Medical schools in Manitoba are actually just one school: the University of Manitoba.
A student seriously considering any school wants to know how well they will fit together, so while and knowing the University of Manitoba medical school applicant preferences will greatly benefit your search for the perfect school, as well as your application.
This is important because you want to make sure that your values match those values of the school. Furthermore, if you want to know about the University of Manitoba Max Rady College of Medicine, then knowing the kind of student they’re looking for will greatly increase your chances of getting in yourself: you can tailor-make your application.
Medical schools in Manitoba are limited to just one choice: Max Rady College. So, if you’re looking to get your MD in MB, it’s your only option, and you’ll need to make doubly certain that you are a match.
In this article, we will go over preferred applicants and academic preferences for the medical school at the University of Manitoba. We will briefly go over the interview selection formula, and then detail the kinds of doctors that the University of Manitoba can train, as well as their best matches.
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What Kind of Applicants Are Preferred for Medical Schools in Manitoba?
There are four main applicant pools considered: Manitobans (in-province), out-of-province, Canadian Indigenous, and a sub-set of in-province for French-English bilingual applicants.
Additionally, factors that speak to a candidate’s equity and diversity are considered and can give an edge to a prospective student’s application, including applicants with rural attributes, culturally or socio-economically-diverse applicants, and/or applicants with advanced academic attributes.
We will discuss each category, sub-category, and diversity attributes.
Want to see your chances of getting accepted to the Max Rady College of Medicine and other medical schools in Canada? Check out our CanadaMDChance calculator!
Are You In-Province or Out-of-Province?
Growing up in Manitoba, or at least getting your high school diploma – or bachelor’s degree – in Manitoba qualifies you to be an in-province applicant.
If you’re out-of-province, just moving to Manitoba and completing two full, consecutive years of study will qualify you as in-province and give you that favoured applicant status.
More comfortable speaking in French? In-province applicants who are bilingual can apply to a sub-stream where a portion of their multiple-mini interview, or MMI, will be in French, as would part of their education, if selected. The bilingual application is not weighted more strongly than a standard in-province application.
You are also considered in-province if you are a citizen residing in the Canadian Territories or if you are a member of the Canadian armed forces at the time of application and have been in full service in the Canadian armed forces for at least two years.
In-province applicants have higher acceptance rates over out-of-province applicants, and have lower average GPA and MCAT scores. They have lower minimum scores as well, but never trust minimums; they don’t wow admissions committees. If you want to stand out as an out-of-province applicant, you’ll have to work extra hard. In recent years, prospective out-of-province hopefuls at the University of Manitoba, who were offered a seat, had an average GPA that was 0.25 higher than their in-province opposite numbers. Their MCAT scores were an average of 11 points higher. Impressive scoring is the main way to stand out until the interview process, too, since University of Manitoba does not take additional documents like personal statements – from most applicants – so you only have one way to stand out with academic achievement.
In every year, out-of-province applicants were offered seats, just at much smaller rates. You can always maximize your chances by standing out in other ways.
First, ask yourself why you want to go to the University of Manitoba, specifically. If you are so keen to gain entry, you probably have a great reason, which might make your application stand out. What is that reason? Can you make sure that the evaluating committees know of it, and will take it into consideration?
Canadian Indigenous Applicants
First Nations applicants include those who qualify as First Nations, Metis, and Inuit, requiring the applicant to have a Status or Treaty card, a Metis membership card, or a Nunavut Trust Certificate card. The applicant might also prove their status by a roll number or other proof accepted by Inuit or First Nations communities.
Applicants in this category are also eligible for consideration in other categories, such as in-province.
Canadian Indigenous applicants tend to receive higher offer rates. Recent years saw rates of 50%, 60%, and even one year of a 100% offers rate to eligible candidates.
Stacked against the college’s general applicant offer rate (12.54%) and we can see that the offer rate is much, much higher for Canadian Indigenous applicants.
Canadian Indigenous applicants have offers of admission extended when recommended by the Canadian Indigenous Applicant Pool panel.
Wondering how to get into Max Rady College of Medicine?
Applicants with Socioeconomic and Cultural Diversity
In order to greater serve the diverse medical needs of patients, the University of Manitoba seeks to obtain a greater diversity within its student body. Their definition of diversity includes ethnicity and religion, gender and sexual orientation, geographic origin, and socio-economic status.
Eligible applicants will fill out an additional questionnaire, similar to a diversity secondary essay, which will identify to the admissions committee, each applicant’s diverse attributes across three domains: (1) family history, (2) economic information, and (3) other socio-cultural determinates.
As an example of something in family history that may help, you could consider if your family are recent immigrants, that would set you apart in a socioeconomic or culturally diverse way.
Out-of-province or international applicants are not automatically placed within the culturally diverse category, however “geographic location” is one of the factors looked at within the scope of diversity. But you should remember that only Canadian citizens or permanent residents can apply to the University of Manitoba’s medical program.
