First Year (FY) BHSc/BSC 2016 Chat/Enquiry

[Rob]

Interview down! It really wasn't as bad as I expected, most of the interviewers were really nice. Hard to tell how well it went though, but it felt alright. Very keen for the 22nd of December!

 

[Stuart]

Interview down! It really wasn't as bad as I expected, most of the interviewers were really nice. Hard to tell how well it went though, but it felt alright. Very keen for the 22nd of December!

Hi,

I hope it went good! You could probably skip 22 December and just look forward to semester 1

Good luck!

 

[blueeyes89]

Interview down! It really wasn't as bad as I expected, most of the interviewers were really nice. Hard to tell how well it went though, but it felt alright. Very keen for the 22nd of December!

What time today were you? I had mine this morning, too. It was definitely tricky but it didn't go as badly as I thought it would. You definitely have nothing to worry about, though, I'm sure you aced it!

 

[Rob]

What time today were you? I had mine this morning, too. It was definitely tricky but it didn't go as badly as I thought it would. You definitely have nothing to worry about, though, I'm sure you aced it!

I was at 9 am. There definitely were a couple of tricky ones, and I don't think the interviewer was particularly impressed with my performance in the role play station, but I think I did alright in some of the other stations. You certainly won't have anything to worry about either looking at your GPA and UMAT!

Hi,

I hope it went good! You could probably skip 22 December and just look forward to semester 1

Good luck!

Haha thanks, don't want to get too ahead of myself yet though!

 

[Kiwiology]

Interview down! It really wasn't as bad as I expected, most of the interviewers were really nice. Hard to tell how well it went though, but it felt alright. Very keen for the 22nd of December!

Good on you mate. What questions did you get?

@Stuart perhaps we could add the replies with this years' interview questions to this thread Auckland Multiple Mini Interview 2014 | Med Students Online and change the title to just "Auckland MMI questions" or something?

 

[Stuart]

Good on you mate. What questions did you get?

@Stuart perhaps we could add the replies with this years' interview questions to this thread Auckland Multiple Mini Interview 2014 | Med Students Online and change the title to just "Auckland MMI questions" or something?

Hi @Kiwiology ,

I was planning on making a combined thread for that purpose. Thank you for reminding me! We (moderators/I) will get to it when all the interviews are finished for this year (or very shortly).

Thank you.

 

[blueeyes89]

I was at 9 am. There definitely were a couple of tricky ones, and I don't think the interviewer was particularly impressed with my performance in the role play station, but I think I did alright in some of the other stations. You certainly won't have anything to worry about either looking at your GPA and UMAT!

Haha as reassuring as my position going into the interview should be I'm still worried, probably somewhat irrationally but ya never know! 22nd of December just can't get here fast enough! Did you have the acting scenario where your friend had tried to drive drunk? I don't know if they change the questions throughout the day or just between days. I was at 11:30 am.

 

[Rob]

Haha as reassuring as my position going into the interview should be I'm still worried, probably somewhat irrationally but ya never know! 22nd of December just can't get here fast enough! Did you have the acting scenario where your friend had tried to drive drunk? I don't know if they change the questions throughout the day or just between days. I was at 11:30 am.

Haha, yeah I know the feeling - nothing is certain until offers are out!

Yep, I had that scenario too! My interviewer said I focused too much on talking about how his grades dropped and implied that this wouldn't really help to convince him he had a drinking problem. Also said that I should have honed in on the comment about his memory loss which I didn't really do. Finished by saying 'Do you think you have the skills to deal with this situation?' and I just said that it is something I will need to continue to work on. Ah well haha, time to move on now!

 

[Stuart]

[offtopic]

I focused too much on talking about how his grades dropped

This is so classic. A sad consequence of doing the first year course...
Don't be too disappointed though! Just look forward and hope for the best (and take a break from MSO...).[/offtopic]

 

[Rob]

[offtopic]This is so classic. A sad consequence of doing the first year course...
Don't be too disappointed though! Just look forward and hope for the best (and take a break from MSO...).[/offtopic]

Haha, yeah - too much time spent thinking about grades this year! Anyone reading this in the future, learn from my mistakes! In these acting stations there will almost always be some deeper underlying situation and they will drop hints to guide you towards asking about it/offering support. I knew this going in, but ended up forgetting it in the moment and missing some of the key hints. Fortunately the acting station only makes up 1/8 of the interview grade so if it goes badly there is plenty of opportunity to make it up in some of the other stations (fingers crossed!)

 

[Stuart]

Haha, yeah - too much time spent thinking about grades this year! Anyone reading this in the future, learn from my mistakes! In these acting stations there will almost always be some deeper underlying situation and they will drop hints to guide you towards asking about it/offering support. I knew this going in, but ended up forgetting it in the moment and missing some of the key hints. Fortunately the acting station only makes up 1/8 of the interview grade so if it goes badly there is plenty of opportunity to make it up in some of the other stations (fingers crossed!)

With your acting station, did you treat the person ("drunk friend") like your actual friend or like a patient?

