much harder for a Canadian to get into a Canadian medical school than for an American to get into an American school).
If you're absolutely set on living in Canada
Your best option: become a Canadian and go to a Canadian medical school.
Next best option: attend a top-notch American school, do a top-notch American residency, and then immigrate.
Now remember that there are plenty of Canada-like areas in the US, and plenty of US-like areas in Canada. Whatever you dislike about where you live now, you may want to consider whether there is somewhere in the breadth of your vast nation that would be what you want Canada to be.
you are making it seem like CDN schools are impossible to get into vs. states. :S
as if American college students are less hard working and less competent and don't deserve to be doctors as much as their CDN couterparts. its a common perception and tone i gather from many cdn med students and residents...its arrogant.
the number of schools: population ratio is similar between countries...
anyhow, competition in U.S. schools is pretty intense as well - its just depends on the location/ state you are applying to. for instance, schools in California are far more competitive than Ontario (UC/SF/LA, Stanford, etc to name a few...)
it may appear to be lesser competitive, because U.S. is very diverse, and there are osteopathic schools which change the picture.
but recall that going to an American school and finishing the program with USMLE step 1, 2 (CK/CS) is no joke...as that is required for residency appointment and is a more objective measure, vs LORs.
with that said.
returning to the OP's question. whats so specifically great about cdn schools? you can get into a good U.S. medical school as well with those scores...and you will have the option of either practicing in states or going back to canada if you really wish...since most residencies, if not all are transferable with +/- additional training (in my case, anesthesia for example is 4 years in U.S. and 5 years canada and if i was to go back and practice, i would have to do one year of critical care fellowship here, or obtain additional supervised training there...)...
as if American college students are less hard working and less competent and don't deserve to be doctors as much as their CDN couterparts. its a common perception and tone i gather from many cdn med students and residents...its arrogant.
the number of schools: population ratio is similar between countries...
anyhow, competition in U.S. schools is pretty intense as well - its just depends on the location/ state you are applying to. for instance, schools in California are far more competitive than Ontario (UC/SF/LA, Stanford, etc to name a few...)
it may appear to be lesser competitive, because U.S. is very diverse, and there are osteopathic schools which change the picture.
but recall that going to an American school and finishing the program with USMLE step 1, 2 (CK/CS) is no joke...as that is required for residency appointment and is a more objective measure, vs LORs.
with that said.
returning to the OP's question. whats so specifically great about cdn schools? you can get into a good U.S. medical school as well with those scores...and you will have the option of either practicing in states or going back to canada if you really wish...since most residencies, if not all are transferable with +/- additional training (in my case, anesthesia for example is 4 years in U.S. and 5 years canada and if i was to go back and practice, i would have to do one year of critical care fellowship here, or obtain additional supervised training there...)...
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It really isn't arrogant, its true. Only 20% of medical school applicants in Canada get into any medical school at all. The average matriculant to a Canadian medical school has applied 3 times. In the U.S this number is about 41%.
The demographics in Canada are very different to demographics in the US. More of Canada's population is comprised of very highly educated immigrants who do encourage their children to pursue medicine. It really a case of a higher percentage of Canadians want to pursue medicine.
Yes, Canadians do look down on Americans who couldn't get into medical school. Why? It means you were in the bottom 60% of applicants, not the bottom 80%. It means you were in about the bottom 3/5ths of the class, maybe you really shouldn't be a doctor. In Canada, it means you are part of the 4/5ths that couldn't get in.
You mentioned that schools in Cali are more competitive than Ontario. Ontario, particularly people from GTA (Toronto), are the most disadvantaged due to location discrimination. Every med school not in Ontario allows only 10% of their spots out of province. Every med school in Ontario allows equal competition between provincial and out of province applicants. At least schools in Cali prefer instate applicants.
2 Medical schools in Ontario, have their own preference for applicants from their own region (you have to go to high school there, Northern Ontario and South-Western Ontario). That leaves the GTA just about the only region in Canada where wherever they apply, they need to compete on equal grounds with other Canadians, but they have nothing reserved for them. Which is why the applicant to place ration is about 10:1. We are talking about people who have spent 4 years on a likely useless biology degree (think about the sheer number of biology premed wannabe grads looking for a job vs the number of jobs that require a bio or biochem degree)
Don't get mad though, we are the ones mad at having fewer med school spots per applicant not you. If i were an american, i would just be enjoying my opportunities and be grateful.