Second, economic diversity is going to necessarily mean if you didn’t have enough money growing up.
Finally, the third category can be filled in with anything that isn’t going into the other two categories, but that still makes you stand out as a diverse candidate. Did you grow up feeling strange thanks to your family’s cultural practices?
Rural Applicants
The University of Manitoba puts forward an effort to increase diversity, recognizing that “applicants with rural attributes,” as they phrase it, are an essential part of the Canadian panoply. Rural applicants are defined as a person who has a connection to and an engagement with rural, remote, and Northern communities. The school is looking for three connections: (1) rural “roots”, (2) rural work experience, and (3) volunteer or leadership experience in a rural community.
There is a section in the application where you can fill out information regarding these attributes.
As an example of the first, showing a connection to a rural community will involve the place where you grew up or currently live. How has it changed you, and how do you relate to it?
Rural work experience could be in many areas. Have you been tree planting? Helping to get resources like water, food, or fuel out to remote areas? Or perhaps the quintessential rural occupation: farming.
As for volunteer experience, anything you have that really speaks to community engagement is great. Helping out at a care facility, assisting in the maintenance of natural resources, or just picking up litter to preserve the countryside are all great. Ideally, your volunteer experience will be something that you stayed with for a longer period of time, had great impact, and made a difference, but anything is welcome and will boost your application’s profile.
What defines rural in Manitoba is clarified in the online application form. The definition for out-of-province is an area with a population of fewer than 40,000 persons.
An unspecified “minimum engagement” with the rural community is necessary for qualification as an applicant with rural attributes.
Rural applicants were admitted at a rate of between 13-14.5% - slightly higher than in-province applicants.
If you are an out-of-province applicant, whose rates are statistically much more in your favour than otherwise, and you qualify for rural status, applying with rural attributes would particularly help your application. If you are a rural applicant, take advantage of this. This even applies to out-of-province applicants.
Applicants with Advanced Academic Attributes
Any candidate who possesses a PhD, peer-reviewed publications, and academic appointments in a research or professional stream will be considered an applicant with advanced academic attributes. This status may contribute to a modification of the composite score ranking candidates for an interview or for an offer.
For the purposes of this category, the applicant must have completed their PhD at the time of application and have five peer-reviewed publications on which they are listed as first or second author.
These publications will benefit your application, but getting a PhD and five peer-reviewed publications is hardly an easy feat. This is not an area where you can just gain a quick boost to your application’s score. However, if you are already on this academic path, you might want to try and accelerate the publication process on a fifth paper.
What Kind of Academic and Non-Academic Achievements Are Preferred at the University of Manitoba?
There are recommended courses of study for applicants, and although they are not required, with such a competitive acceptance rate, it would be wise for prospective students to heed such recommendations:
Biology, chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, psychology, sociology, biochemistry, microbiology, and research methods.
These recommendations won’t give your application additional weight – the University of Manitoba doesn’t favour one type of degree or course over another – but they will help you generally-speaking in terms of being able to understand the world of being a physician, as well as with getting an excellent score on the MCAT, and that will give you a tremendous advantage.
If you are taking other courses outside of those listed by the University of Manitoba, consider that they do have values outside of the hard sciences. They value diversity, for instance, so taking something like Indigenous Studies, even as an elective, could give your application a boost, particularly if you are planning on entering the Indigenous Canadians pathway.
A bachelor’s degree and MCAT are required. The MCAT minimum score is given at 502, but with the average score for offers sitting at 514, know that the minimum might not be enough – although do note that Indigenous applicants had an average score of 502.
Aim to get further in your MCAT scores than the minimum. If you are out-of-province, your score will need to be even higher. If you are going through one of the advantaged tracks – such as the Indigenous track – your competition won’t be quite as fierce, but you will still have to meet minimum thresholds and remain competitive.
A GPA of 3.30 or higher is required, but the average GPA of accepted students is 4.18 – 3.77 for Indigenous students. As with the MCAT scores, the higher you can achieve, the better, and you will need to work all the harder if you are out-of-province.
The CASPer test is required by all applicants except for those with Indigenous Canadian heritage. However, because Indigenous Canadian applicants are also eligible for other programs, they are still required to take the CASPer. The University of Manitoba requires a score greater than 1.5 over the standard deviation, but only requires students take the English CASPer.
Selection Process
Applicants are put into their respective pools – in-province, out-of-province, Indigenous Canadian, and in-province bilingual – and selected based on their AGPA, which is weighted based on course hours: MCAT score, and CASPer score. Equity and diversity attributes are taken into consideration.
Course hours for AGPA are weighted based on credit hours. Three credit hours are assigned for a one-term course, six for a two-term course, and the courses with the lowest marks are dropped based on how many credit hours are completed.
If the candidate has multiple MCAT scores, the score that most advantages the applicant is used, and the scores are unweighted.
