Do you know anything about tuition changes for GEM over the last few years? I can't find any info on increases or decreases
Hey guys,
Current UCD 4th year student here, I'd be happy to answer any questions people have! I'm from Canada and matched into family medicine in the states, so if people have questions about being a Canadian applying to the states or matching in general, I can help with that too.
To start off, most north americans do live in residence the first year, although I myself did not, along with a few others. Many lived in the Glenomena residence; this dorm is set up so that you have 5 bedrooms each with their own bathroom that share a living room and kitchen. This worked out for some of my classmates and not others. The dorm facilitates trying to keep older people in the graduate programs together in one dorm, but some of my classmates were stuck in the dorms with 4 18 year olds who were just out of home and starting university, infuriating if you are older and have a previous degree. Glenomena is definitely much much cheaper than finding a 1 bedroom place on your own, but you do risk being put with younger kids who are noisy and disruptive, hence why I chose to live off campus. You do have the option of looking for shared housing through the popular rental websites, or there is a Facebook group for young doctors in Ireland who often post about needing roommates.
The first 2 years at UCD are lectures, and the last 2 are clinical placements in hospital, just like the American and Canadian schools. Lectures are good, the classic style where the professors teach from powerpoint. Obviously, they're dependent on the professor and we had some excellent proffs who love teaching and others who were not so great, as you'll find at any school. Mostly very good though 🙂. The curriculum is systems based. Year 1 semester 1 is all your basic stuff - ie. cell biology etc. Year 1 semester 2, you start getting into systems. You do the anatomy, physiology, pathology and pharmacology of cardio and resp in year 1, then of GI/GU, endocrine, neuro and anything else in year 2. Year 2 semester 2, you start taking pre-clinical courses, so you'll get classroom lectures on OB, peds, palliative care etc. to start preparing you for clinical rotations. This is interpreted with visits to the ob hospital, the hospice etc. to start getting a taste of being in the clinical setting. Clinical skills - ie. how to do the clinical examinations - is a longitudinal curriculum and you get a 2-3 hr clinical skills session about every other week over the first 2 years. There are also anatomy labs, small group tutorials and problem based learning mixed in for most courses to solidify the learning. The exams are tough, and the exam and class schedule only makes them tougher. In our second year, we had 7 exams over 9 days during the christmas exam period. Its definitely do-able, but you'll need to be in the habit of studying from day 1 and if you are used to straight A's, get used to straight B's and C's. That being said, the top 10-20% of the class can pull off all A's in the first 2 years. The last thing to say about that, is that your grades matter very minimally in medical school! As long as they are not all D's and you don't have any fails, you're fine.
The second 2 years are clinical rotations at the hospitals. For medicine and surgery, we are divided up between the Mater Hospital and St.Vincent's hospital, easily the 2 best hospitals in Dublin. UCD definitely gets the best hospitals, and my friends from other schools agree. You'll spend some time on peripheral rotations out at Wexford General Hospital and other hospitals around Dublin. OB takes place at Holles Street Hospital and the Coombe Hospital, while peds takes place at Temple Street and Crumlin Hospitals (all in Dublin). Any rotations outside of Dublin, UCD pays to put you up in a B&B. I think I only had about 5-6 weeks total outside Dublin over 2 years, which is much much less peripheral time than RCSI students have to do. Exams during these years are notoriously hard, the school grades to a C class average, and they really won't give out A's to anyone except the top few students. I got C's and B's in all my clerkships, even an A in one and I am approximately at the 35th percentile in my class to give you an idea. When you are going through the matching process, UCD does write into your Dean's letter about their grading system, that a C is average and a B is above average. Your class rank is included as well, which speaks more about your performance than your individual grades. Not a problem for matching, that way programs get accurate info on your academic performance, I was told in all my interviews that my grades were very good.
Overall, I had a positive experience at UCD. Yes, there was an incredible amount of stress being an IMG and lots of hoops to jump through. At the end of the day, the match rates for my class this year have been fantastic and there's plenty of things IMG's can do to make their chances good if they are willing to work hard.
