Auckland OLY1 chat - archive

[Tupac4life]

Again everyone who's attended has different opinions about the workshop itself. Though I know there are some guys in 2nd year medicine now that I know who went to the workshop, obviously a fair number of them may probably refuse to admit they went there because *of others who didn't attend these workshops and got into medicine that would ridicule them for doing so. This is an assumption by itself but I think it's credible.*

It depends on if you're willing to fork out some money to have a practice mock interview and get some feedback from one of the interviewer trainers who is a doctor that is doing specialist study at the moment if I recall correctly from the advertisement flyers being handed out last year. Then again you can ask some medical students who did the interview without going to it and ask them which is probably quite a good helpful as well!

Then again having said that worry about your GPA eh... the interview can wait after you get a good GPA!!!*

Then how about their interview workshops? Worth it?

 

[Hopefully]

I heard the physics in sem 2 is not that hard, even if you havent done phy for a long time. The real bomb is medsci I guess. But anyway, no worries for sem 2 now

That's true; we have to keep it real and focus on this semester! ^_^

 

[leiladian]

How about Medview?
Anyone heard any feedback of it?:mellow:

 

[Nogeat]

Yup, went to their seminar last friday

They're offering core paper tutoring, 1 hour a paper per week. So in semester 1 they teach the 3 core papers and in semester 2 they teach medsci. What they claim they will do is inform us on information that is regularly examined and info that is like never examined. Im not sure whether to do them or not but will be going to one of their trial tutoring on next tuesday for biosci 107 just to see if they're useful or not

 

[Tupac4life]

Core paper tutoring really? I thought they were just medical interview specialists?! I guess if it's their first year of doing OLY 1 tutoring I in my opinion would not be so certain of attending sessions in the long run. Avancetutors started in 2008 and from what I heard all these other 1st year OLY tutoring companies started emerging left right and centre. [MENTION=13210]Nogeat[/MENTION] from experience last year I would study BIOSCI 107 myself and not rely on tutors. Rely on the online mcqs for practice and the incourse tests from previous years. These tutoring companies will say that you should study only a particular topics but at the end of the day I wouldn't want to risk taking tutoring sessions in the long run. Sure for certain consecutive years they might have examined students on similar topics. Yet I can assure you Clive Evans can be a quirky examiner and he can test you on something out of the blue. Last year was a classic example when they got us to draw the 4 stages of the claw toed frog embryonic development which was 20 marks and then write an explanation for each stage making sure you paid attention to detail. Therefore I would be cynical towards the fact that they could be able to pinpoint potential topic related questions as they have stated when so many people got thrown off and were not expecting this sort of question. Furthermore, they do modify the course over the years so what a med student who's in 5th year might have been examined on different things from the stuff you are learning now.*

Yup, went to their seminar last friday

They're offering core paper tutoring, 1 hour a paper per week. So in semester 1 they teach the 3 core papers and in semester 2 they teach medsci. What they claim they will do is inform us on information that is regularly examined and info that is like never examined. Im not sure whether to do them or not but will be going to one of their trial tutoring on next tuesday for biosci 107 just to see if they're useful or not

 

[leiladian]

Yup, went to their seminar last friday

They're offering core paper tutoring, 1 hour a paper per week. So in semester 1 they teach the 3 core papers and in semester 2 they teach medsci. What they claim they will do is inform us on information that is regularly examined and info that is like never examined. Im not sure whether to do them or not but will be going to one of their trial tutoring on next tuesday for biosci 107 just to see if they're useful or not

I went to seminar on Friday as well. Apparently compare to Avance, they are lack of tutoring experience as its their first year doing tutoring just like what Tupac4life said. But they might know better about what will be examined as they are the new 2nd years instead 5th year in Avance.
But I guess it will do no harm to attend their trial lesson.^_^

 

[Worshipppp]

Hey guys, regarding the admission scheme, everyone seems to have a different opinion about it...

Half are saying it HAS changed, even some of the staff at UNI while the other half says it HASNT changed.
Can i just verify,

First I need B+ GPA in ALL 8 of my papers, and then after that they look at my 4 CORE papers which should be minimum about ~7.5 , and then i get invited for an interview, after that, they look at my 4 CORE PAPERS for my 60% of GPA calculation, and 15% of UMAT and 25% Interview.

^ Is that the basic gist of it? Because some are saying that ALL 8 papers non-core and core are considered now as the selection process instead of 4 core papers.....

Thanks

 

[League]

Hey guys, regarding the admission scheme, everyone seems to have a different opinion about it...

Half are saying it HAS changed, even some of the staff at UNI while the other half says it HASNT changed.
Can i just verify,

First I need B+ GPA in ALL 8 of my papers, and then after that they look at my 4 CORE papers which should be minimum about ~7.5 , and then i get invited for an interview, after that, they look at my 4 CORE PAPERS for my 60% of GPA calculation, and 15% of UMAT and 25% Interview.

^ Is that the basic gist of it? Because some are saying that ALL 8 papers non-core and core are considered now as the selection process instead of 4 core papers.....

Thanks

Getting information from unreliable sources is not the best way to seek answers. When you say "half", do you mean "half the students" you ask or "half the accredited staff"?

At Auckland it's the same a before, 8 papers, 4 cores used for selection (as they overlap with BHSc).

