the only black med student in her cohort, she's paving the way

she is the first of her family to attend university. she is also the only black student in her english-speaking class of about 120. shortly after george floyd was murdered by minneapolis police, she felt inspired to start an online platform for other students like her, aspiring or otherwise, and so @1stgenmd was born.

previously, she had given talks to the association of black aspiring physicians (abap) at ottawa, so this was just a matter of taking that information online.

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📌spotlight series: gpa - part 1 i vividly remember the first time i learned about this whole “gpa” business - an entire semester into my undergraduate studies. two high school friends and i were walking out of an introduction to business management class i had sat in on. as one friend mentioned in passing that she was concerned about her gpa, my good friend @necessarygoodness and i exchanged puzzled glances. prior to that moment of complete happenstance, i was unaware of the extent to which my undergraduate gpa would dictate my prospects at getting into medical school. while it may seem like common sense knowledge to those with older siblings or parents who were educated here in canada, it is not to those of us navigating these ivory towers on our own. i could not fathom how someone like myself, as academically oriented as i was, had been failed by my guidance counsellors, teachers, and the public education system as a whole. i would argue that this is crucial information that should have been communicated to me and my peers long before we ever accepted our offers to university. the reason being is that those who are most successful at gaining admission to medical school, or any competitive professional program for that matter, are those who had a plan of action before ever stepping foot on their university campus. this brings me to today’s major 🔑: protect your gpa at all costs. all other aspects of your application are secondary & should be treated as such! different institutions will use different metrics by which to calculate your gpa. be mindful that your cumulative gpa (cgpa) is different from your weighted gpa (wgpa). the former accounts for all undergraduate courses ever taken (including spring and summer terms) whereas the latter may only account for your last 2 or 3 years of studies. before embarking on your undergraduate studies, it would be in your best interest to create an excel spreadsheet where you record the official gpa cut-offs of candidates invited to interview (this data is publicly available). it would also be wise to account for the unofficial gpa cut-offs for candidates receiving offers of admission.

a post shared by selam, ms3 👩🏽‍⚕️ (@1stgenmd) on jun 8, 2020 at 12:41pm pdt

right now, her focus is on highlighting different aspects of med school applications. she recently posted about understanding the importance of grade point averages. she hopes one day she can expand the platform to include the stories of other first generation med students.

the solutions, like with any issue of systemic proportions, would be multi-fold. part of it, ogbalidet says, should include a stream for aspiring black students in all medical faculties, akin to what the university of toronto already has. ottawa currently has a similar stream for indigenous students.

another push for change, one that is being proposed and petitioned  across many educational institutions, is mandatory anti-black racism training for medical students.

ogbalidet’s most potent example of such lack of representation was during the ob-gyn portion of her education. not once was it mentioned that black women are at a much higher risk of mortality than caucasian women, even when controlling for socioeconomic, educational and other factors. that’s something she found out in her own reading. canada does not collect race-based data, but in the united states, black women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women.