Guide: Choosing Between Multiple Offers for Medicine/Dentistry

[vw03]

What is better from utas, jmp and uws if location doesn't matter? Thanks

 

[TKAO]

What is better from utas, jmp and uws if location doesn't matter? Thanks

If you haven't even been offered at these places yet why ask? The likelihood of you being able to get a UTAS offer as an interstater (which I'm assuming you are) is tiny, and JMP and WSU are exactly walks in the park either...

You probably need to provide a little information about yourself before we can even realistically give you a little bit of advice. Have a look at the UCAT results discussion to see what sorts of advice we can give to you right now since offers haven't come out yet

 

[ucatboy]

If you haven't even been offered at these places yet why ask? The likelihood of you being able to get a UTAS offer as an interstater (which I'm assuming you are) is tiny, and JMP and WSU are exactly walks in the park either...

Can confirm, couldn't clutch a UTas offer last year

JMP and WSU are 100% and 75% interview respectively, so there's absolutely no guarantee or certainty you'll get place offers there either.

 

[Crow]

What is better from utas, jmp and uws if location doesn't matter? Thanks

As per above, it's impossible for us to answer questions like this when you provide no information about your considerations in making the decision.

 

[vw03]

say I do get offers from all 3, which is very unlikely I know, and the location isn't a factor, how would you rank the 3 unis. Is there anything big that differentiates these 3 unis, for example, is it harder to specialise if I'm in utas because there aren't any specialty programs in Tasmania? Will I have to move if I want a specific specialty? And is it easier to get internships in one uni compared to the other?

 

[Crow]

say I do get offers from all 3, which is very unlikely I know, and the location isn't a factor, how would you rank the 3 unis. Is there anything big that differentiates these 3 unis, for example, is it harder to specialise if I'm in utas because there aren't any specialty programs in Tasmania? Will I have to move if I want a specific specialty? And is it easier to get internships in one uni compared to the other?

The uni you graduate from isn't going to affect your chances of getting into a specialty program. You may have to move if you want to move into a specific specialty, which could be the case in literally any state that you graduate or work in - that's just the nature of competing for sought after positions as a doctor in Australia.

You're guaranteed an internship if you're in a CSP at any university, but each state has their own allocation system - most use a random ballot system. You should choose the uni based on where you are willing to live for the 5+ years of your degree and probably more importantly, the state in which you want to work after graduating (hint: you will get an internship in the state you graduate from but interstate internships are harder to get and not guaranteed). I'll also add the caveat that internship priority categories are state-decided and are subject to change every year, so you can only use the current priority lists as a guide only. In 5 years time they will more than likely have changed in one way or another.

 

[ucatboy]

And is it easier to get internships in one uni compared to the other?

Pree sure internships are guaranteed for all domestic medical school graduates here in Australia.. You might wanna do some more research into stuff like this.

 

[Crow]

Pree sure internships are guaranteed for all domestic medical school graduates here in Australia

Close - the COAG agreement guarantees CSP graduates an intership, but not domestic FFP graduates. We are yet to see an FFP graduate miss out on an internship, though, but as graduate numbers continue to increase it could be a future possibility.

Definitely agree that doing some background research into specialisation and internship allocation is well advised prior to jumping into the thick of things and selecting preferences!

 

[ucatboy]

Close - the COAG agreement guarantees CSP graduates an intership, but not domestic FFP graduates. We are yet to see an FFP graduate miss out on an internship, though, but as graduate numbers continue to increase it could be a future possibility.

Oop

 

[A1]

We are yet to see an FFP graduate miss out on an internship, though, but as graduate numbers continue to increase it could be a future possibility.

I guarantee it'll be 100 years before we see domestic FFP grads not getting an internship.

Reasoning : No state gov would be politically naive enough to internship prioritise int'l FFPs over domestic FFPs. Which means if some domestic FFPs miss out then virtually all int'l FFPs would miss out. When the words spread out no int'l grad in Aus gets an internship at all they stop coming and our med schools go bankrupt.

 

[chinaski]

An opinion on your part; hardly in a position to be making guarantees there.