However, listening to my answer would go against everything I mentioned:

This is Tanya's e-mail. Ask her yourself:
[email protected]

Also, the minimum of interview is expected to be 7.25 as you now need 90% in 107 to receive an A+ (same as 2011). Though, to attain a competitive profile, you need a GPA of 8.25/8.5 for admission.

 

[Nogeat]

Just to mention, i emailed [email protected] and they said that nothing has changed

 

[Tupac4life]

When you say 7.25 are you referring to the core GPA? If it is that sounds around right, I had a friend who's cousin had a core GPA of 7.25 and got an interview. I'm not sure if that person got an offer though.... I think it's not the official cut off though. GPA cut offs vary every year so depending on how the overall cohort performs determines the interview cut off.

Getting information from unreliable sources is not the best way to seek answers. When you say "half", do you mean "half the students" you ask or "half the accredited staff"?

At Auckland it's the same a before, 8 papers, 4 cores used for selection (as they overlap with BHSc).

However, listening to my answer would go against everything I mentioned:

This is Tanya's e-mail. Ask her yourself:
[email protected]

Also, the minimum of interview is expected to be 7.25 as you now need 90% in 107 to receive an A+ (same as 2011). Though, to attain a competitive profile, you need a GPA of 8.25/8.5 for admission.

 

[Nogeat]

This question may have been answered before, but is lab 1 for biosci 107 worth anything for the final grade?
I just got my mark back it's unexpectedly bad (9/15.5) and the class average was 12.5. I seriously thought that it was an easy assignment

 

[Hopefully]

I second what Nogeat said. Can someone please verify that?
I thought it was relatively straightforward but got a 13.5/15.5 in comparison with the high (!) class average of 14.9... :blink:
Is it weighted or anything like that?

 

[Gigaoblivion]

Hi Auckland first years

I didn't know there were any around on MSO lols

From what I recall, the BIOSCI107 labs do worth something, but very small amount (like 1-2%?). It might've changed now... Remind me what the lab was about? I don't have my lab book with me anymore, but whether the assignments worth anything or not should be in your lab book or course manual.

cheers
Gigaoblivion

 

[Hopefully]

Hi Auckland first years

I didn't know there were any around on MSO lols

From what I recall, the BIOSCI107 labs do worth something, but very small amount (like 1-2%?). It might've changed now... Remind me what the lab was about? I don't have my lab book with me anymore, but whether the assignments worth anything or not should be in your lab book or course manual.

cheers
Gigaoblivion

Hiya Gigaoblivion, yup, there are MSOers who are also first years at UoA haha I just joined these holidays.

Anyways, the first lab was microscopy. In our lecture guide, it says that overall the labs are worth 20% of the final grade, but unfortunately does not go into much more detail than that.

On Cecil, Lab 1 has just the marks and class average, but nothing else relating to the weighting, etc.

Thanks ^_^

 

[Sophi]

Yes, I too had a mini panic today when i saw my mark was 9/15.5 like nogeat, considering I thought it was relatively straightforward also :unsure: The class average seems to have started to decrease down to 12.6 or something when I checked. In terms of marks, our lab tutor aka red coat lady, told us that all the labs would be worth about 2-3%, comprised of 1/3 pre lab and 2/3s actual lab, but the first one would be slightly less as it didnt have a 'do it at home' prelab, if that makes any sense.

 

[Nogeat]

Yes, I too had a mini panic today when i saw my mark was 9/15.5 like nogeat, considering I thought it was relatively straightforward also :unsure: The class average seems to have started to decrease down to 12.6 or something when I checked. In terms of marks, our lab tutor aka red coat lady, told us that all the labs would be worth about 2-3%, comprised of 1/3 pre lab and 2/3s actual lab, but the first one would be slightly less as it didnt have a 'do it at home' prelab, if that makes any sense.

Sophi, do you happen to be in my lab class (thurs 9-12 west lab)
Well, if you are, i think there's some issue with marking in our lab. I know 5 other people and me who got 9 or 9.5

 

[Sophi]

Sophi, do you happen to be in my lab class (thurs 9-12 west lab)
Well, if you are, i think there's some issue with marking in our lab. I know 5 other people and me who got 9 or 9.5

That might be it, though mine was thursday 2-5pm in the west lab, so maybe thursday was a bad day, havent spoken to anyone from my lab stream yet to see what they got though. But yeah thats definitely odd about your lab stream.

 

[italianopalo]

Looking back to 2011 on cecil, the microscopy lab had 0.00 weighting (but it was out of 14.5, not 15.5), so if this year's the same, it won't count at all. But def check with the biology centre or your lab coordinator at the old bio building.

 

[Hopefully]

[MENTION=9215]italianopalo[/MENTION] - Then it stands to reason that this year's microscopy lab isn't weighted as well.

[MENTION=13210]Nogeat[/MENTION] and [MENTION=13997]Sophi[/MENTION] - Yeah, I talked to some of my friends and two of them got 9 as well (!). So there may well be some issue with Thursday's marking...could it be that they haven't been moderated? And where those people working in the same group as you guys (in your respective streams) during the discussion section of the assignment?

 

[Nogeat]

Looking back to 2011 on cecil, the microscopy lab had 0.00 weighting (but it was out of 14.5, not 15.5), so if this year's the same, it won't count at all. But def check with the biology centre or your lab coordinator at the old bio building.

Great, i just hope it stands like that this year

@Hopefully yes the people in my group got 9 or 9.5. Even in other groups (in same lab stream) got 9's and 9.5. The highest i heard from our session was a 10