Career Planning Advice
The Medical Student Performance Record (MSPR), aka "Dean’s Letter" is like an elaborate transcript of your performance throughout the four years of medical school. It is not a letter of recommendation but a more objective reporting of your academic history, the evaluations you have received, and the faculty-sponsored activities in which you have participated.
All Canadian residency programs want to see your MSPR as part of your CaRMS application. You can check the CaRMS program description document requirements for any program you are interested in. The Francophone programs call it the "Fiche de rendement académique de l'étudiant en médecine."
While all programs want to see it, not all programs indicate exactly how much weight they give to the MSPR when evaluating your dossier. Those who do give an indication sometimes weigh it at something like 25% - 30% of the dossier (just as an example, at the time of writing this in 2018, Universite Laval Emergency Medicine indicated their weighting of the MSPR like that). You will need to check the Selection Criteria of your target residency programs on CaRMS Program Descriptions very carefully as it varies between programs, and it can be subject to change as well.
Clinical evaluations and notations from Osler Fellows are included in the appropriate sections exactly as they are received by our office. The Dean’s Office has NO authority to edit evaluation content for the MSPR, so be sure to check your evaluations online regularly. If you are dissatisfied with any aspect of an evaluation that you have received, please be sure to follow the correct procedures (see Review of Grades & Evaluation as well as the MSPR Policy in the UGME website's Academic Policies - Evaluation & Promotion section) for evaluation review within the timelines prescribed.
In the MSPR Policy, you can see what sort of course outcomes are recorded in the MSPR, and what sort are not recorded.
In the Fall of Med 4, UGME prepares your MSPR for you by drawing from all your official evaluations received by the UGME office within a certain timeline, which allows UGME to complete the MSPR and upload it to your CaRMS account in time to meet the CaRMS MSPR milestone. Generally, evaluations received by UGME by early-to-mid-October can be included in the MSPR (at the time of writing in 2018; precise cut-off date to be established each year depending on the block dates and the CaRMS timeline).
Evaluations received after the cut-off date for your cohort cannot be included, but all electives you have confirmed for Med 4 will be included as line items, and a line to the effect of "Evaluation for this rotation was not received by the Faculty at the time of compilation of this document" will be included instead. This is normal, and not something you need to worry about. Every year, Canadian medical students are faced with the same CaRMS milestones and every year, programs receive hundreds of MSPRs which include a combination of completed evaluations and incomplete courses, which is understandable as no one expects you to have completed your medical education by October of 4th year.
During early fall, you will have a chance to review your MSPR so that you are aware of its general content and layout before it is submitted to CaRMS.
Applying to the US with the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS)? You'll need to use CaRMS as your designated Dean's Office to transmit your MSPR to ERAS by the ERAS timeline. CaRMS must receive your documents at least one week prior to the ERAS deadlines. Make sure you communicate with UGME well in advance of September to tell them of your ERAS intentions, as UGME will need to create an earlier version of the MSPR for you and send it to CaRMS by mid-September of med4.
If you have any questions or concerns about the MSPR (Dean's Letter), please email.