I'm thinking of doing ucat in the 1st year of griffith and applying as non standard to wsu/jmp, or doing gamsat in 2nd year and applying for postgrad usyd. Can someone who has is in/gone through griffith provisional med advice me if the workload would be too much for me to get a good gpa as well as doing well in ucat/gamsat?(especially considering it's a 2year accelerated degree). For a rough idea, I have got 99+ atar.
I think I’m in a good position to answer this.
Here is the advice I’m going to give you. From my very limited experience, Griffith is a very good medical school. It has a world class communications course and very convenient access to a lot of hospitals on the Gold Coast being the only public med school there. A lot can and will change in a single year, and you should not make the decision that you want to leave so soon without even being exposed to it first, otherwise your experience will be unnecessarily hard and stressful. The possibility of the UCAT and GAMSAT not going your way (which is entirely possible) could also ultimately let you down when things don’t go to plan.
Now to get more technical, both UCAT and GAMSAT are aptitude tests. Past performance is the best indicator for future performance. It appears that the trend amongst those that sat it, was that those who had a stronger UMAT did better in the GAMSAT, although GAMSAT is more preparable. A few were even able to get 70+ scores on the GAMSAT (96%ile+) with zero preparation.
The workload in med sci is very tough especially if you also want to maintain a high GPA (which is needed for entry into many post graduate medical schools). You will most likely be completely absorbed in the work and trying to meet deadlines frequently, that you will find very limited time for UCAT and GAMSAT prep unless you are very organised and make a concerted effort. That said, as I was saying before, it is a bit of an aptitude test and some people will be able to get 99% with very minimal prep.