The demographics in Canada are very different to demographics in the US. More of Canada's population is comprised of very highly educated immigrants who do encourage their children to pursue medicine. It really a case of a higher percentage of Canadians want to pursue medicine.
Yes, Canadians do look down on Americans who couldn't get into medical school. Why? It means you were in the bottom 60% of applicants, not the bottom 80%. It means you were in about the bottom 3/5ths of the class, maybe you really shouldn't be a doctor. In Canada, it means you are part of the 4/5ths that couldn't get in.
You mentioned that schools in Cali are more competitive than Ontario. Ontario, particularly people from GTA (Toronto), are the most disadvantaged due to location discrimination. Every med school not in Ontario allows only 10% of their spots out of province. Every med school in Ontario allows equal competition between provincial and out of province applicants. At least schools in Cali prefer instate applicants.
2 Medical schools in Ontario, have their own preference for applicants from their own region (you have to go to high school there, Northern Ontario and South-Western Ontario). That leaves the GTA just about the only region in Canada where wherever they apply, they need to compete on equal grounds with other Canadians, but they have nothing reserved for them. Which is why the applicant to place ration is about 10:1. We are talking about people who have spent 4 years on a likely useless biology degree (think about the sheer number of biology premed wannabe grads looking for a job vs the number of jobs that require a bio or biochem degree)
Don't get mad though, we are the ones mad at having fewer med school spots per applicant not you. If i were an american, i would just be enjoying my opportunities and be grateful.
^can you provide sources for these numbers you quoted? I don't believe its that stark. The immigrants to U.S. are quite educated as well. In fact, its much more difficult to migrate to states than to Canada since Canada has an immigrant quota of around 250K just to sustain the population!
If you can provide me sources for the numbers you quoted...i'll be glad to look into them as I do not believe that they are true.
The reason American Medical schools may appear to be 'not as competitive' is multifold: College education is expensive. There are many other career opportunities for students pursuing bachelor's in sciences. There are more dental school, more vet schools, pharmacy schools. There are amazing Masters and PhD programs. The breadth of opportunities takes away from the pool of medical school applicants. Which is good for those who are only interested in medicine.
lol you can be as arrogant as you want. Who cares? American docs are the best on this planet. We have the best research, best institutions, best technology. For one University of Toronto, there are 5 Umich, Harvard, Stanford and UCLA, UPenn, Duke, U Texas, OSU and others...Its true that American life expectancy is not as high as it should be, but that's very disputed and not the only criteria to adjudge the cross sectional quality of health care. That's another topic. But to give you an example, do you know which city performs the most number of total knee replacements for Canadians??
...
..
.
Its Rochester, NY 🙂. Yes. Cdns travel to states to get their knees done (an outpatient procedure), because the healthcare systems deprives them of a good quality of life.
I was just saying that I notice this a lot from undergrad kids who have no clue what it requires to get through medical school and survive the physical, emotional and psychological turmoil that is called residency!
This arrogance is more stupidity and lack of knowledge, IMO. Memorizing and regurgitating Kreb's cycle or miosis meisos does not mean anything. I certainly would not want any stuck-up CDN doctor with a superiority complex treating me what that attitude!
i would be interested in seeing the competence of a Cdn med student taking USMLE Step 1 and comparing to an average American grad. USMLE Step 1 is an 8 hour exam. Step 2 has two days. Day 1 - CK is a 9 hour exam. CS is 7-8 hours long. Step 3 is also a 2 day exam (9+6). Most students take these BEFORE matching. Preparation of these exams takes months...so it is at that time, I say to any Cdn student...before you judge...try to see if you can perform well on these exams.
By the way, score on USMLEs correlates quite well with performance in residency...
As for myself, I am in fact quite grateful. I already made it. I'll be finishing my residency in Anesthesiology next summer, and a fellowship in Interventional Pain medicine next. I'll do an MBA from a really good program at the same time, and after a couple of years of academic medicine...I'm going to start a nice private practice or partner up down South near the beaches...far far far away from Canada.
So...There is more to this world than Canada. You just need to get out of your hole to see it.
If you can provide me sources for the numbers you quoted...i'll be glad to look into them as I do not believe that they are true.
