Hey Guys,

So it is final! I am officially in WB-F (Wightman-Berris Academy, rotation F)!

In the 2nd year class at UofT medicine, the whole academy/rotation schedule ranking process has come under heavy fire because MANY people got choices low on their ranking. More than one friend of mine got their 12th choice out of 18 choices, and I heard that one person in our class actually got their 16th choice!  

So you might be asking, what happened? 

If you read my earlier post, I mentioned that in past years, nobody had gotten lower than their 8th choice, but this year it looks like things have gotten quite severe! Well it just so happens that my year is the first year where they have used the new revised clerkship schedule which I showed in my last post.  In the old rotation schedule, which I have not shown, electives were dispersed throughout 3rd and 4th year, and were not bunched up together. What that meant was, some people had important elective time AFTER CaRMS matching day, meaning that these electives would not help them with their application to their desired specialty. What's worse, SOME people who got a really bad rotation schedule, had core/important rotations AFTER CaRMs as well. For example in the old schedule, one could forseeably get a Medicine or Surgery rotation after CaRMs, making it useless. Well people complained about this, and UofT listened and created the new schedule which my year is now the guinea pig of.  

With the old schedule, people were more willing to go to the less coveted PB academy if it meant that they would get the rotation that did not have important elective or core rotations after the CaRMs matching day. Now with the new schedule, EVERYONE will be done core rotation time and electives BEFORE CaRMs interviews and match day. So now, rotation schedule does not matter all that much anymore! What's the conclusion? Even LESS people chose PB as their academy since now there was no real advantage to choosing PB academy if you did not live near Sunnybrook, and as you might guess, most UofT med students live downtown and not near Sunnybrook. (For those who are confused, PB = Peters Boyd, and is the academy that includes Sunnybrook, North York General, and Women's College). 

So the people I mentioned that got their 13th or 16th choices were people who ranked PB higher on their list compared to most of the class. If you recall, the algorithm that UofT uses is it fills the LEAST popular academy-rotation choice first with the people who ranked it highest. So if lets say there are 10 spots in PB-A, and it is the least popular academy-rotation combination, then 10 people HAVE to get slotted there. All spots at all academies must be filled. So if the people who ranked it the highest put it in their 13th or even 16th spot, well so be it!

So how was it that some people, like myself, got my 1st choice, while others got their 12th or even 16th choice? Well first mistake they made was, they ranked their 18 choices like PREFERENCES, and did NOT take into account the trends of the class.  In essence they did not try to "game the system". So what do I mean? Well for example, I want to go into internal medicine, so surely I would not want to start my clerkship with my medicine rotation. Hence the worst rotation schedule for me would be E. So someone who wanted internal medicine like myself, and chose their rankings purely based on preferences would have put WB-E, Fitz-E and PB-E as their last 3 choices.  Now if I did not know anything about my class or the matching algorithm, then this would be the prudent thing to do. HOWEVER I DO know that most of my class does NOT want to go to PB because Sunnybrook is just too far from the downtown core. AND I DO know that the computer matches the LEAST popular choice first. So it stands to reason that MOST people would put PB as their last 6 choices. What that means is that if I put ANY PB choices higher than my bottom 6 (i.e. 1-12th choice), then I will get those choices for sure. 

Now BOTH these pieces of information was known by ALL members of my class, so why some people decided to choose purely based on preference is beyond me.  These are the same people who afterward complained about the match, because they got choices low on their list. 

Some people who have gotten choices low on their list started suggesting that we take people who got a choice high on their list, let's say their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd choice, and bump them down to their 5th or 6th choice, and then bump people who are in their 11th or 12th choice and bump them up to their 5th or 6th choice. That is absurd, unfair and ILLOGICAL. The reason it is unfair is because we all had the same information going into the clerkship match and we all chose our own way of ranking. There was no unfair advantage between people who got a higher ranking vs. a lower ranking except that people who got a higher ranked match thought about it the right way.  Also this bumping up/down of choices is illogical because it assumes that for a person who got their 1st ranking, that their 6th choice is the same as the 12th choice of the person who got that low-ranked choice and vice versa. The fact of the matter is, we all ranked differently and so there's no way of evening it out so that EVERYONE gets their 5th or 6th choice. In fact, if I found out that UofT was in the business of giving everyone their 5th or 6th choice, then I would advise all of next year's medical students to put their 1st choice as their 6th choice.  Hence this is an illogical system.

Next I heard the suggestion, that the algorithm of matching the least popular first is "stupid".  Well for people who think/say that, I ask you, what system is better that STILL allows us to fill EVERY academy/rotation spot? What system allows people's rankings to be taken into account WHILE still allowing us to fill the most unpopular spots at PB to be filled? When I asked this to such people none had an answer, but that there must be such a system in existence.  While I don't pretend to know all possible matching systems out there, I have not heard a better system than the one currently used. What I HAVE heard of is people not using their heads when choosing their rankings. 

So now that all this complaining has occurred, what now? What is UofT going to do to quell the angry mob? Well to much my dismay, UofT has decided to "even out" the travelling distances, by making people in Fitz and WB travel further during clerkship for community placements such as Family or Paeds, while PB travels closer to downtown or within Toronto. How far is far? Well I have heard people travelling as far as Brampton for their Paeds placement.  This was done so that Fitz and WB have to feel some of the travel burden despite not having to travel to Sunnybrook. 

So for any of you readers who end up attending UofT medicine in the future, remember: Consider the trends of your class before you make your clerkship match.  Do NOT just consider your preferences.