 

[Doradoraaa]

30. uh, Bond University ($$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$)

Just out of curiosity, would you move Bond med up the list if the cost is not taken into account because of its 4 years 8 months duration?

 

[Mana]

Just out of curiosity, would you move Bond med up the list if the cost is not taken into account because of its 4 years 8 months duration?

Perhaps, but not by that much. I would move it up to the bottom of the 5 year courses. Why? The course doesn't finish early in the year; it commences later. So between the end of year 12 and the end of your degree is still 5 years. That basically means you are taking a longer post year 12 holiday and then squeezing more of the medical degree into the remaining time. This necessarily means shorter duration of clinical placement time but you still have the same time between end of year 12 and commencement of internship, which makes this worse, in my opinion, than all the other 5 year courses, even if the cost were the same.

When you then look at the relative university resources (it is a small private university) and the location (it is in the Gold Coast and therefore the placements nearby are unlikely to necessarily have the best resourced hospitals compared to large tertiary centres in larger cities) and the university is relatively new (founded 1989) and the medical program is even newer... yeah, there isn't exactly a lot going for this according to the criteria I've suggested above (which certainly isn't exhaustive, but should be enough to give you a rough idea). If the cost were the same then I would take it over any 6 year or provisional course, but that's about it.

 

[Doradoraaa]

This necessarily means shorter duration of clinical placement time but you still have the same time between end of year 12 and commencement of internship

This is something that I haven't thought about, thank you for the insight!!!

 

[walktest]

As usual, I've had a few requests to answering this and while there is a very simplistic method to helping you choose between universities from the thread Choosing Between Universities - and with offers coming out this might be relevant to those with multiple offers.



there are obviously many other factors to consider; one of them is the quality of the education there which I will cover in this article as best as I can.

Now, before I get into discussions about universities and saying good or bad things about particular universities the disclaimer here is that I have not actually attended that many universities and the issues with comparing medical degrees and the quality of medical education generally occur from the fact that people tend very much NOT to attend more than one medical school to complete their medical degree.


Okay so in order of what I think are the important factors to think about when choosing between multiple offers, here they are with some commentary:

1. What is the cost of the medical degree that you are about to undertake?
While this question may seem superficial at first, I'm not only talking about the cost in Australian dollarydoos; although this is not the only measure that is important. The costs include, but are not limited to:

a) the cost in university fees and future repayments (CSP > BMP > FFP and obviously 5 years is better than 6 or 7 within those categories; if you happen to have already finished a degree then starting a 4 year grad entry degree is preferable to starting a 5 or 6 year undergrad degree)
b) the cost in time to study the degree (we're talking 5 years v 6 years v 3+4 years for some provisional) and the loss of productivity that studying for those years would take (for example, you can't hold down full time work while you study)
c) the cost in opportunity to spend time and maintain relationships (things like being able to live with your family or partner which may vary especially if time with particular people is very important - things like close family members with terminal illness for example make this cost very high)
d) the cost in other lost opportunity (things like quitting a job that you have already invested significant time and effort into, or other future major life events such as getting married and having children)
e) the cost of living in proximity to the university/locations where you will undertake your medical degree (for example, it's cheaper to live in Armidale than it is to live in Sydney if you're paying rent).
f) any things that might offset the cost - things like those rare scholarships, or having other family or friends elsewhere who are happy to let you stay with them for discounted or no rent at all. Bear in mind that no scholarship will pay more than the income of an intern, which is what you get by graduating one year earlier.

2. Do you already live in close proximity to one of the medical degrees such that you would not have to change your place of residence?
While this might seem like it's pretty obvious, inevitably there will be someone every year who decides to uproot their entire life in the name of prestige of their medical school. Taking this into account, for example, this can decrease the hypothetical cost of living very significantly as per (1) given that if you already live at home and you're a school leaver and your family is happy to let you stay rent free (or with discounted rent) etc. you'll be saving a lot of time and money by not having to move and find accommodation etc.

In this sense, unless there is some very obvious reason you should be uprooting (for example, things like toxic family environments which admittedly have come up in discussion many times on here) you should have as your first preference a university where you would be able to travel there every day from your own residence (all other factors being equal, like the CSP/FFP thing).

