VANCOUVER - Parents desperate to see their sons and daughters get a highly coveted seat at the University of B.C. medical school are trying everything, from calling their MLAs and the dean to waving around their chequebooks.

We do get a number of calls, requests and even offers to pull out chequebooks from people who say, What would it take to get [my kid] into this medical school? said Dr. Gavin Stuart, dean of the UBC medical school.

Although I am fairly shielded from the process, I do get sporadic calls from angry people yelling at me. Its a competitive process, a highly charged area, he added.

The school accepts 288 into its four- year, undergraduate medical degree program, but gets about 1,800 applications a year. Its considered to be in the top tier of Canadas 17 medical schools. The competition for spots is so overheated that, as an internal memo obtained by The Vancouver Sun attests, even prominent individuals are not above asking for special consideration.

The memo, sent nearly a year ago by former admissions director Denis Hughes to Dr. David Snadden, executive associate dean of education at the medical school, states:

Allowing submission of late documents has become a recurring theme this cycle. We have made more exceptions this cycle than in all three previous years combined. I find this troubling on many fronts.

The memo, which contains some blacked-out parts, mentions one case in which the applicants father contacted UBC to plead for late filing of documents due to circumstances beyond his daughters control. In that case, the father was a Victoria surgeon with an affiliation to UBC. His email message included his full signature clinical faculty, UBC and University of Victoria.

The memo states that the applicant was allowed to file late documents even though she was given six (automated) email reminders that her application would become ineligible if she missed the deadline.

Hughes, who left his position last summer, confirmed he wrote the memo. It ends with this statement:

It is in the best interest of the faculty of medicine to uphold a transparent and unbiased admissions process.

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Parents turn up the heat on UBC medical school for acceptance