Ok so circling back to the main point... is a system justified whereby students are able to receive a significant concession to gain admission to one of the most (if not the most) competitive degree in the arbitrary hope that they are somewhat more likely to practise in rural areas? There is no practical mechanism in the system to ensure that they actually fulfil this moral obligation unlike BMPs. There is no effective process to ensure that 'rural' students who are actually privileged do not abuse the system. There is no mechanism to ensure that even if such a system were to exist, it would not further warp a system whereby state based quotas apply pretty much everywhere except NSW.
Hi! I'm new to this conversation so I'll give a bit of my take on it. Preface: I am not a rural student but I am someone from a low SES school and area, so I can (somewhat?) sympathise with rural students.
For the record, I think the Rural entry pathway
is justified. Whilst there is no guarantee that rural students will go back and study with their areas, (despite rural students being more likely to still go back and study there). I think the Rural Entry pathway serves also a much greater purpose and that's addressing equitable access to high-end courses such as Medicine.
This is a whole other issue that I'm talking about but I don't want a medical school admissions system that tells students who are literally born in certain locations that they will have near 0 chances for entry into medicine. Now you might say that this can be addressed with an EAS system that boosts rural students' points but I really don't think this will have any effect considering the UCAT
exists. We don't have access to information regarding how well rural vs non-rural students perform on the UCAT, but just getting a general gist from the scores I've seen from many rural applicants across MSO is that they're nowhere near the prevalence of the high 90s+ from non-rural applicants. I think the UCAT personally is debatable since I don't think it actually measures your aptitude for medicine
that well, and that it's just used as a culling system to create an interviewee pool. There's also the issue of prep companies and training programs which can be purchased to practice more for the UCAT, whereas someone from a rural area who I assume would be disadvantaged, won't have access to this and is limited to the free resources online.
And when you mention the 'difference' in score between say a 92nd percentile and a 40s percentile, and immediately conclude the 92nd percentile did more practice and was more 'deserving', who's to say the person in the rural person in the 40s percentile
didn't give it their all? Who knows how much they really tried? What if they simply didn't have access to the plethora of practice material as people from non-rural backgrounds? You can't compare how much someone tried, and by extension, 'deserved' simply by their marks in something. Someone who scored higher got into medicine because they got the higher score in the system. It doesn't mean they tried any harder and you can't compare that.
Granted, you did mention that privileged 'rural' students abusing the system, and I think it's the fault of the unis for not counter-measuring this. So what I suggest is to make additional criteria. Rural entry pathway is limited to people who have lived in a rural defined area for x amount of years and attended a rural school for at least Year 11-12 or greater. This will cap those who are 'rural' from abusing the program meant for actual rural students. Local state quota is a whole issue in itself that should be resolved by unis themselves but I can see why it exists in a state such as Victoria having literally one Undergrad medical school (Monash).
I think the current system makes it ridiculously hard to enter Medicine despite mildly curbing the shortage of rural doctors, but I think removing the Rural Entry Pathway is going to make this even worse. I'd much take the 'lesser' of two evils per se, with a slight-medium chance of improved rural shortage rather than none. Here's not to say I don't sympathise with non-rural students getting 99.2 ATARs and 92 UCATs and still having zero chance anywhere. I'm not sure what can be done to combat this other than (increase spots in medical school which is currently not possible).
Side Note: I'm still 18 and rather new to all this medicine stuff, definitely not as experienced as heaps of people here on this forum so if I am ill informed on anything, feel free to correct me! I just happen to be passionate on these types of issues