Many people dont qualify for the wGPA and even if it didnt exist, the average would probably be 3.90 (down from 3.94).
True, but again as I said, Canadian schools are generally more marks based in their admissions, making the entrance averages so high. Take the Ontario schools for instance, by opening OMSAS in October and giving out interviews in January, the only way for them to process thousands and thousands of applications is to set very high cut offs and eliminate most of the applicant pool. The emphasis on high numbers though has made process much less holistic in my opinion.
PERSONAL OPINION WARNING: The OMSAS application requires no essays and instead an autobiographic sketch containing up to 48 activities with 100 characters to explain each activity. I know highly successful Canadian applicants who easily fill up each activity with menial activities like volunteered at x place for one day and took guitar lessons for a week and can get away with it because you only get 100 characters to explain each activity. The AMCAS application gives less spaces for activity and more characters to explain each activity and this favours people with sincere, long term activities instead of box checkers (which exist in both countries, I'm just saying the different applications systems favour one over the other and vice versa). Also, there is the personal statement on AMCAS that only UofT requires on OMSAS, no one else seems to care about your motivation to go into medicine, before the interview at least.
University of Toronto this year, however, seemed to radically change it's admission process. I would be very surprised if the entrance average is as high as last years. Apparently an extremely heavy emphasis was placed on the personal statement and they are very particular about what they are looking for. I have four friends with 35+ MCATs, 3.9+ GPAs that will probably be matriculating Hopkinsx2, Cornell, and Vanderbilt next year (and they all had very strong US and Canada application cycles this year, two of them have mdapplicant accounts and are on SDN so see if you can find them) who were rejected first round by UofT. Then, I have friends with much lower stats and UofT is their only interview, rejected from all other Canadian schools. Weird. I have no idea what is going on with them this year to be honest.
Anyway, I don't even know what I'm trying to say in the first place. I guess I just wanted to say that US and Canadian admissions are very different and can't really be compared because different types of applicants are favoured (I know, a good applicant is a good applicant and I made a huge generalization...but still...). That being said, I think it is just as competitive to get into a Canadian school as it is to get into a top 30-40 American school, it's just that Canadians don't really have the option of applying "more broadly" because there are so few schools, and a lot have strong regional/francophone bias, so that can make things a lot more difficult for Canadians...but that why we apply south of the border and are on SDN in the first place
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Note: I'm super sleep deprived so pardon any grammar mistakes or whatever