3. What is the quality of the medical degree that you will be undertaking?
This is a very difficult and arguably sensitive topic to discuss; here I will suggest some guidelines as to how I would determine the relative quality of medical degrees compared to one another. It's very difficult to quantify the quality without using subjective measures (especially since hardly anyone goes to multiple medical degrees at different universities), but I've put the more objective ones first and place more weight on them:

a) Is the medical degree accredited by the Australian Medical Council and are they at risk of losing it or not being approved for it?
As of the time of writing, all medical schools in Australia as far as I know have AMC accreditation for their existing years. However, as an example in the past Notre Dame in Sydney has lost its accreditation leaving a whole cohort of their medical students wondering whether their degrees would be recognised in the workforce (thankfully they regained their accreditation before this became a problem). This however can become a problem for new medical schools such as Curtin and Macquarie where for example the AMC may have granted accreditation provisionally for the first few years but not for the later years and THIS may become an issue later if you are a student there because your qualification is at risk if you are a medical student there during those years. As much as possible, I would stay away from very new medical courses in favour of those that have many years under their belt for this reason.

b) How new is the medical degree?
Other than the issue with potential accreditation, there are a lot of issues which can arise with newer medical degrees (Curtin, Macquarie, any others which started in the last decade) by measure of how long they have had to secure medical placements, how long they have had to change their course, how long they have had to recruit academic staff. Naturally, those with a longer history have had longer to sort out these issues and as a result it's less likely that this would be an issue for you in particular if you attend a medical degree where you aren't the (or one of the) guineapig cohort(s).

c) What is the quality and number of the clinical placements that are offered?
Clinical placements are a very significant cornerstone of medical education and there is vast variation in the quality of clinical placements. I would be looking for universities that have lots of placements in the major metropolitan centres (the more high level specialisation the better and the more specialty representation the better). Why? These are the placements which are harder for a university to get because these hospitals are already the ones that are saturated. You might notice that every new medical school on the horizon has a focus on rural health and rural placements and while they can be good places to learn good medicine, these are also the placements which are relatively easier for the medical school to create. Consequently, it is relatively easier for you to get a rural placement than a metro one (even though there are more metro placements overall). This is illustrated by the observation that every year in every medical cohort there is an oversupply of students that want to go metro and an undersupply of students that want to go rural. Without going into the discussion about which placement is better (rural placements vs metro placements each have their own place and you should do some amount of both), you don't want to be in a place where you don't have the option to go where you want to (or have a good chance to).

As an example, and I will use this example as a relative comparison within this category only ignoring all others:

Comparing UNSW's placements to UNDS (noting that UNSW has about 3x the cohort of UNDS):

UNSW has these metropolitan sites:
St. Vincent's
St. George
Prince of Wales (and associated Sydney Children's and Royal Women's)
Liverpool Hospital
Bankstown Hospital

and a few rural sites with relative ease of getting in.

UNDS has these metropolitan sites:
St. Vincent's (shared with UNSW)
Auburn Hospital
Hawkesbury Hospital
Mater Hospital
Werribee Hospital (Melbourne)

and a few rural sites, also with relative ease of getting in.

If you look at the relative thoroughput of those hospitals and the relative specialty breadth of those hospitals and the relative acuity of patients managed in those hospitals then arguably UNSW has better quality placements than UNDS (based on locations alone, which may or may not be a fair comparison).

Another example is to look at the number of relative clinical years or how early you get clinical exposure. For example, Melbourne University has 2.5 years of clinical placements (out of a 4 year degree) which scores it relatively highly in this regard, whereas many other 4 year degrees only have 2 years out of 4.

d) What other resources does the university have or lack relative to others?
This often ties in with the age and/or size of the university. For example, if you look at the older universities, these are the ones which have large anatomy labs with years and years of anatomical and pathological specimens. They are also the ones with large libraries and developed clinical schools and clinical facilities. Finally, they are also the ones which might have the other on-campus facilities, such as sporting or accommodation facilities, which while are not part of the quality of the medical degree per se they are part of the quality of the university experience, for which if you are going to be spending four or more years there, does make a difference.

