Removing Barriers, Not Lowering the Bar
Medical admissions are not merely selecting students. They are constructing Canada’s future physician workforce.
In 2024, Queen’s University did something shocking. Something no Canadian medical school had done before. Something that has been equated to Russian roulette with patients’ lives.
Queen’s, like most Canadian medical schools, had already adapted processes to minimize systemic barriers. Yet they recognized that the large volume of applicants led to inflated admission thresholds that disadvantaged certain groups. They knew many well-qualified candidates were not offered interviews.1
Therefore, the university’s medical school admissions committee introduced a lottery into its process. Applicants who clear academic minimums—GPA, MCAT, CASPer—are chosen at random to move on to the interview stage. The volunteering, the research publications, the curated extracurricular lists that had become a rite of passage for every pre-med student in the country are set aside. If you meet the bar, your chances are the same as anyone else’s.
There was immediate outrage. It was called unfair and reckless. Irresponsible and dangerous.2