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I am a second year diagnostic medical sonography student at NAIT and I will be sharing my personal experiences as well as thoughts about the program. The DMS program is two and a half years (6 semesters) long. The first three semesters are your typical university schedule with four months off in the summer. The other three semesters (a full year from January to December) are clinical which means that as a student, there will be no more didactic material to memorize. In Western Canada, SAIT and BCIT also offers the same course. However, between the three technical institutes, NAIT’s program grants its students more practice time, as there are more machines (19 for 30 students). Every year, 30 individuals are admitted into the program after going through the multi-mini interview process.
You might be thinking that 30 is a lot, but in my year, there were 700 applicants which makes the acceptance rate 4%. Although the NAIT website lists 75% as the required mark, you would actually need high 80s to low 90s in order to receive an interview. I am the youngest in my program (17 when I started) and there were two others that have been accepted straight out of high school. Everyone else either has previous post secondary experience or has taken the time to gain work experience or to upgrade their marks. There are three guys in our class, which seems to reflect the profession fairly well. The interview was daunting and took place on the first floor of the business tower at NAIT.
We were required to sit and wait in a room in the basement with seven of our competitors and wait for them to call us upstairs. After being brought upstairs, we were told to pick a door to stand behind.
On the door is a question or a scenario that we had one minute to think and write down what we wanted to say when we went in (pencil and paper provided). Inside the classroom, you would take a seat across from your interviewer and recite your answer to the question or opinion to a controversial topic. Your response may not take up the whole allotted five minutes, in which case the interviewer may or may not ask you follow-up questions. This process is repeated eight times until you have cycled through all the rooms and are dismissed. However, this type of multi-mini interview for the program has now been changed. Starting in 2015, the diagnostic medical sonography program will now do the interviews online. The timing of the interview have not changed.
Applicants will have one minute to read the situation, scenario, or question before having to record themselves on a webcam for five minutes. Compared to our year, I also believe that the January interviews have been taken out and that all applicants will have to do their interviews in April. I got the call in an afternoon about two weeks after the interview despite thinking that I wouldn’t get in and it was one of the happiest days of my life.
So, it was on to the next step: immunizations, criminal record check, and medical terminology. The first two are pretty self explanatory. Immunizations are required by healthcare professionals in order to keep ourselves and our patients safe. Unfortunately for me, I grew up in China and my records were incomplete as some documents were lost in our move and the hep-B vaccine also took four shots for my body to begin producing antibodies so I ended up having to get around 10 shots and 3 blood draws.
Medical terminology was a pre-requisite course required by healthcare programs at NAIT. As soon as high school ended, I took the course online through NAIT. This course has a deadline of July 31st and was not overly difficult but was quite lengthy and it took me almost three full weeks to complete. And so, at the end of July, I submitted my grade and eagerly anticipated the next step in my life! For part 2, click.
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Hey Chantel, The funny thing is I have an engineering degree and I was feeling pretty depressed about not getting a job for over a year. I applied to DMS as a backup and got in. I eventually turned it down because I didn’t want to study anymore (I was doing the medical terminology course and despised it) and ironically got an engineering job shortly thereafter. As for grades, I got the interview with a 90% or so average. If you have more questions, email me. I might still have the interview questions somewhere in a notepad too.
Cheers Andy Like. Hi Chantel, Like Andy has mentioned, you would want around a 90% or higher to be guaranteed an interview. I applied with a 91% and I knew someone who didn’t get an interview when they applied with an 88%. It depends on how many people apply because the year after us, someone got an interview with an 86%. We had maybe 6 or so people with medical backgrounds, but they don’t really look into that, as I got in with just volunteering experience and part time jobs.
They really just base their decisions on your interview.