As asked below, there is the question of cohort size:
Large or small cohort size per se is not a reason to go or not to go to a medical school; the issue is the relative availability of resources. For example, a medical school that is large however happens to have large enough anatomy labs and enough quality clinical placements for that large cohort makes the large cohort a non-issue. Similarly, a small cohort which doesn't have enough placements/resources etc is still less preferable in that regard.

For example, and again I speak from personal experience - UNDS is a cohort of around 100 medical students (probably slightly more now) which is around 1/3 of the size of UNSW. However, UNDS happens to not even have an anatomy wetlab, meaning actually that the resources required for anatomy teaching are somewhat lacking there (they borrow the wetlab from UTS and even then the wetlab sessions are far less frequent). Even though the cohort was smaller, this resource in particular was even more limited in comparison to a larger cohort.

4. Is there a reasonable guarantee of obtaining your medical degree at the end?
There are multiple reasons why you would not make it through and a lot of these are personal (e.g. personal sickness, significant life events etc). However, barring these which I will assume would be similar wherever you went, there are a few things that might stop you from ever getting that medical degree once you start:

a) Provisional degrees - as the adage goes, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. If you do a provisional degree and for whatever reason you're unable to make the minimum GPA (for example, you fell ill and you didn't get the marks because of this - and note that in pretty much all provisional degrees there is NO pathway for you to make this up other than being thrown into the GAMSAT pool with the remainder of non-provisional applicants) you're often out of luck, sorry. Going by this, you will want to be taking non-provisional medicine over medicine every time.
b) Non-guaranteed pathways - this is like (a) but even worse and I'm looking at you, Melbourne Chancellor's Pathway with an interview in third year that you can fail
c) Even less guaranteed pathways (like the UNSW Med Sci pathway or the UTas Med Res non-guaranteed pathway and many others) where your chances of getting in are very small (please see my articles elsewhere on MSO for my opinion on how crap these are - Common pitfalls to avoid for year 12 school leavers and other medicine applicants)
d) A less common but significant issue being high fail rates and high attrition rates which was a problem up to very recently at the University of Adelaide (again, see my articles elsewhere on MSO for this Interesting data from the medical training review panel )

5. What are your future career plans?
This ties in with a lot of the other categories but there are a few things that I think are best mentioned here:

a) Where do you want to practice? If you are wanting to practice in a certain state (e.g. in NSW) it makes sense to be doing your medical degree there because that's the state where you will be likely guaranteed an internship. It's possible of course to change between states at any point, however it tends to be harder for many reasons (nepotism of particular hospital networks being one of them).

b) What do you want to practice? If you are wanting to do, say, paediatrics, then you'll be wanting to go to a university which has clinical placements in major paediatric centres. If you want to do neurosurgery, you'll be wanting to go to a university where you will get a clinical placement in neurosurgery (and this would generally be at major tertiary centres only). Essentially, if you want to be doing particular specialties you'll be wanting as much exposure to those as early as possible, because it will allow you to get experience (even if just observational) and networking within those as well as potential research opportunities.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Taking these into account, here is my generalised rank list of medical degrees in order of which you should take them, assuming that you are a year 12 school leaver with no tertiary record (i.e. make a list of your current offers then start eliminating them based on this list until you have one choice left. Remember this list is preferred so you cross out the ones that AREN'T the description, starting at #1)
(your list may be different depending on the above considerations)

