Fairness issue in Canada

[DentalP87]

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Just wanted to see what pre-dent students think about this fact around my town.

So I am a student at UBC (university of british columbia) where it is the hardest school in BC to get into. Of course, most high school students with high marks go to UBC.

Anyways, what bothers me is that while UBC doesn't allow re-takes unless you get below 50% (F), a neighbouring university (won't name it but UBC students know where) deletes up to 3-5 failed courses from your transcript if you write up a "decent letter" for your academic hardship. Yes, they just ERASE the mark from their transcripts and they can re-take it.

I don't want to complain or anything but our school is already quite difficult considering the fact that the best students in BC come here, I'm sure you guys understand what I'm talking about.

Thoughts?

 

[Motormouth]

Just wanted to see what pre-dent students think about this fact around my town.

So I am a student at UBC (university of british columbia) where it is the hardest school in BC to get into. Of course, most high school students with high marks go to UBC.

Anyways, what bothers me is that while UBC doesn't allow re-takes unless you get below 50% (F), a neighbouring university (won't name it but UBC students know where) deletes up to 3-5 failed courses from your transcript if you write up a "decent letter" for your academic hardship. Yes, they just ERASE the mark from their transcripts and they can re-take it.

I don't want to complain or anything but our school is already quite difficult considering the fact that the best students in BC come here, I'm sure you guys understand what I'm talking about.

Thoughts?

Unfortunately nobody ever said that the world was a fair place.

Personally I realized that as I was completing my BSc degree since my gpa was 3.5 I stood no chance in hell getting into dental where the average entering GPA is 3.8... I soon realized that nobody gives a rats *** what sort of challenging academics you persue and get good grades, all that matters are your grades whether it be taking ""arts" or sciences. I realized that I should have taken the easy road like business or somethign where I could have had huge gpa's pushing 4's lol my rant over.....

Honeslty I am very happy having taken sciences and love the things I learned and what it has made of me but there is that part of me that wonders whether I should have had a view of the bigger picture or if I should have been more focused on my long term goals of Dent and how I could have achieved that in the easiest way possible. So you have to weigh your priorities, are you wanting to persue somethign in the long run and how can you achieve that best or do you want to do what interests you in the short run? Unfortunately when you are young, inexperienced and niave you don't think of these things, and quite often you don't have anyone there to tell you these pieces of advice....

Regardless, I'm in Dent but at NYU, and I'm very excited to start there.

 

[dackmonkey]

that's pretty ridiulous. as if it's not enough that BC residents don't get precedence to UBC compared to OOP applicants.

 

[bodiddely]

Sucks but what can you do. There are tons of things that are unfair in academics. Buy a new shirt or stop eating cheese!

 

[bent on dent]

and so begins the UBC hate thread... haha. But it's true, I understand where you are coming from.

 

[djeffreyt]

I don't want to complain or anything

Yes you do. That's the why you brought it up, otherwise, you would have ignored it or left it alone.

You're right...in a fair world...your two schools are playing by different rules and that isn't right. But...like it was pointed out. Life isn't fair.

If perhaps you had spent a little less time getting high marks in high school and spent a little time researching the academic and administrative policies of these two schools, weighed those into your considerations as to which school to go to - coupled with the concept that you wanted to eventually get into dental school - and knowing dental school admissions is a competitive numbers game, then perhaps you might have made the choice to go to the non-hardest to get into university in Canada in order to better achieve your final academic goals. But, that would take a lot of forethought for a teenager.

So you really got three options:

Ignore it and continue your education

Complain about it but otherwise do nothing, and continue your education

Complain about it, drop out of your institution and apply to the other institution and continue your education.

 

[ummjoey]

UBC doesn't allow re-takes unless you get below 50% (F), a neighbouring university (won't name it but UBC students know where) deletes up to 3-5 failed courses from your transcript if you write up a "decent letter" for your academic hardship. Yes, they just ERASE the mark from their transcripts and they can re-take it.

do you guys think dental schools know about this and take it into consideration when they are going through the applications?

i think you should stay where you are. if you have good faith and truely work hard. i dont see any reason why you wouldnt become a successful dentist.

