For the uninitiated, CaRMS is a mysterious thing. For those of us going through it, it is also mysterious, but with the extra added benefit of being terrifying.
Here’s how it works...
In first year of med school, some of us decide what we want to be when we grow up. Others don’t. Some of us have known for ever. Some are gunners for their particular specialty and start doing research in the first year and setting up appropriate observerships. We all join clubs and go to conferences and speeches and try to learn as much as we can about what we can do in the future.
In second year, many students who hadn’t previously chosen what they wanted to do begin to have an inkling. Some of these students see what the gunners have been doing and freak out, thinking they need to get to work as well. Some of the gunners decide they must have been nuts and start to change their research focus to something else. Other students remain comfortable in not really knowing what they are going to do since that is the situation of so many others.
In third year, lots changes. We experience the clinical side of medicine and rotate through different core specialties. We also need to choose our ‘electives’ for fourth year which will display our desire for one specialty over another. It’s a stressful choice to make for most of us. We need to make sure that our faces are seen at all the programs we plan to apply to during CaRMS. But most exciting is when we figure out that everything we’ve been planning is for something we don’t even want to do anymore.
So many of my classmates figured out in the last few weeks before beginning electives that they were looking at the wrong specialty. This is exhilarating and terrifying. Electives need to be rearranged at the last minute across the country but doing so means that you are showing so much passion for a field of medicine they now love. It’s something that we are told will happen in first year but we never believe them until it happens.
In our final year, it’s time to enter the CaRMS process. We find consultants who will write us reference letters, then dwell on whether or not these consultants were the right choice. Will they say something that the programs will take the wrong way? Which consultant will put us in the best light? Did I really spend enough time with this person for them to know enough about me to write a good letter? Will they resent me asking?
We need to choose which specialty (s) we are applying to. Should we back up with a less competitive specialty just in case? Should we apply to all the schools in Canada? Am I planning on couples matching? Can I stand to live in these places for years?
We write letters and essays about why we’ve chosen our specialty, what we’ve learned about ourselves and why we want to be in the program we’ve applied to. Then we fret about whether or not we have said the right things, that our examples are beefy enough or that we have accidentally left the wrong specialty or program in the letter when we copy and pasted the lines from one letter to another.
We also need to chose which comments from our third year evaluations will best communicate the type of resident we will be. Which of the ‘code words’ used by the consultants are most flattering.
All those clubs, conferences and research need to be pared down into something that will fit into the CaRMS prescribed CV template. Choosing which should be included and which discarded is something else entirely. Anything included is fair game during the interview. We want to look well rounded but not flakey, responsible but still like we’d be fun to work with.
The week that we need to finally submit our application is terrifying as we go over everything again and again to make sure it’s all there. Birth certificate, photo. letters, essays, transcripts.
Submit.
Wait for the interview invitations to come.
Here’s how it works...
In first year of med school, some of us decide what we want to be when we grow up. Others don’t. Some of us have known for ever. Some are gunners for their particular specialty and start doing research in the first year and setting up appropriate observerships. We all join clubs and go to conferences and speeches and try to learn as much as we can about what we can do in the future.
In second year, many students who hadn’t previously chosen what they wanted to do begin to have an inkling. Some of these students see what the gunners have been doing and freak out, thinking they need to get to work as well. Some of the gunners decide they must have been nuts and start to change their research focus to something else. Other students remain comfortable in not really knowing what they are going to do since that is the situation of so many others.
In third year, lots changes. We experience the clinical side of medicine and rotate through different core specialties. We also need to choose our ‘electives’ for fourth year which will display our desire for one specialty over another. It’s a stressful choice to make for most of us. We need to make sure that our faces are seen at all the programs we plan to apply to during CaRMS. But most exciting is when we figure out that everything we’ve been planning is for something we don’t even want to do anymore.
So many of my classmates figured out in the last few weeks before beginning electives that they were looking at the wrong specialty. This is exhilarating and terrifying. Electives need to be rearranged at the last minute across the country but doing so means that you are showing so much passion for a field of medicine they now love. It’s something that we are told will happen in first year but we never believe them until it happens.
In our final year, it’s time to enter the CaRMS process. We find consultants who will write us reference letters, then dwell on whether or not these consultants were the right choice. Will they say something that the programs will take the wrong way? Which consultant will put us in the best light? Did I really spend enough time with this person for them to know enough about me to write a good letter? Will they resent me asking?
We need to choose which specialty (s) we are applying to. Should we back up with a less competitive specialty just in case? Should we apply to all the schools in Canada? Am I planning on couples matching? Can I stand to live in these places for years?
We write letters and essays about why we’ve chosen our specialty, what we’ve learned about ourselves and why we want to be in the program we’ve applied to. Then we fret about whether or not we have said the right things, that our examples are beefy enough or that we have accidentally left the wrong specialty or program in the letter when we copy and pasted the lines from one letter to another.
We also need to chose which comments from our third year evaluations will best communicate the type of resident we will be. Which of the ‘code words’ used by the consultants are most flattering.
All those clubs, conferences and research need to be pared down into something that will fit into the CaRMS prescribed CV template. Choosing which should be included and which discarded is something else entirely. Anything included is fair game during the interview. We want to look well rounded but not flakey, responsible but still like we’d be fun to work with.
The week that we need to finally submit our application is terrifying as we go over everything again and again to make sure it’s all there. Birth certificate, photo. letters, essays, transcripts.
Submit.
Wait for the interview invitations to come.
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