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.

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.

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.