Queen’s adds lottery to admissions process

Queen’s University is changing its medical school admission process, including adding a lottery, in an attempt to minimize systemic barriers faced by applicants and increase diversity.

Students hoping to gain acceptance to the MD program beginning September 2025 will, if they meet set admission thresholds, be placed in a lottery to determine who gets invited to an interview.

“We have thousands of qualified medical school applicants each year who would make excellent doctors. Our new admissions process will give them equal opportunity to be selected (to move on to this next stage),” Jane Philpott, dean of Queen’s Heath Sciences said Tuesday. “This will help level the playing field for prospective students.”

Thresholds will be determined for grade point average (GPA) and scores in the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) and Casper situational judgment test. Qualified candidates plucked from the lottery will go on to do multiple mini-interviews, which evaluate core skills and attributes, and top applicants will continue on to a panel interview and final application review before an offer is made.

In making the announcement, the university in Kingston, Ont., said the volume of qualified applicants has been more than the MD program has had the capacity to review which has required “the use of inflated standards (for MCAT, Casper and GPA scores) to pare the applicant list down and make the admission process manageable.”

Last year, more than 5,000 students applied for 139 spots; 638 were interviewed. The GPA range was 3.03 to 4.0, with the average being 3.76.

But inflated standards, together with inherent biases in both standardized testing and the ability to build impressive extracurricular resumes, may disadvantage certain groups, the university added.

Queen’s said it would be creating greater access for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds by setting aside 8 per cent of spots for them in the lottery. The medical school will also be adjusting its existing pathway for Indigenous applicants (which reserves a minimum of four seats for qualified Indigenous applicants per year) by eliminating the Casper test requirement.

The university will be phasing out Queen’s Accelerated Route to Medical School (QuARMS), a highly sought-after program that was overhauled in 2020 to support Black and Indigenous students, and it will be developing a more comprehensive recruitment pathway for Black students.

‘‘ This will help level the playing field for prospective students.

JANE PHILPOTT DEAN OF QUEEN’S HEATH SCIENCES