1. Whatever degree isn't full-fee paying (FFP)
2. Whatever degree isn't provisional or non-guaranteed
3. Whatever is the shortest degree in the city you already live in
4. Whatever degree isn't bonded (BMP)
5. Whatever is the shortest degree outside the city you already live in
6. Whatever is the degree in the state you want to practice in
7. Whatever degree happens to have offered you a scholarship
8. Monash University (pi will enjoy this)
9. University of Tasmania (NOT the guaranteed B.Med Res pathway — note from LMG, this pathway no longer exists for new applicants)
10-11.University of Newcastle/University of New England (supposedly there is equal possibility for clinical placements for both I am told)
12. University of Western Sydney
13. Curtin University
14. University of New South Wales
15. University of Adelaide
16. James Cook University
17. University of Western Australia provisional (6 years)
18. Flinders provisional (6 years)
19. Griffith provisional (6 years - NOT including the University of the Sunshine Coast 7 year pathway)
20. La Trobe University/Melbourne University provisional (guaranteed pathway for regional students only) - Bachelor of Biomedical Science (Medical), Courses and degrees, La Trobe University
21. University of Sydney provisional
22. University of Queensland provisional
23. University of the Sunshine Coast/Griffith provisional (7 years)
24. University of Tasmania B. Med Res guaranteed pathway (8 years!) - no longer offered
25. University of Melbourne Chancellor's Pathway (because it's not guaranteed)
26. uh, Bond University ($$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$)

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Similarly, here is a general list for those with a completed degree who are also applying through the GAMSAT pathway:

1. Whatever degree isn't full-fee paying (FFP)
2. Whatever degree isn't provisional or non-guaranteed (not that this is an option for graduates)
3. Whatever is the shortest degree in the city you already live in
4. Whatever degree isn't bonded (BMP)
5. Whatever is the shortest degree outside the city you already live in
6. Whatever is the degree in the state you want to practice in
7. Whatever degree happens to have offered you a scholarship
8. University of Melbourne (4 year grad) (because of the earlier clinical placements)
9. University of New South Wales Lateral Entry (i.e. direct entry to year 3 if you are already B. Med Sci graduate from UNSW - note I don't recommend this pathway for year 12s)
10-12 (aeq): University of Sydney (4 year grad)/University of Western Australia (4 year grad)/University of Queensland (4 year grad)
13. Australian National University (4 year grad)
14. Monash University (4 year grad)
15. Flinders University (4 year grad)
16-20 (aeq). Griffith/Wollongong/UNDS/UNDF/Deakin
21. University of Tasmania (if you happen to be a UTas B. Med Res graduate - again I don't recommend this for year 12s)
22-23. University of Newcastle/New England
24. University of Western Sydney
25. Curtin University
26. University of New South Wales non-lateral entry
27. University of Adelaide (there is a rural pathway that grads can use if rural)
28. James Cook University
29. uh, Macquarie University ($$$$$$ and the fact it's new and the fact that it couldn't get enough Australian clinical placements so it has to send its students to India... ಠ_ಠ wat)
30. uh, Bond University ($$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$)



EDIT: By request here is a similar list of Australian dental schools for a year 12. Note that there is no internship requirement for dental graduates so the state you graduate doesn't determine the state you work in once you do. All the undergrad dentistry is 5 years also, so less need to worry about duration (provisional of course is longer.)

1. Whatever is the most CSP (basically - CSP is better than CSP + FFP like Griffith which is better than completely FFP)... other than provisional courses - more on this soon
2. Whatever is in your current city if applicable
3. Whichever is not provisional/non-guaranteed (UMelb/USyd/UWA are provisional)
4. University of Queensland
5. University of Adelaide
6. Charles Sturt University
7. La Trobe University
8. James Cook University
9. Griffith University
10. University of Sydney provisional
11. University of Melbourne provisional
12. University of Western Australia

The reason I have placed Griffith over the provisional courses is because 5 years of fees there comes out to around 150k and then you get two years of dental salary (around 80k/yr - you'd already have almost broken even after tax) whereas 7 years of fees at a provisional pathway comes out to roughly 80k in debt and no full time income yet.

Conversely, a graduate entry dental student's preferences list would strongly preference the 4 year graduate entry courses over the 5 year undergraduate ones.

If there are other things that you think are important, please feel free to mention them here and I will be happy to edit the main article to talk about these. If you want a tl;dr - see the quote at the beginning of this post.

Best of luck with your medical career, and welcome to medicine! (Or dentistry, heh.)

Hello Mana and thank you for the great post. I was focusing on the parts related to the GAMSAT pathway. I have looked at your list. I have also compared the different programs on the Compared website. This is the website that collects the government surveys about the course that students fill out.