 

[Rob]

With your acting station, did you treat the person ("drunk friend") like your actual friend or like a patient?

It was supposed to be a friend, so I focused on that and kinda forgot that I was supposed to be displaying traits of a health professional haha. I actually think my acting was pretty solid, but I didn't offer much good support though which is the most important part!

 

[Louise91]

Does anybody know what the grade differences are for the RRAS?

 

[Rob]

If we get a med offer and accept it, will this automatically unenrol us from the 2nd year papers? Or do we need to do that manually?

 

[smallgondola]

Hi what do you think of 8.5 GPA...what are the chances

No one can tell you that because noone knows. 8.5 is generally known as the average GPA in the med cohort, but that being said there are always people who get rejected with 8.5. Your chances depend on your interview. Unless you bombed it, you have a decent chance

 

[catty]

Sorry to ask what was your GPA

 

[catty]

No one can tell you that because noone knows. 8.5 is generally known as the average GPA in the med cohort, but that being said there are always people who get rejected with 8.5. Your chances depend on your interview. Unless you bombed it, you have a decent chance

Hi What was your GPA

 

[Kiwiology]

@catty; first of all bloody well done for getting an 8.5 core GPA, that's good work.

If you're that worried about it, think of it like this: Auckland clearly informs you of the selection criteria: 6o% GPA, 15% UMAT and 25% interview.

So, if a 9 GPA awards you the full 60% i.e. 100% of 60%, then an 8.5 GPA is 93.5% of the possible 60%, or 56%. If you have a 50th %ile UMAT and 50% interview (as an example, I don't know your UMAT or how the interview is scored, I think it's out of 8 or 10 or something...) that adds 7.5% and 12.5% respectively for a total of 76/100.

That might sound lower than you would like, but in practical reality, somebody with a 9.0 core GPA and the exact same 50%ile UMAT and interview is only going to score 80/100 while somebody with an 8.5 GPA, 50% UMAT and 70% interview scores 81/100. I imagine there'd be a very small number of people who achieve full 9.0 GPA and a high interview score but considering there's almost 300 places in medicine it's not like it's full of people who have a 9.0 GPA and 90-100% interview score. I would reasonably presume the average score would be in the eighties out of a possible 100.

I don't know what the average interview score is; but I'd imagine it to be somewhere in the middle. It's not like you are going to a professional job interview where you have to really sell yourself using complex real-world examples and get put through the bloody wringer for 45 minutes to an hour because you're competing with 3-5 other people for one job.

So, I hope a bit of pragmatism helps you in this instance.

 

[Oxycodone]

If we get a med offer and accept it, will this automatically unenrol us from the 2nd year papers? Or do we need to do that manually?

you need to do it manually, once you get the offer, they'll give you instructions regarding what papers to enrol in (mbchb221A & B), you wont need to make a timetable that is generated automatically.

 

[Rob]

@catty; first of all bloody well done for getting an 8.5 core GPA, that's good work.

If you're that worried about it, think of it like this: Auckland clearly informs you of the selection criteria: 6o% GPA, 15% UMAT and 25% interview.

So, if a 9 GPA awards you the full 60% i.e. 100% of 60%, then an 8.5 GPA is 93.5% of the possible 60%, or 56%. If you have a 50th %ile UMAT and 50% interview (as an example, I don't know your UMAT or how the interview is scored, I think it's out of 8 or 10 or something...) that adds 7.5% and 12.5% respectively for a total of 76/100.

That might sound lower than you would like, but in practical reality, somebody with a 9.0 core GPA and the exact same 50%ile UMAT and interview is only going to score 80/100 while somebody with an 8.5 GPA, 50% UMAT and 70% interview scores 81/100. I imagine there'd be a very small number of people who achieve full 9.0 GPA and a high interview score but considering there's almost 300 places in medicine it's not like it's full of people who have a 9.0 GPA and 90-100% interview score. I would reasonably presume the average score would be in the eighties out of a possible 100.

I don't know what the average interview score is; but I'd imagine it to be somewhere in the middle. It's not like you are going to a professional job interview where you have to really sell yourself using complex real-world examples and get put through the bloody wringer for 45 minutes to an hour because you're competing with 3-5 other people for one job.

So, I hope a bit of pragmatism helps you in this instance.

If this post is to be believed the actual ranking might be a bit different and more complicated than this (not that I am going to pretend to understand the statistical mumbo-jumbo in the pdf in that post). But certainly an 8.5 is an excellent GPA which gives you a very good chance. I imagine that this would be above average for those who get an interview given that the interview cut-off is around 7.25 or so usually. And yeah, I wouldn't think that there would be more than 30/40 people with a 9.0 GPA this year given that only 90 or so got A+ in medsci and a lot of these will be people who didn't get 3 A+ in semester one cores. Interview average is 165-170/240 according to the entry lecture earlier in the year

you need to do it manually, once you get the offer, they'll give you instructions regarding what papers to enrol in (mbchb221A & B), you wont need to make a timetable that is generated automatically.

Excellent, thanks for that! Now for the wait.