No worries! Questions are good; saves headaches later on
To answer your question, doing a Nursing degree is actually pretty good. First and foremost, you get plenty of clinical exposure and patient contact, and med schools love that. And although Nursing is not an easy program by any means, it is not the most difficult either. So if you work hard, you can do well. It also serves as a great backup in case you don't get accepted to medical school.
On the other hand, although not many people like to admit this, medical schools in north america tend to be somewhat elitist (some schools more than others). They may hold your nursing degree against you. But if they choose to do that, especially during an interview, you just need to be prepared with some good responses and some counter-arguments.
I don't know anyone personally who had gone to med school through this route, but I have heard some success stories. So you might want to do a bit more digging yourself or start a new thread with this question.
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As for your med-P chances, if your Cote R is below a 35, then it'll be very tough. But since you're only in your first semester, you still have a lot of time to pull that score up.
Med-P vs. doing a bachlor's degree first:
Based on what I have seen and experienced, I think it's very important for everyone to have the experience as an undergrad. I feel that if you go the Med-P route, you miss out on too much life because essentially as soon as you're out of your teenage years, you're in med school. And once you're in med school, the social aspect of your life is gone. Sure you'll get to socialize, but it'll mostly be with other med students. I just think that you'll miss the chance to experience things in life that don't involve studying or medicine.
There is also the age issue -- if you graduate from cegep at age 18 and go into med-P, you're graduating from med school at the age of 23. I'm not saying that you won't be mature enough at 23, but ageism does exist. You will encounter some patients who would not trust the younger doctors.
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Just to clarify something, I'm not saying all these horrible things to want to scare any of you away from the hard programs at mcgill, I'm just telling you what I and some of my friends had gone through during the past few years with the whole med school process. Most of us who did physiology weren't able to get accepted because our GPAs were too low to be competitive in Canada. But some of us are doing med school in Australia now (whole other sub-forum for that). There are always options to achieve your goal if what you really want to do is to become a doctor. Don't fall on your backup plans too easily. Don't give up until it's absolutely necessary.
