Frequently asked questions

Four things, broadly: your academics (GPA and usually the MCAT), your non-academic file (the OMSAS ABS or an equivalent activity list), situational judgment tests like CASPer or Kira where the school requires them, and the interview itself, whether that's an MMI or a panel. How much each piece counts varies wildly between schools. McMaster leans on CARS and CASPer, while other schools put more weight on GPA or the interview, so the same applicant can be strong at one school and borderline at another.

Competitive applicants usually sit around 3.8 or higher on the OMSAS 4.0 scale, but that number is less fixed than it looks because several schools apply weighting formulas that can raise your effective GPA, like Western counting your two best years or Ottawa weighting your most recent years more heavily. These policies do change, though. Toronto, for example, retired its wGPA formula, so always confirm against each school's current admissions page. A 3.6 with the right school list and a strong non-academic file can still absolutely get in.

There's no limit, and reapplying is completely normal. A large share of successful applicants got in on their second or third try, and admissions committees don't hold previous attempts against you, especially when your file has clearly improved between cycles.

By the numbers, yes. Canadian schools admit a much smaller fraction of their applicants, often under ten percent and into the single digits in Ontario, and there are only 17 MD programs in the whole country. That's exactly why the parts you can control, like CASPer, your interviews, and your ABS, deserve deliberate practice rather than hope.

CASPer is an online situational judgment test, run by Acuity Insights, that many Canadian medical schools require. You watch video scenarios or read short prompts and respond with typed and video-recorded answers under tight time limits. Schools receive your result as a quartile, and some use it as a hard filter, meaning a low score can end your application before anyone reads your file.

You can prepare for it, whatever the test-maker's marketing says. CASPer rewards fast, structured ethical reasoning that considers more than one perspective, and that's a learnable skill. Practicing timed scenarios with feedback on your structure, empathy, and time management reliably moves people up quartiles between sittings.

Kira Talent is a one-way video interview platform some Canadian programs use. You get a prompt, a short prep window of usually 30 to 90 seconds, and a single recording attempt with no interviewer to read or react to. Doing well on it comes down to practicing the format itself until timed thinking and talking to a camera feel routine.

The Multiple Mini Interview is a circuit of short, independent stations, typically somewhere between six and twelve of them at around eight minutes each, covering ethical dilemmas, role-plays, collaboration tasks, and personal questions. Each station has its own rater who never talks to the others, so one weak station won't sink you. What wins the MMI is consistency across the whole circuit.

Start by knowing your own file cold, because panels pull questions straight from your ABS and essays. Then build out your answers to the question families that come up in nearly every panel, like why medicine, why this school, a time you failed, and a healthcare issue you care about. After that, it's reps: full-length mock panels under realistic conditions, with someone giving you honest feedback afterwards.

Quite a lot, mostly because interview anxiety is really just unfamiliarity, and unfamiliarity responds quickly to realistic practice. In my experience the biggest jump happens between someone's first and third mock, once the structural feedback stops being something they think about and starts being something they just do.

Live over video call, one-on-one, and you book directly from my real calendar, which includes evenings and weekends because I remember what a premed schedule looks like. Written work like ABS reviews and essay edits comes back as tracked-changes documents within 48 hours per round.

Because there's nothing to pay for except the coaching. No office, no sales team, no ad budget, and no markup to fund any of it. I'm a current Canadian med student coaching directly, so you're paying for the hour rather than the brand.

If a session clearly missed the mark, tell me within 48 hours and I'll either redo it free or refund it. Packages get refunded pro-rata for whatever sessions you haven't used, and written reviews are fully refundable any time before I start the work.

No, and I'd encourage you to read the fine print very carefully on any company that says it does. What I can promise is an honest assessment of where you stand, deliberate practice on the skills schools actually score, and visible improvement from session to session.