The composite score used for selecting candidates for an interview is calculated using this formula:
(20%AGPA + 50% MCAT + 30% CASPer) x (rural co-efficient, if > 0) x (academic co-efficient, if > 0) x (socioeconomic and cultural diversity co-efficient, if > 0)
Competitive candidates are then granted an interview. During your interview, non-academic experiences can be a tremendous asset, and this will be the likeliest place to discuss them, should the opportunity arise. Obviously, this depends on which questions are asked, but you should be ready. How to prepare for your medical school interview is an integral part of your application process.
What Kind of Doctor Can You Become at the University of Manitoba?
Based on data from CaRMS, most students’ residencies from the University of Manitoba are in family medicine, followed by internal medicine, psychiatry, and pediatrics. These are common statistics, however, because primary care specialties are more in-demand and less demanding than specialist areas. While the exact numbers and percentages vary, other universities, such as University of Western Ontario and Memorial University of Newfoundland, show that family medicine, internal medicine, psychiatry, and pediatrics are popular residency choices across the board.
The ideal doctor for the University of Manitoba is one with a profound connection to rural and remote areas, one who wants to work with Indigenous communities, or a family physician in a small town.
More tips of how to succeed below:
The University of Manitoba is particularly interested in supplying physicians to all parts of Manitoba, so if you aren’t from the province, planning to live and work there will be viewed as an advantage and might net you a spot.
Doctors who are seeking a specialization might want to attend a different school, as there are better matches for specialists.
Finally, while it might not be as accommodating as medical school in Quebec, there is a bilingual program, so French speaking – bilingual – students can find something which will engage with their linguistics. If you come from a French speaking rural area, you will find a good place to study at the University of Manitoba.
Conclusion
An ideal candidate for the University of Manitoba’s faculty of medicine is one who represents diversity, a local Manitoban, and somebody with particularly high academic credentials. As with any medical school, academic achievement and demonstrable scholastic capabilities are always highly-prized.
Make sure you consider all aspects of your background – your cultural history and community ties, for instance – and not just your academic prowess. Focusing on one area fails to give an application committee the complete picture of who you are.
If you want to stand out, use every facet of your life to show why you are the perfect candidate for your school of choice.
FAQs
1. What is the actual application process like for the University of Manitoba?
Applications are made via an online application portal, although they require some documents to be mailed in – which documents are clarified in the application portal.
Check to make sure that you meet the requirements for application, including program-specific requirements. There are also different requirements for direct entry students – coming directly from high school – and advanced entry students, who have more than 24 credit hours of post-secondary study.
Assuming that you meet those qualifications, you will send in details of prior education and a small fee: $100 CAD for Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and refugees; $120 CAD for international students.
Additional documents might be required, such as proof of English language proficiency.
An interview is part of the application process, as well.
2. What if I don’t have “preferred status,” should I apply anyway?
Maybe; a lot of factors go into candidate selection.
There are things you can do to stand out regardless of your status, including getting a much higher GPA or including work experience that connects you to the University of Manitoba, rural programs, or Indigenous values – just to name a few areas you could stand out with.
If you have any doubts about your medical school acceptance rates, check yourself on our medical school chance predictor, or sign up for some medical school admissions consulting for an evaluation.
3. Do I qualify for Canadian Indigenous status?
Most people with Canadian Indigenous status have known about this as part of their family’s history, but some people are unsure of whether or not they qualify for official, government-recognized status.
If you have any doubts about eligibility, check with Indigenous Services Canada.
4. What kind of interview can I expect?
Most applicants will go through the multiple mini-interview (MMI) process. How to prepare for your multiple mini interview is an essential step in your application process. The best prep is a mock interview, but you also might want to read up on sample MMI practice questions.
Indigenous applicants will receive an MMI and an additional panel interview. University of Manitoba requires the submission of additional biographical information before the panel interview. How to prepare for your medical school interview is important whether for a panel, or an MMI, or both, and the mock interview is still the best method of preparation.
5. If I am an international applicant, am I considered “culturally diverse”?
Only Canadian citizens or permanent residents of Canada are eligible to apply. So, while international students are accepted, they still must be permanent residents of Canada.
6. Does the University of Manitoba Medical School allow deferral of admission?
Rarely, but under certain circumstances they will.
Firstly, if an accepted student requires one year’s time to complete a graduate degree – either a master’s degree or PhD – they can request a deferral.
Secondly, if the accepted student has extenuating personal circumstances, such as illness or significant hardship to themselves or a “first-degree relative” (ie, parents, siblings, spouses, or children).
The deferral request must be made in writing within five business days of the posting of the offer.
7. Do I need a reference letter?
They are required only once and if you are selected for an interview, at which point you would provide contact information for your referees, as well as notifying your referees that they will be contacted.
8. What if I’m not academically impressive?
Consider some strategies on how to get into medical school with a low GPA.
If you aren’t making the cutoff for the Max Rady College of Medicine, do know that the University of Manitoba offers direct entry through their bachelor of science program.
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