The GAMSAT pathway to do an MD is a postgraduate degree, at least based on what I skim read here.

My question was to do with Flinders University GAMSAT entry pathway to do the MD program.

So first I wanted to look at Flinders University by itself and compare compare the survey results for the undergraduate program to the postgraduate program. The results, at least the way I interpreted, was like night and day.

So, when comparing Flinders undergraduate medicine program to the postgraduate GAMSAT entry medicine program:

1. Overall satisfaction for undergraduate was 68.4%, compared to postgraduate at 38.3%
2. Teaching practices satisfaction for undergraduate was 81.6%, compared to postgraduate at 41.3%
... and so on... IN THE SAME UNIVERSITY.

When you compare Flinders Post Graduate student surveys to, say ANY OTHER GAMSAT POST GRADUATE ROUTE, Flinders came out really poorly. For example, Flinders on the list was number 15. Woolongong on the list was number 16-20. University of Sydney was 10-12 on the list.

When comparing Flinders postgraduate to Woolongong Postgraduate Medicine and University of Sydney Postgraduate Medicine:

1. Overall satisfaction for Flinders postgraduate is 38.3%. Woolongong postgraduate is 90.9% (for reference USYD is 79.6%)
2. Skill development perception for Flinders postgraduate is 71.9%. Woolongong postgraduate is 94.6% (for reference USYD is 81.3%)
3. Teaching practice rating for Flinders postgraduate is 41.3%. Woolongong postgraduate is 94.7% (for reference USYD is 83.9%)
... and so on...

So my questions are, if the offer is the same (e.g. both bonded or both not bonded) and you have to travel to a new location, new house, new social network for Flinders or a lower ranked Woolongong example or a higher ranked one example University of Sydney :

1. Am I looking at the surveys wrong? Did I get the undergraduate vs postgraduate muddled up?
2. Is Flinders GAMSAT pathway a poorly structured course?
3. Why is Flinders so poor? Overall satisfaction is 38.3%, which is about HALF of what USYD is. The teaching practice survey result is horrible as well.
4. Any other insights you may have



Thank you

 

[A1]

2. Is Flinders GAMSAT pathway a poorly structured course?

For most med students the choice between multiple offers depends more on which state they want to intern/work in on graduation, since they are guaranteed a job there whereas they'd would have to apply as interstate for other states. The latter is not guaranteed and if successful they often get a hospital location the instate graduates don't favour (thus left over).

With that in mind, say hypothetically you prefer to intern/work in Adelaide would you choose USyd/UWoll instead based on more positive student surveys?

Regarding Flinders a poorly structured course, if that were the case Flinders would have been struck off AMC accreditation.

 

[Mana]

At the time of writing the article the QILT data wasn't available to me.

That said, I would be looking to see if there are multiple years of data to see if there is consistently poor satisfaction as flagged by the students completing the survey. Assuming all else being equal (i.e. having to move away from home/cost of living elsewhere/desired location of work) this is a reasonable metric to include with the caveat that essentially zero of the students will have done medicine at more than one university and so the comparison is still subjective, and the percentage of satisfied graduates is a very subjective endpoint with potential for a lot of noise - for example, is there a difference between surveying students prior to their final exams and after they have received their pass (or fail) mark?


I'd love to see when QILT releases further years' worth of data in this regard and if it is consistent then certainly I'd be happy to update my recommendations taking this into account. For now though all the other mentioned factors (the geographical and financial ones at the very least) would take precedence for me.

 

[walktest]

For most med students the choice between multiple offers depends more on which state they want to intern/work in on graduation, since they are guaranteed a job there whereas they'd would have to apply as interstate for other states. The latter is not guaranteed and if successful they often get a hospital location the instate graduates don't favour (thus left over).

With that in mind, say hypothetically you prefer to intern/work in Adelaide would you choose USyd/UWoll instead based on more positive student surveys?

Regarding Flinders a poorly structured course, if that were the case Flinders would have been struck off AMC accreditation.