Thanks so much! This is incredibly helpful. I was wondering how many electives you did in North America and when during your degree you completed them. Also, did you try matching back to Canada, or go straight for a US residency? I've been seeing a lot of chatter about SON and J1 visas, how did you sort out all the government requirements to get your residency?
Thanks so much! This is incredibly helpful. I was wondering how many electives you did in North America and when during your degree you completed them. Also, did you try matching back to Canada, or go straight for a US residency? I've been seeing a lot of chatter about SON and J1 visas, how did you sort out all the government requirements to get your residency?
UCD gives you about 9 weeks of summer after 3rd year, where you can do electives before submitting ERAS/CaRMS (applications for residency in the states and Canada). I did a month long internal med elective at Western, a month of family medicine at Emory (Atlanta, GA), then I skipped the first week back of UCD to do 2 weeks with a family doctor at her private clinic in London, ON. 10 weeks total for the summer, only one month in the states! January of fourth year is also off at UCD, and did another month long family medicine elective at Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN). Despite my applications already being in, I was highly interested in that program, so used the month as an "audition" to show them my abilities and enthusiasm and I figured if I didn't match, it would be an extra elective on my CV. Schools generally don't let students come for electives once you are graduated.
I did apply to both CaRMS and ERAS, Canada and the States. Personally, I was couples matching which made CaRMS tricky. In CaRMS, there are set spots for IMG's and set spots for Canadian grads. So for example, if there are 10 spots in Winnipeg for family medicine, 1 MUST be filled by an IMG, and 9 must be filled by Canadian grads. It forces them to take IMG's, but usually only one per program. In ERAS, anyone can apply for any spot, they don't have to take IMG's, or they can choose to take mostly IMG's. Since me and my partner both wanted family med, we didn't apply to any Canadian programs which only took 1 IMG as we didn't want to be apart, unfortunately that's most programs. Second issue was, I unfortunately didn't get the NAC OSCE cut off for Ontario family med, so that limited me as well. I was unwilling to compromise and choose a specialty in Canada with lower NAC OSCE cutoffs. No problem for the states, we got plenty of interviews and matched together into the same fm program. Obviously a personal decision for me to limit my CaRMS options, but its always a good idea for IMG's to have the states as a backup. There are only about 120 FM spots for IMG's in Canada, whereas there are 7000-8000 family med spots IMG's can apply to in the states for FM.
As for Visa things, for Canadians to work in the states, you require a visa. The J1 is the only one you would be eligible for if you're going into residency straight out of med school. This is a "non-immigrant" visa and requires you to leave the country for 2 years after residency, unless you complete a J1 waiver agreement, where you sign a US government contract to work in a rural area. In order to get the J1 visa, Health Canada must give you a statement of need. This is basically saying, since you have to leave the states afterwards, there is a need for your specialty in Canada. Health Canada decides which specialties they give statements of need for, and they put limits on the number they give out. This information is available here: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hcs-sss/hhr-rhs/postgrad-postdoc/cat_b-list-liste-eng.php. If you want to train in a specialty that's not listed there, you cannot do so in the states as a Canadian. If your specialty is on this list, you just have to apply for the statement of need within the number they give out. The application for the statement of need is simple, it was a 2 page form and I sent it in by email within minutes of getting my match results and was told I was within the limit. I had a friend who did the same with OB, and even though they only give out 20 statements of need for OB, he was in the limit. Getting the statement of need and J1 is really not a worry if your specialty has statements of need available.
How did you arrange your electives? I've heard that the NA ones they offer through the school are really competitive and that some people arrange them on their own. Also, Is shadowing/observership experience in the preclinical years helpful for this?
I have 3 specific UCD Questions:
1. Is attendance mandatory? if not, are lectures recorded for viewing at a later time?
2. Can you be specific about the general annual time off:
- when do classes start first year?
- do you have any time off at Christmas?
- do you have spring break?
- how many weeks off do you have in Summer after 1st year, after 2nd year, after 3rd year?
I just want to know in terms of specific amount of days/weeks off in order to plan for potential electives/observership back home.
