ihateumat!
Member
Okay so the deal with the ranking process is quite confusing and you will hear lots of different things about it. How it works though is you have to meet a certain criteria to be considered at all, that criteria is a B+ --> A- over all 8 of your papers. once you pass that criteria you move onto the next one. this is where it gets important, they then rank you on JUST your 4 core papers and select 2x as many people as places to interview. So the B+ criteria is just to ensure that you don't slack off in other papers, what you get ranked for the interview with is core papers alone, so my advice is to really focus on medsci this semester obviously still do well in the other papers but as long as your average overall is at an A- to be on the safe side don't stress about A+. The cut off for interview last year seemed to be in the high 7.8 maybe? i think was around the lowest i heard of getting an interview (there could be lower though, and thats for general entry not schemes) and that GPA is core only by the way.
After an interview then the 60%, 15%, 25% rule comes into play. Basically they separate all interviewees into 3 criteria. exceptional (very few people mayb 10ish (very approximate) each year who get guaranteed admission regardless of marks umat etc, then those who are acceptable and those who are unacceptable (again very few people). everybody who fits the acceptable criteria is then ranked 60% on marks, 15% umat 25% interview. They then offer places to those based on this ranked list.
UMAT is a bit complicated, and they never truly discolse how they rank it ie whether they look at percentiles or raw score. But it seems that they group people into quite large clusters, ie discrete rather than continuous. I really would advise not to stress about UMAT unless your marks are weak. My GPA was 8.75, and i had a good interview but my UMAT was crap in the 67% or soemthing like that, (i just bombed on the day), had a big cry in the car thought my med career was over. don't worry its not lol. They really don't emphasise UMAT that much. Having said that do as well as you can because it still contributes! and everything ads up. Most important once you get your marks is the interview, just be yourself, don't try to be somebody different. All they really want to see is that you're friendly, can communicate well (that means listening and responding not just talking), that you have other interests in your life and most importantly that you have some sort of idea what a career in med really encompasses (which is actually quite hard to do.. and you quite possibly will get grilled on the realities of medicine and med school in an interview), and in my mind one of the most important things is to see that your enthusiastic and really passionate about med, and if you are, that will shine through and you will do fine!
In terms of community service again people stress too much about this. I talked to one of the interviewers about this (a family friend), and he talked about how pained he was about the token 2 months before sudden interest in community service etc. Yes it is desirable, but only if its a genuine interest and not token. You don't need community service to get into med, rather an understanding of the dynamics of the community, a willingness to be involved with people from lotos of different backgrounds etc
All the best guys, hope to see some of you at freshers camp next year
. Just had my sheep heart lab today morning, and the test was quite hard 
. Are the forthcoming labs harder? Or was that the hardest lab? I dont feel good about that lab...ohh well