General Medicine Entry Discussion and Advice Requests

[Crow]

From reading these forums I get the impression that doing a Bachelor of Science is discouraged, but what about using it to get into Master of Nursing Science @ Unimelb (nursing is my backup) should graduate entry fail? To give more context, I most likely won't get an undergrad offer because of my UCAT and thought about doing a gap year to resit the UCAT and work full time (I really want to protect my potential pathway into Monash undergrad), but only if my ATAR is above ~98, otherwise I go into the Bachelor of Science without taking a gap year.

That sounds like a reasonable plan, though I would query if you know nursing is your back-up, why not just start with a Bachelor of Nursing?

 

[asan_chan]

ik this is an impossible question to ask, however is there any hope to get interveiws for medicine with a ucat score of 2920?

 

[A1]

(I really want to protect my potential pathway into Monash undergrad), but only if my ATAR is above ~98

I suggest you take a gap year for Monash only if you get ATAR 99+ or at least high 98s, or have SEAS. Low-mid 98s without SEAS doesn't give high chances even for Vic applicants, not worth investing a gap year (unless you want the time off to work full-time anyway).

ik this is an impossible question to ask, however is there any hope to get interveiws for medicine with a ucat score of 2920?

I would help answer if it's clear cut or not dependent on UCAT percentile. Your case is dependent so we should wait until percentile is known.

 

[jf_pt]

That sounds like a reasonable plan, though I would query if you know nursing is your back-up, why not just start with a Bachelor of Nursing?

I considered this but I've heard that Master of Nursing Science has better job prospects (I could be wrong on that though). This is also considering that I'll pursue becoming a nurse practitioner after nursing and perhaps into other higher roles as a nurse.

I suggest you take a gap year for Monash only if you get ATAR 99+ or at least high 98s, or have SEAS. Low-mid 98s without SEAS doesn't give high chances even for Vic applicants, not worth investing a gap year (unless you want the time off to work full-time anyway).

I believe I am eligible for SEAS which should just tip me over to low 99s or at least high 98s, from low-mid 98s.

 

[dotwingz]

I considered this but I've heard that Master of Nursing Science has better job prospects (I could be wrong on that though). This is also considering that I'll pursue becoming a nurse practitioner after nursing and perhaps into other higher roles as a nurse.

I would be surprised if there were any difference betwen Monash and Melbourne to be honest with you, and any difference between them would be mitigated by an extra 2 years of work experience given that Monash is a 3 year undergrad degree.

That being said, often degrees like Nursing have practical components which are difficult to get high marks in so it might be a roadblock for you if you're trying for Medicine, but these sometimes can be graded as pass/fail so you might be well served reaching out to any current nursing students . The advice here is to have a backup plan, going for a BSci with intentions to do a post graduate masters in Nursing is not a bad idea by any means (in fact was my plan but with UniMelb masters of Engineering )

 

[chinaski]

I personally don’t think there’s anything at all wrong with generalist degrees, as they can bring excellent flexibility for career progression (I say from experience as someone who was tossing up three VERY different options when I started uni and was able to do first year subjects from all three in my general degree). It’s also good that you’re already recognising you may need to do more study regardless of the path you take (whether that be Med, Nursing, or something else) with a general degree, but that’s definitely not automatically a bad thing. Best of luck with your decision making.

I agree. This site has somewhat of a bias towards vocational degrees, because a lot of posters have a preference towards degrees that have a linear and predictable path towards a career goal as a "Plan B" should you not get into medicine (or to supplement income while you study medicine). This leads to the inference that generalist degrees cannot be utilised towards a career pathway, which personally I think is a myopic view. It also ignores the potential benefit of the education itself.

 

[orangeuser]

Ik this can only be answered until percentiles come out, but would you say 3000 is a safe score for interview? (non-rural)

 

[naian616]

Ik this can only be answered until percentiles come out, but would you say 3000 is a safe score for interview? (non-rural)

definetely safe for an interview

 

[iamnotlegendary]

definetely safe for an interview

I wouldn't be so sure.. Last year, if you were a non-rural NSW student, you needed a score of 2980 to secure interviews at JMP and UQ. WSU is more contingent on VR and GWS status and UNSW on ATAR in addition.

 

[naian616]

I wouldn't be so sure.. Last year, if you were a non-rural NSW student, you needed a score of 2980 to secure interviews at JMP and UQ. WSU is more contingent on VR and GWS status and UNSW on ATAR in addition.

im saying this with a lot of bias since i got a fairly lower score than their's, so i should apologies for this ha ha

 

[DrDrLMG!]

This kind of confusing back and forth is exactly why we are asking people to please be patient and wait for percentiles to be released. Otherwise threads become unusable messes full of back and forth speculation that crowds out useful information.