3. Is it customary for medical students in Dublin to be doing their own observership/shadowing with doctors in Irish hospitals? Asking to observe ORs in the evenings/weekends/any time free from class? For instance here in Ontario most students will try to network from early on and arrange observerships during the school year. UofT specifically has alloted "study time" in each week's schedule and many students use these 2-4 hours/week to shadow a doctor they personally contacted for a few weeks.
Just one more thing, someone stated that UCD only has a couple of hours of "clinical skills" lab time every 2 weeks? does this seem sufficient?? I know Ontario schools do much more
Great! Thank you for the detailed response. So in terms of lectures not being recorded - do you find most people attend lecture? I've heard from Ontario students that most poeople end up skipping lectures to self-study or do all those other things (network/observe docs, research etc)
Sure, I hope that helps! It really depends on the people, maybe half half. Some people learn really well by attending lectures and are serial attenders. Others don't gain much from listening to lectures, so they are serial skippers. Overall, attendance drops off throughout the semester as people start skipping to study near exam time. Depends on the proff too, some are better than others and thats reflected in the attendance. By second year, a lot of the north americans will have started using first aid and discovered pathoma and find that they learn better from those resources than from class. Totally up to you. There is a TON of material, especially in second year so I found it good to go to lectures just so I was up early every morning, up to date with what was going on in class and familiar with the slides. In second year, you'll have 7 courses going at once, so studying and keeping up with all of them is a ton of work every day. Again, first year summer is your time to do additional things, you'll find it very difficult to do anything but study with lectures 9-5 and all those courses to keep up with.
Thanks for the detailed responses! All this information is super useful.
The only question I have left is whether most NA students live on campus or off campus in first year?
Most lived on campus for UCD, in Glenomena residence. That residence is set up so that 5 bedrooms (which each have their own bathroom) share one kitchen/living room. Like I said above, the residence people try and facilitate keeping the older graduate med and vet students together, but that doesn't work out for everyone. Some of my classmates were unfortunately in rooms with 3-4 18 year olds, fresh into college, who were partying until all hours of the morning almost every night. Myself and a few others sucked it up and did the harder thing of finding somewhere to rent off campus, let me tell you I loved my apartment, particularly when people were complaining about their young roomies or weird residence policies. If I were you, I'd try and get the names of a few other North American graduate entry students and request to be in the same residence room as them (you can request roommates) to not be put with 18 year olds (no offence to any 18 year olds reading this 😛).
Thanks for the info! Haha Ya I don't want to be stuck with a bunch of 18 year olds...
hmm, I really hope the Irish schools would try to adapt the new changes seen in Ontario. The programs are becoming much more flexible after student feedback. Gone are the days of 9-5 lectures except perhaps in the weeks prior to exams, but there is so much flexibility to study on your own. I guess as long as you end up in a med school program you shouldn't complain, but I really wish it was not 9-5 all the way through.
I saw online there are some interesting awards students can compete for, such as the dissection prize. How competitive would you say the atmosphere is? I understand it is med school, but are people really cut-throat about things or more cooperative? I would worry with the stress/ competition to return to North America, it might not always be the best atmosphere amongst the North American classmates.
is research mandatory at UCD?
in first year med it says you have a selective course (choose 1 of 7) - any recommendations? any particularly better than others based on feedback?
Yup, always good to have a heads up. Like I said, it would be best to get names of other graduate entry students and try and get a dorm with them if going that route. In previous threads on this forum, people have said that House 4 at Glenomena is where all the North American graduate entry students tend to go.
Speaking to other U.S. and Canadian students in your class, did you gather a sense as to why people picked Ireland for medicine training? Did they attempt to enter school back home? Did they consider DO? Did anyone regret the decision?
Having looked at lots of programs, I'm sure those electives don't count as USCE.Some had to get an "unofficial" elective - basically you just call up a family friend and see if you can do a clinical rotation with them instead of officially applying through a University. These may fill school requirements, but there's no real consensus as far as I know how letters from those electives look in ERAS.
