what are the 'essential' books for ELM? I already own both baby and big robbins, pretty sure I have Grays, and a few others from when my gf did med, but ELM for her was a long time ago so they're probably either out of date/no longer used
The basic sciences like pathology and anatomy don't evolve particularly quickly (or at least, what's taught to preclincal medical students evolves at a glacial pace), so books like Robbins and Grays are probably fine. I can't imagine your girlfriend would've gone through more than about 10 years ago anyway (?), so they're probably only an edition or two out of date.
Stuff like Talley and O'Connor or the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine - anything particularly 'clinical', really - do go out of date a little faster. But even then, for what you'll be learning in HSFY, it probably wouldn't matter that much.
Anyway, as others on here have insisted many times (and you discovered yourself with the HSFY textbooks), most of the textbooks you buy will end up being used for little more than decoration. The medical school does give you most of the content you need (in the form of slides, lecture handouts etc), and the rest is usually easier to find online than in a textbook anyway. So I wouldn't worry too much about having slightly out-of-date books, unless you're going to be one of those people who becomes a human UpToDate access portal from week 2 of second year.
Hi guys!
Long time stalker, you have no idea how long I've been creeping over this forum lol
Anyways, uhhh I'm just another typical worried HSFY hopeful, and basically I'm in it to get into Dentistry... (Not really looking into Medicine or Pharmacy otherwise I would've stayed in Auckland to go UoA - don't kill me). I'm really worried because my sem 1 results weren't that great, I got 82, 84, 84, 86. However I've seen in previous Ranking and Offers threads that people that got into Dent and Med got averages of ~95 across their papers. I'm so worried that I won't get into Dent which is really my #1 goal, and I just wanted to know if it is still possible to have a chance? I'm very willing to up my game in sem 2 as actually I was pretty depressed in sem 1 (didn't make the transition from highschool to uni quite well). But now I want to make my move to Otago worth it
Thank you so much, this site is a gold mine for information *-*
Welcome!
For obvious reasons, people with 95%-type scores are vastly over-represented in posts here. However, that doesn't imply that you need grades like that to get in. Dentistry has been a little trickier than medicine to work out cut-offs for historically (although we're planning on making a big push to get a better idea of the dent cut-off this year - for which we need posters like you with 'lower' scores).
What we do know of the dentistry cut-off is that it's nowhere near the 95% mark, so you can breath a little
So far as we know, it's usually somewhere in the low-mid 80's. Your semester 1 grades are floating somewhere in that range, so you're at the very least in with a reasonable shot. Particularly if you are able to pull your average up a couple of percent this semester if all goes to plan (sorry to hear about your depression in sem 1 - the move away from home to HSFY can be pretty stressful, hope you're doing better now), then you should be in with a healthy chance of getting in - and, if you stick around, of helping us get more accurate data on the dent cut-off!