 

[gochi]

Just wanted to see what pre-dent students think about this fact around my town.

So I am a student at UBC (university of british columbia) where it is the hardest school in BC to get into. Of course, most high school students with high marks go to UBC.

Anyways, what bothers me is that while UBC doesn't allow re-takes unless you get below 50% (F), a neighbouring university (won't name it but UBC students know where) deletes up to 3-5 failed courses from your transcript if you write up a "decent letter" for your academic hardship. Yes, they just ERASE the mark from their transcripts and they can re-take it.

I don't want to complain or anything but our school is already quite difficult considering the fact that the best students in BC come here, I'm sure you guys understand what I'm talking about.

Thoughts?

Yea right.

Even if they somehow "erase" it, the grade will still show up on you're application. You must have it confused with something else.

Why do you presume the "best" student's in BC attend UBC ?

 

[loved]

there's always something about one school that makes it better than another. IMO that's a small price to pay for getting to live in beautiful Vancouver 😍

 

[Dr.Millisevert]

Alternatives are to apply to dental schools in the US and Australia.

The University of Sydney I know takes approx. 13 internationals every year into their dental program and 90% of them are Canadian. 👍

 

[DentalP87]

Yea right.

Even if they somehow "erase" it, the grade will still show up on you're application. You must have it confused with something else.

Why do you presume the "best" student's in BC attend UBC ?

Do the majority of the best students in USA go to harvard, stanford, ucla.. etc? If you don't know anything about universities in canada, you shouldn't be making that kind of statement.

And no, I am not confused with something else. It is a known fact up here and you don't see any other Canadians contradicting me now do you?

For those of you who are giving me words of widsdom thank you. I will be finishing my microbi degree by 2010 and will be applying next cycle.

 

[jazzyb]

Im gonna grad this yr with a biochem degree and i dont wanna get into any debates with n e one but the fact is UBC is notoriously known to scale classes and make sure that only certain percent of the class only gets A's, B's and the works. To add to the misery, in my 2nd yr class we had 150 students planning to continue in biochem but only 120 were allowed on so the remaining 30 had to go and redo 2nd yr in the bio stream or general sci!!

I do regret having attended UBC and i wish i had attended SFU coz i do live real close to SFU, but its also an issue of pride and name that goes along with attending UBC(i believe we ranked 27th in the world..so keep ure head up man).

Lastly, UBC is the only school in the country where the dental school doesnt give its province students preference. I mean UBC med gives province students preference so i dont understand why UBC Dent cant follow the same policy considering the first 2 yrs the med and dent have classes together. Life isnt fair but in the end everything will fall into place. Just have faith.

 

[bent on dent]

couldn't have said that better myself jazzyb... good analysis.

 

[dgundy]

Unfortunately nobody ever said that the world was a fair place.

Personally I realized that as I was completing my BSc degree at UofA and trying to get into Uof A dental, but since my gpa was 3.5 I stood no chance in hell getting into Uof A dental where the average entering GPA is 3.8... I soon realized that nobody gives a rats *** what sort of challenging academics you persue and get good grades, all that matters are your grades whether it be taking ""arts" or sciences. I realized that I should have taken the easy road like business or somethign where I could have had huge gpa's pushing 4's (I took a business minor, chemistry major).... lol my rant over.....

Honeslty I am very happy having taken sciences and love the things I learned and what it has made of me but there is that part of me that wonders whether I should have had a view of the bigger picture or if I should have been more focused on my long term goals of Dent and how I could have achieved that in the easiest way possible. So you have to weigh your priorities, are you wanting to persue somethign in the long run and how can you achieve that best or do you want to do what interests you in the short run? Unfortunately when you are young, inexperienced and niave you don't think of these things, and quite often you don't have anyone there to tell you these pieces of advice....

Regardless, I'm in Dent but at NYU, and I'm very excited to start there. I actually think that I will be happier in NY taking dent then Uof A, the facitlities at NYU are world class, and it will be a very cool experience living there!