 

[ratishjob10]

I came to Australia early last year, 2020 aged 39 from India as a permanent resident with my family. I have been working as a business intelligence consultant for 15 years.
Undergraduate in Computer Engineering, 2005: Poor score. 54%
Master's degree in ERP Systems from Victoria University, Melbourne 2013. 78%. Distinction , level 9 AQF. Math, ERP Systems and programming courses.

Father, a practising physician died from covid last year and my mother's dementia has shown a sudden rapid decline to severe stages. My Dad was already doing poorly financially since he was treating the poor for the last 2 decades with little to no compensation.

I had attempted the NEET, Indian medical entrance for MBBS a few years ago. I ranked 334 out of a million students.

What are my options to get my GPA better? Should I opt for
1. another Master's program in say machine learning, score well there. That's 2 years on this. In addition also take some basic physics, biology and chemistry courses.
2. Do a Bachelors degree in natural sciences and score well there. That's 3 to 4 years.
3. Or think about trying for Medicine but at the undergraduate level, I checked out some integrated programs for Medicine in Australia. But I am not sure I fit the entry criteria since they are high school based. graduated in 2000. But that is a 6-7 year journey to becoming a GP.

Reason for pursuing medicine at 40 years old: Long story short, I am a person who is comfortable being among people rather than machines and spent a lot of time as a teenager with my Dad in his clinic. I enjoyed it then and enjoyed visiting my Dad's clinic after work until his demise. And I am skilled in artificial intelligence and machine learning which has a lot application in medicine (although my project experience have been in the financial and petroleum sector).

 

[DrDrLMG!]

I came to Australia early last year, 2020 aged 39 from India as a permanent resident with my family. I have been working as a business intelligence consultant for 15 years.
Undergraduate in Computer Engineering, 2005: Poor score. 54%
Master's degree in ERP Systems from Victoria University, Melbourne 2013. 78%. Distinction , level 9 AQF. Math, ERP Systems and programming courses.

Father, a practising physician died from covid last year and my mother's dementia has shown a sudden rapid decline to severe stages. My Dad was already doing poorly financially since he was treating the poor for the last 2 decades with little to no compensation.

I had attempted the NEET, Indian medical entrance for MBBS a few years ago. I ranked 334 out of a million students.

What are my options to get my GPA better? Should I opt for
1. another Master's program in say machine learning, score well there. That's 2 years on this. In addition also take some basic physics, biology and chemistry courses.
2. Do a Bachelors degree in natural sciences and score well there. That's 3 to 4 years.
3. Or think about trying for Medicine but at the undergraduate level, I checked out some integrated programs for Medicine in Australia. But I am not sure I fit the entry criteria since they are high school based. graduated in 2000. But that is a 6-7 year journey to becoming a GP.

Reason for pursuing medicine at 40 years old: Long story short, I am a person who is comfortable being among people rather than machines and spent a lot of time as a teenager with my Dad in his clinic. I enjoyed it then and enjoyed visiting my Dad's clinic after work until his demise. And I am skilled in artificial intelligence and machine learning which has a lot application in medicine (although my project experience have been in the financial and petroleum sector).

Your current Masters qualifications may already be enough for multiple undergraduate entry universities (via UCAT). Including counting next year as a year you sit UCAT, yes this would mean a 6-7 year pathway (as the undergraduate degrees themselves are 5-6 years depending on university). But this is still going to be shorter than graduate entry which will likely require a new completed bachelor + graduate entry which would be 7 years minimum.

That said: Your Masters degree may be enough for some graduate entry universities (as it’s within the 10 year cut-off), but I don’t know enough about that pathway to offer anything further.

 

[ratishjob10]

Your current Masters qualifications may already be enough for multiple undergraduate entry universities (via UCAT). Including counting next year as a year you sit UCAT, yes this would mean a 6-7 year pathway (as the undergraduate degrees themselves are 5-6 years depending on university). But this is still going to be shorter than graduate entry which will likely require a new completed bachelor + graduate entry which would be 7 years minimum.

That said: Your Masters degree may be enough for some graduate entry universities (as it’s within the 10 year cut-off), but I don’t know enough about that pathway to offer anything further.

Ok, so there is a 10 year condition as well! so in that case they won't consider my bachelors for a GPA at all? and only concentrate on my Masters? Ok let me check further. Thanks for that piece of info....That could also mean , that if I take university first year courses in physics, chemistry and biology and do well, a possible boost to my GPA that is based only on my masters??

 

[A1]

That could also mean , that if I take university first year courses in physics, chemistry and biology and do well, a possible boost to my GPA that is based only on my masters??

