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HSFY 2019
- Thread starter Stuart
- Start date
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It will not be added.
The latest from the Guidelines for Admission is that UCAT will be used as a threshold only - you must achieve a score above a threshold in all five sections, and the threshold will be set annually by the admissions committee.
Once you reach that threshold, you will be ranked on academic (HSFY) score only.
(One of my previous posts has this information, I'll quote it below.)
So I assume for now it’s just best to get the best average grade I can get for all my papers
That's about the only thing that you can control, and now it makes up the entirety of your rank score if you clear the UCAT threshold. So yep, smash them papers.So I assume for now it’s just best to get the best average grade I can get for all my papers
Yup, and that has always been the advice we’ve given out here, even in the UMAT days. As froot said, your grades are about the only thing you can control, so you should try and get every mark in the finals.So I assume for now it’s just best to get the best average grade I can get for all my papers
Back in UMAT days, you could compensate for an average UMAT with stunning HSFY marks, but it was much harder to do the reverse. UMAT being an aptitude test, other than becoming familiar with the test format and having strategies for maximising performance, you can’t actually drastically improve your score, or predict ahead of time how you’re going to do. (No, I don’t believe in prep courses: Preparation courses for a medical admissions test: effectiveness contrasts with opinion. - PubMed - NCBI you’ll learn in POPH192 what all that means but suffice to say there’s no scientific evidence that it does anything.)
Now, with UCAT being a threshold only, there’s nothing more important than trying your best to get every mark you can.
Now, with UCAT being a threshold only, there’s nothing more important than trying your best to get every mark you can.
Looking for a bit of advice.. i'm quite far behind on physics and way worse at it then any off my other subjects, and I fell like my score in the final exam is gonna bring my grade average down by a lot. I was wondering if it would be a good idea to just focus on my other three papers for these exams, and then take a fourth paper next sem to mask my physics grade?
Nope, I would recommend studying hard for physics too. I would ignore the lectures, start going through all past papers, identify all questions you don't know how to do, then take them to the phsyics help desk, ask someone in your hall/you know who is good at physics, or post them here. Repeat for all past papers, then keep redoing all the papers until you can't get a question wrong.
It's too soon to give up on an entire paper just yet - what if one of the second semester papers turns out to be really hard?
Like Rusty said, don't worry about trying to do all the lectures, just go through past papers, and focus on anything you can't do - for those ones see if you can find the relevant concepts in the notes to work out what's going on, if not, Physics help desk, others around you, or post them here.
Similar advice for other papers too - it's definitely time to be going through past papers rather than doing lecture notes etc. Get familiar with the styles of questions you're likely to be asked and practice answering them.
Also, prioritise your time - I had a look at the 2019 Exam Timetable and I see CELS is up first next Wednesday, followed by HUBS next Friday? In that case you may wish to do some more each day on CELS and HUBS, seeing as you have a few days after HUBS to prepare for CHEM (the following Wednesday) and PHSI (the following Friday).
That's not to say spend entire days on CELS by the way, remember that when you've hammered a particular topic so much you're not taking anything in, it's time to take a break and do a different topic (say, do some CHEM or PHSI). There's nothing worse than spending 8 hours at the library working on, say, CELS, when after the first hour your brain was fried and nothing made any sense.
Thoughtfyre
Member
Amadeus should be about the same
cereal Practice essays aren't 'real' essays, if you've seen (e.g. your terms test hubs gave you prac essays that no one can be bothered doing) the mark schemes, e.g. 8 mark queue, there's 20 1/2 marks to give, so if you get 15 different points you'll get 7.5 marks, with an additional 1/2 mark for 'writing it in sentences etc.'
So basically the best way to look at it is go 'is this a meaningful point? 1/2 a mark'
cereal Practice essays aren't 'real' essays, if you've seen (e.g. your terms test hubs gave you prac essays that no one can be bothered doing) the mark schemes, e.g. 8 mark queue, there's 20 1/2 marks to give, so if you get 15 different points you'll get 7.5 marks, with an additional 1/2 mark for 'writing it in sentences etc.'
So basically the best way to look at it is go 'is this a meaningful point? 1/2 a mark'
Focus on doing well in high school, especially chemistry and physics. After that, try to have as much fun as possible. There will be plenty of time to study once you actually start hsfy. Pre-studying is usually a very ineffective way of learning.
Take it from someone who tried that over summer (between high school and HSFY), and even worse, paid actual money for someone else's HSFY notes, it is not helpful nor necessary.
Without attending the actual lectures or lab classes, straight up reading someone else's notes (organised in their own way) made basically no sense to me, so I didn't learn much over summer - in fact I probably looked at them for 30 minutes total before I realized I wasn't taking anything in. I didn't remember anything from it by the time I actually started HSFY, and never accessed those notes since. In HSFY you get repetitively spoon-fed by the lecturers and classes, in a way that you'll grow to envy (especially in the clinical years at med school), so you'll be able to make plenty of your own notes and study from them.
So, I tried to do unnecessary pre-study, and it didn't really work. But (and weird flex time) despite not making use of the notes I bought, I still got 93.14 HSFY average without doing an 8th paper. (Yes, that was enough to get into med school.) Source: 2011 Otago HSFY Ranking Scores and Offers
coolcat1234
Lurker
Unfortunately if you do not get the required min 70% in CELS191 you are not able to apply for med. The summer school CELS paper actualyl runs after medicine offers have already been offered, and for medicine entry there is a requirement that you must pass the required 7 papers with min 70% first try.
I read online that you can do cels199 I think as a replacement for cels191 I’m not too sure if they consider that for med but I’ll have to see when those results come out
coolcat1234
Lurker
From the medicine admissions website: "To be considered for admission in the HSFY category an applicant must be enrolled in HSFY at Otago and pass all the papers prescribed for HSFY at first attempt, with a minimum of 70% in each paper".I read online that you can do cels199 I think as a replacement for cels191 I’m not too sure if they consider that for med but I’ll have to see when those results come out
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