Just thought I'd throw in my two cents. I always think it's funny when people talk about the easy road ("arts" or "business") in comparison to the hard road "sciences." I just had my interview at the University of Alberta on Saturday and one of the best things that I had going for me was the fact that I was a history/biochem major. I switched to history a couple of years ago because I wanted to round out my application a little. I did not switch to the "easier" major to upgrade. I am in my 4th year and my cumulative science GPA is 4.0 while my non-science GPA is 3.93. My hardest class last semester was not organic chem or biochem. It was my business elective. Don't talk about difficulty unless you have experienced it. The sciences may be more of a time commitment, but I have found As to be more attainable in the sciences. It is right or wrong in the sciences. The arts are subjective. My advisor told me that a 3.93 in the arts is more impressive than a 4.0 in the sciences. No more excuses man. Enjoy New York university. $200K more for new countertops......yeah, it's worth it.

 

[Motormouth]

Just thought I'd throw in my two cents. I always think it's funny when people talk about the easy road ("arts" or "business") in comparison to the hard road "sciences." I just had my interview at the University of Alberta on Saturday and one of the best things that I had going for me was the fact that I was a history/biochem major. I switched to history a couple of years ago because I wanted to round out my application a little. I did not switch to the "easier" major to upgrade. I am in my 4th year and my cumulative science GPA is 4.0 while my non-science GPA is 3.93. My hardest class last semester was not organic chem or biochem. It was my business elective. Don't talk about difficulty unless you have experienced it. The sciences may be more of a time commitment, but I have found As to be more attainable in the sciences. It is right or wrong in the sciences. The arts are subjective. My advisor told me that a 3.93 in the arts is more impressive than a 4.0 in the sciences. No more excuses man. Enjoy New York university. $200K more for new countertops......yeah, it's worth it.

Sorry that I offended you, but if you had put your giant gpa to use and inferred form my post that I was talking about easy/hard based on personal strengths/weaknesses you might not have been so offended...😀

And it's more like $260K more 😀

 

[KinKs]

To the OP and others in Canada

- I think the same situation exists in every province. There is a really good school UBC or U of T and some questionable schools like York or Ryerson. I have always heard that complaint. Hardly anything is removed from a transcript at U of T. You almost have to loose an arm to get a test remarked much less get a grade removed (impossible).

So many students think they should have opted for the easier school, where physics, calc and orgo are a breeze and in any event, a grade can be removed. But I dare say that going through a rigourous undergradate institution is not necessarily a bad thing.

Look at some of the predents who routinely have GPA>3.5 and cant get a 20 on the DAT. I think their undergraduate education puts them at a disadvantage on the DAT because thier institutions did not prepare them nearly as well as U of T or UBC would.

It is my opinion therefore, that we value the high educational standards we receive at UBC or U of T and prove how much more supperior our education was by "murdering" standardized tests ike the DAT or GRE or LSAT or MCAT.

There is a reason the DAT is called a standardized test - it levels the playing field a little.

Also, ADCOMS know that no two institutions are the same. A 3.3 at MIT is not the same as a 3.3 at Western University. Likewise, a student with a better undergradate education should have better DAT results. Adcoms are not impressed with a 3.8 and subpar DAT results.

 

[AlcoHulk]

To OP:
We all have unfair circumstances at our Universities. I go to UC, and here each class has its own arbitrary scale as to what letter grades are what percentages. On our transcripts, we don't have our exact percentages listed, only the letter grade. When I apply to other schools, only the letter grade is used to convert to percentages at that particular school. If I got a 90 in one class but that is only considered an A-, then I automatically get scaled down to an 81. If I went to a different school that uses percentages, I would have a much higher GPA.

I guess its up to DAT scores to show what's what... even though it might not be a perfect indicator of potential.

 

[tamkhan]

UofT was frikkin hard! That's all I have to say. Would I look back and wish I had gone to some other university; no. I could easily have been a slacker if I were some place else. I mean, an even bigger slacker than I am right now.😛