To make things less complicated please keep separate the options of undergrad medicine vs graduate-entry.

Undergrad:
- You need to sit UCAT, your Masters allows you to apply to WSU, JMP, Curtin which are 5-year long just 1 year longer than graduate entry. I believe these schools do not have a 10-year limit on your degree.
- Can also apply to 6-year UNSW but realistically I don't think your Masters+Bachelor GPA is competitive enough.
- Can also apply to 6-year JCU, not requiring UCAT but a really good written application.

Graduate entry:
Apart from sitting GAMSAT, the way they calculate GPA with a Masters is complicated. Some schools use the most recent 3 years of study (i.e. if Masters was 2 years it's these 2 years + the last year of the Bachelor), some use the Bachelor's GPA plus a small "bonus" for the Masters etc. Browse through this 97-page doc to familiarise yourself
> https://gemsas.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/2022-Medicine-GEMSAS-Admissions-Guide-v1.4.pdf

In previous years UQ would be your best graduate-entry option since they use the GPA of the most recent qualification (i.e. your Masters alone), but now they require Biomed prerequisites which I think you don't have. Overall it appears undergrad med is your most practical option. Best of luck.

 

[kkkk]

Can anyone tell me the pros and cons of flinders VS Adelaide medical program? And also for the SATAC can you apply for both the normal medicine one and the BMP one or is it only one that you need to place in your preferences?

 

[naian616]

Can anyone tell me the pros and cons of flinders VS Adelaide medical program? And also for the SATAC can you apply for both the normal medicine one and the BMP one or is it only one that you need to place in your preferences?

i think some unis require you to included BMP as a preference, whilst other unis will always consider you for BMP regardless of your application, similar to the UAC/NSW unis, other examples include jcu, curtin unis etc.

 

[Veisn]

Apologies if this has already been answered on the forum (I suspect it already has been) but could anyone provide an estimate as to how much more competitive a course would be for an interstate applicant? I'm particularly interested in Monash and noticed that offers were made to local applicants with around 92% UCATs and 99.5 ATARs? Would this be similar for an interstate applicant or would the cutoffs be significantly higher? Thanks in advance!

 

[ucatboy]

Apologies if this has already been answered on the forum (I suspect it already has been) but could anyone provide an estimate as to how much more competitive a course would be for an interstate applicant? I'm particularly interested in Monash and noticed that offers were made to local applicants with around 92% UCATs and 99.5 ATARs? Would this be similar for an interstate applicant or would the cutoffs be significantly higher? Thanks in advance!

Bad news, but significantly higher

 

[MoeMoney]

Personal information:
- Victorian student.
- ATAR: 97.95.
- UCAT: 72%ile.
- I am also eligible for EAS/SEAS/Monash Gurantee.

Background information regarding the UCAT:
In preparation for the UCAT this year, I did every single question and mock on [removed] and watched countless videos to have a strategy for each sections. I started training about 6-7 months before my test. Right before the exam I was getting 98-99th percentile consistenly on the mock exam compared to other Medify students. However, obviously it didn't work out like that on the day. Despite many people delcaring that the offical UCAT exam was much easier, then medify mocks (with QR being extremely easy). I certaintly didn't feel that way and I found QR to be much harder in the real exam. This leads to me to feel like that it must've been a combination of 1. getting a more difficult exam (not everyone sits the same one), 2. Being unlucky with any questions I guessed and 3. being unlucky in general.
What I could do in the future regarding the UCAT is:
1. Hope that I'm more lucky on the day.
2. Get tutoring/pay for expensive courses to see if they will help.
Also, as I'm a year older, I may be more skilled/mature which will assist in getting a better score.

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Hi there,

After having received no interview invites as of yet, I do not believe there's much hope left of getting into undergraduate medicine this year. I feel pretty lost as medicine was really the only course I felt very passionate about studying.

From what I understand, I have three options:
1. Take a gap year, get my English exam remarked (I believe it was harshly marked) and hopefully have an ATAR increase and resit the UCAT. Then re-apply for under-graudate medicine as a standard applicant.

2. Start a commerce/engineering double degree, (I'm a bit interested in either degree) to get a feel for which I am more interested in and then switch to either straight commerce or straight engineering. And resit the UCAT, apply as non-standard.

3. If 2 doesn't work out/2 isn't a good idea, finish the course I choose, sit the GAMSAT and apply for post-graduate medicine.

If all three doesn't work out, I at least got a decent degree with decent job prospects, which I hopefully will come to enjoy/develop a passion for.

Can some please clarify if this is correct and advise me on what I should do?

Cheers.

Where can you access the list of offers like 1st, 2nd round e.t.c and the applicants atar and ucat score?