Despite the bad rap it occasionally gets for being difficult to understand, many students have always known our dear R-Score as a relatively simple formula: (Z-Score + IFG + 5) × 5, where IFG, or group strength index (indice de force de groupe), equals (High school average – 75) / 14 (if you haven’t read our R-Score breakdown, it will provide useful background before reading this article). As authors of a website dedicated to analyzing not only university admissions but also the R-Score itself, we were evidently intrigued when the media reported on Monday that the Ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur would implement a modified R-Score calculation, starting in the Fall semester of 2017.

When applying to competitive university programs, you may, as a CEGEP student, be inclined to join dozens of clubs and activities, seeking to check off as many of the common “boxes” of extracurriculars as possible: volunteering, scientific research, and so on. We think that this approach is far from optimal, and we seek to give you an introduction in this article to the most efficient approach to extracurriculars. Variety and depth A common concern is whether students should invest time into a variety of extracurriculars, doing the bare minimum for each one, or rather pour most of their time into one or two activities that they care about and maximize their impact in those.

If you have read our article The Ultimate R-Score Breakdown: Everything Explained (and if you haven’t, you should before reading this article), you will know that the only true ‘variable’ relating to the R-Score with which CEGEP students should be concerned is the evaluation group. To recapitulate, the evaluation group is the group of students who are considered to be taking the same class as you, and with whom you are grouped for the purposes of R-Score calculation: the class average, standard deviation and high school average are determined from this group.

In our first semester of CEGEP, we often wondered as students how grades might correlate to R-Score values, and indeed first-years can often be spotted obsessively using rscorecalculator.com. Knowing only their approximate grade and lacking information for the class average, standard deviation and high school average, they confidently make up dubious values for those three numbers. At RScology, we performed a statistical analysis on numerous R-Score data points obtained during our own studies to extract those values, thus generating the very first publicly available R-Score dataset available online.

Studying for science subjects can sometimes seem daunting, especially if you’re about to cram for your midterm because you forgot to listen in class. In reality, there are very few ways you can go about studying for science classes efficiently, and these can be separated into two types of studying: memorizing and understanding. The God of Memorization: Anki Evidence-based science has shown that the best way to memorize information is through spaced repetition.

Depending on which medical school you would rather attend, the approach to take in order to optimize your application will vary. The French medical schools (that is, Université de Montréal, Université de Sherbrooke and Université de Laval) differ from McGill and other English medical schools as they only look at your grades and interview score, without any direct evaluation of your CV or extracurricular activities. Why Attend a French Medical School Language: You would rather spend most of your time in a French environment than an English one.

Med-P is an undergraduate medical program at McGill University, open only to CEGEP students in Quebec, whose selectiveness, convenience and prestige have consistently made it one of the province’s most desirable university programs. The somewhat irrational fascination with the program experienced by many CEGEP students has placed it at the center of many misconceptions about the difficulty of admission, or rather the factors which create that difficulty. McGill is the only medical school in Quebec which uses a holistic admissions process, evaluating a candidate’s CV and personal narrative (PN) in addition to their grades before granting an interview.

CEGEP is generally the last program into which Quebec students enter that comprises mostly general education; thereafter, their paths start to differ significantly. As such, it’s best to have an idea of the path you want to pursue in university as you start to become an adult. Although we do not recommend chasing admission into certain programs for the sake of prestige, we have compiled a list of the 5 most competitive programs or types of universities to which CEGEP students can apply, in order to facilitate students’ introspection and planning by giving a rundown of the characteristics and requirements for each one.

One trend that any attentive CEGEP student will surely notice, and which is somewhat contrary to what one might expect, is that students’ R-Scores mostly stay within the same range from semester to semester. Yes, there are some exceptions, such as people who either start taking their studies seriously later on and see their marks increase dramatically, or the opposite, a severe drop in effort. However, in most cases, a student who seemed highly motivated to achieve high marks will get a disappointing 31 R-Score in their first semester and only a 32 in the second, while a student who studies at the last minute and managed to “get lucky” with a 34 R-Score in his first semester will get a 33.

If you are currently in CEGEP, or even in the last years of high school in Quebec, you’ve probably heard some cliché discussion of the R-Score, often taking the following form: “The calculation of the R-Score is extremely complicated, and you need to fully understand it to use it to your advantage,” and continuing with an explanation of the ’lesser-known’ factors involved in calculating the R-Score, such as the standard deviation.

Even with the best intentions, a plan to apply to medical school won’t always go as you expected. Problems involving health, family or simply a series of unfortunate events can force you to readjust your initial plan towards medicine and temporarily settle for a well-advised plan B. This plan will depend on which category of applicant you are, and what your ultimate goal is. Collegiate applicant Suppose that, despite carefully tailoring your profile to maximize your chances of admission to McGill Med-P and other Quebec medical schools, you are directly rejected from all of them, or fail to get off the waitlist at any.

The most prestigious program in Quebec to which students can be admitted directly from CEGEP without any science prerequisites would undoubtedly be one in the field of law. The province is unique in allowing collegiate students to begin a law degree as an undergraduate degree, whereas law is an exclusively graduate field of study in the rest of North America. Here is everything you need to know about law school admissions from CEGEP.

You wake up, knowing full well you’re late for class…again. You look at your calendar. Oops. It’s October and you’re already on your way to a 19 R-Score. As you sprint towards your bus stop in your desperate attempt to not miss it, you can’t help but wonder: when did it all go wrong? Maybe if you didn’t mess around during your first month, things would’ve been different. Schedule, schedule, schedule The priorities of a typical CEGEP student can be symbolized as a pyramid of Maslow.