Thank you for the reply. I understand that for most, when given a choice, would stay in the state they hope to do their intern or work in.

I also understand that if the Flinders course did not meet the accreditation requirements then it would be rightfully struck off.

I just wanted to do a comparison between already accredited universities. For example, a cut of cow meat is known as beef (very generally). But there are several different grades of beef. Copy pasted from elsewhere, these are Prime, Choice, Select, Standard, Commercial, Cutter & Canner. The grades are based on two main criteria: the degree of marbling (intramuscular fat) in the beef, and the maturity (estimated age of the animal at slaughter) [Source].

So yes, Flinders postgraduate, USYD postgraduate, and Woolongong postgraduate are all going to give you a MD degree, just like you get a cut of beef from all cows. I was interested in finding out the quality of that cut and the quality of the cow. Especially if the offer is the same (both bonded or both unbonded, both requires travel).

I was able to find the AMC accreditation for medicine for Flinders University here. They had their report done in 2015.
Same for University of Sydney here. They had their report done in 2019.
Same for Woolongong here. They had their report done in 2016.

I just skim read the reports this morning. My poor interpretation of the report for Flinders was that the program in Northern Territory had more issues in terms of organization, staff retention, and coordination compared to the South Australian program. There were issues with the program conveying the vision of what the desired outcome was with all the staff involved, especially when students were out on the clinical rounds. The Flinders program, at least back in 2015, did not seem as well structured compared to the University of Sydney program. The Sydney program does issues, but it seemed more mature. And it makes sense that it is higher on the list kindly compiled by Mana. The Woolongong program, lower on the list compared to Flinders, seems better organized and streamlined and just seems to 'make sense', but being a smaller school may run into issues if there is staff attrition.

I guess it can be quite difficult to accurately know what you are getting into and not think too much into it. Pursuing the GAMSAT entry means that those treading this pathway already have a degree of some sort. Personally I just want to go to one where I don't have to learn the entire subject material by myself from books and youtube. If staff can even help me a quarter of the way then second time around it would be a completely different experience.

 

[A1]

I guess it can be quite difficult to accurately know what you are getting into and not think too much into it.

My view is the vast majority of applicants are lucky to get a single med offer, which they have to roll with. The luckier few who get multiple, most choose home state or where they like to intern/work. That leaves very few who are in the position to choose based on students satisfaction.

Essentially I'm saying you are spending a huge amount of effort on something we are not likely to have the luxury of, and even then it's inconsequential to the end purpose of a Medical Board approved degree and a doctor career. Your time would be better spent researching the pros & cons of interning/working in SA vs NSW rather than Flinders MD vs USyd/UWol MD.

 

[walktest]

A1 and Mana thank you for your great insights.

Mana I couldn't find QILT data for other years. I definately agree that it would be interesting to see how it evolves and whether the student satisfaction changes from year to year. The surveys are taken in August I read, so potentially early enough so that students are not thinking about exams, passing, or failing. For the postgraduate surveys I would imagine that the students would be comparing their postgraduate medicine experience to what they went through when they completed their undergraduate degree.

For Flinders I believe it is easier for Flinder degree holders to get into medicine compared to others. This would be interesting, if my assumption is correct, as the previous undergraduate Flinders students think that the postgraduate medicine course is not up to the standard they are used to within the same university. This would be in line with the difference seen in the student satisfaction surveys for the undergraduate Flinders medicine program compared to the postgraduate Flinders MD medicine program.

There are surveys for current students as well as recently graduated students that is all on the same website (for Flinders, University of Sydney, or Woolongong). Again, for recent graduates (so not current students) from the postgraduate program, when comparing just these three, Finders came out bottom, Uni Sydney middle, Woolongong top. Same trend seen with current student surveys.

A1 I agree that there are more pressing problems to look into at the moment. Your suggestion to look into interning in SA vs NSW was very helpful. I've found this from the Australian Medical Students Association which goes into the different intern locations. But that is getting too far ahead for now probably. As one of my practice GAMSAT essay quotes said, "Diamonds are created under pressure so hold on, it will be your time to shine soon ". It'll work out in the end.

Thank you again.