Medical Students at the University of Toronto, 1910-40: A Profile

This article is intended to contribute to the small but growing literature on university students in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Canada--in this case, to add to our knowledge about medical students at the University of Toronto between 1910 and 1940. Aside from crude estimates of total numbers, we know very little about medical students before the early twentieth century because the kinds of records required to probe further have rarely survived. Beginning in 1910, however, all of the applications for entry to the Universitiy of Toronto medical faculty have been preserved, as have the academic record cards of many graduates. Using these and other sources, this article focuses on the academic standards students had to meet to get into medical school; on the socio-economic composition of the student body, and how that changed over time; and on some key features of students' progress through the program of studies.