The reason American Medical schools may appear to be 'not as competitive' is multifold: College education is expensive. There are many other career opportunities for students pursuing bachelor's in sciences. There are more dental school, more vet schools, pharmacy schools. There are amazing Masters and PhD programs. The breadth of opportunities takes away from the pool of medical school applicants. Which is good for those who are only interested in medicine.
lol you can be as arrogant as you want. Who cares? American docs are the best on this planet. We have the best research, best institutions, best technology. For one University of Toronto, there are 5 Umich, Harvard, Stanford and UCLA, UPenn, Duke, U Texas, OSU and others...Its true that American life expectancy is not as high as it should be, but that's very disputed and not the only criteria to adjudge the cross sectional quality of health care. That's another topic. But to give you an example, do you know which city performs the most number of total knee replacements for Canadians??
...
..
.
Its Rochester, NY 🙂. Yes. Cdns travel to states to get their knees done (an outpatient procedure), because the healthcare systems deprives them of a good quality of life.
I was just saying that I notice this a lot from undergrad kids who have no clue what it requires to get through medical school and survive the physical, emotional and psychological turmoil that is called residency!
This arrogance is more stupidity and lack of knowledge, IMO. Memorizing and regurgitating Kreb's cycle or miosis meisos does not mean anything. I certainly would not want any stuck-up CDN doctor with a superiority complex treating me what that attitude!
i would be interested in seeing the competence of a Cdn med student taking USMLE Step 1 and comparing to an average American grad. USMLE Step 1 is an 8 hour exam. Step 2 has two days. Day 1 - CK is a 9 hour exam. CS is 7-8 hours long. Step 3 is also a 2 day exam (9+6). Most students take these BEFORE matching. Preparation of these exams takes months...so it is at that time, I say to any Cdn student...before you judge...try to see if you can perform well on these exams.
By the way, score on USMLEs correlates quite well with performance in residency...
As for myself, I am in fact quite grateful. I already made it. I'll be finishing my residency in Anesthesiology next summer, and a fellowship in Interventional Pain medicine next. I'll do an MBA from a really good program at the same time, and after a couple of years of academic medicine...I'm going to start a nice private practice or partner up down South near the beaches...far far far away from Canada.
So...There is more to this world than Canada. You just need to get out of your hole to see it.
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Yes for our UofT, McMaster, UBC and McGill (Canada's top 4 medical schools), America does have more and arguably better ones. However, don't forget your population is 10x larger than ours so it goes hand in hand.
If you look at the numbers that jaycee kindly posted, you would see what i mean. Acceptance rates are incredibly low, and most Canadians don't apply to the same number of medical schools that the US does, because we don't have the same number of medical schools. Also, the US has medical schools sprouting up like weeds as well as DO schools.
Don't forget, many of the greatest physicians were actually in fact Canadian. William Osler was one of the founding 4 professors of Johns Hopkins SOM and the inventor of the American residency system. Frederick Banting was the inventor of Insulin and also the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Prize in Phys/Med at the age of 32.
Canadians have their own licensing exams they take MCCQE pt 1 and pt 2, which are broadly equivalent to the USMLE. If you really want to compare healthcare systems, you will also know that in Canada, we don't have to deny care to patients who don't have health insurance.
It's not about Canada being the shiznit, it's about the competition. Today was Unmatch Day - the province of Ontario has 30 FM positions left unmatched, 8 of which are reserved for Francos. 63 FM positions across the country. 1600 people are applying for those positions (and other unmatched residencies, but FM has the most spots, then probably IM, I don't have their numbers); 1300 are outright IMG's, the rest unmatched Canadian grads and Canadians who studied abroad.
OP would be one of the 1300. Those odds ain't good.
Well, I don't think that's a fair comment. The reason Canadian schools are almost impossible to get into for non-citizens/permanent residents is simple - they're not even eligible to apply. Only a few schools accept non-Canadians and it's something on the order of 10 or fewer spaces across the country.
Ottawa gives preference to locals and McMaster gives 90% of interview slots to Ontario applicants. In fact, the only schools that don't have any kind of location preference are UofT and Queen's.
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Ottawa gives preference to Ottawa area applicants, also has a French-English department which usually means you are living in Eastern Ontario or Quebec. Really, if you are from the GTA i.e. 6 million people i.e. more than 1/6th of Canada's population, you only get preference from Mac.
The SWOMENs have western, the northerners have NOSM, the ottawa people have UOttawa.
My solution is to eliminate all these quotas. We all pay the same taxes, why discriminate. Its not like you will have a diverse student body if you do all these provincial restrictions.