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HSFY tips and advice from inflow/other MSO members (updated: 2014)

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inflow

Regular Member
This thread has been closed to prevent further posts (as it is not intended for discussion purposes), however if you have anything you'd like to see added, or you vehemently disagree with anything written here, please send myself, or another member of the NZ sub-forum development team (Ben, greenglacier, Cathay808) a private message, and we'll do our best. Ta, frooty.

Here is a compilation of frequently asked questions and advice that MSO members have for students entering or studying HSFY. The information here is not concrete facts, but is a collection of opinions gathered from various sources. If anyone has any suggestions to add/remove from this than PM inflow/frootloop/cathay/greenglacier.

Best of luck to all future (and present) Health-Sci’s!

Textbook Advice
I personally would not recommend to pre-purchase any book other than HUBS and/or the PHSI textbook written by the department. HSFY is structured in a way in which 98% of the content in which you need for your exams will be included in the lectures, labs and GLMs. If at any point you feel you need to the readings there is always the library (which is free).

HUBS: It is stated that the HUBS department test some things off the assigned readings, however these are often MUCH to in-depth and time could be spent more wisely by studying the lecture material or other papers. With that being said, I felt like the HUBS book was useful reference for anything that you weren’t sure of during the year.

PHSI: I recommend the PHSI book, written by the department, as it follows the lecture content 100%. Useful to learn concepts, and has many practice questions.

OTHERS: Try them at the library, or borrow them from a friend, and acquire at own discretion.

Note: I (as well as the HSFY departments) do not recommend that you buy any ‘third-party’ books. The content in HSFY subtly changes each year, and all the resources will be given to you, so someone else notes will probably not benefit you.


Study Advice
How you study is completely up to you! There are a number of different methods that you can use, but whatever you do I recommend doing CONSISTENT STUDY and REVIEW. People ask how much to study, and that differs, but I would suggest 2-4 hours of ‘quality’ study is reasonable. Another important note is to review previous content regularly whilst you are studying otherwise you may become overloaded with forgotten knowledge you have to relearn in exams.

The method I used was spaced-repetition, I have included a link (look into Anki) to show you at least on way of studying.Spaced repetition - Wikipedia

An Overview of the Papers

HUBS
The first semester of the ‘Human Body Systems’ papers. You study Musculoskeletal, Nervous, Endocrine, and Immunological Anatomy and Physiology.

In my opinion HUBS in general would be one of the easiest papers. Few people find content conceptually ‘difficult’ and the easiest way of studying would be to brute-force rote learn the content on the lecture slides.

The terms tests I would consider easy, but to get the last 4 or 5 marks you need to have a wide knowledge of the lecture slide content rather than a deep understanding. The exams are similar, but I would caution people on spending too much time on recent practice questions, as they are unlikely to be asked again. The Labs and GLMs are straightforward so I wouldn't spend much time preparing for them (they recommend 4 hours preparation on the GLMs but most people do the test straight away).

CHEM

First semester chemistry paper covering a variety of topics, similar to and in more breadth than NCEA level 3 chemistry. CHEM191 is potentially the hardest paper that you will have to sit in HSFY. It is essential to do as many practice questions and past papers as possible. Getting used to the methods to answer questions, rather than perfecting concepts, is key.

ESSENTIAL: You MUST do preparation for the CHEM191 laboratories. They are a large percentage of your final grade, and many people lose out on A+ because they were not prepared when they entered their labs.



PHSI

First semester physics paper covering a variety of topics, similar to and in more breadth than NCEA level 3 physics. This paper can both be regarded as one of the hardest and one of the easiest papers. It is probably the easiest paper to get 100% in if you put time in. The tactic for this paper was just to do as many practice questions as possible, and make sure you update your cheat sheet AS the year is going on. In exam period you want to be studying, not making your cheat sheet. With the cheat sheet, don't make it too cluttered but put important facts or formulas that you have trouble remembering.

CELS
First semester cell biology paper. CELS is one of the harder papers. I would make sure that you have a decent understanding of how everything fits together because they have a habit of asking questions which require some out of the box thinking.

Make sure you grab some friends when you sit the GLMS, they aren’t particularly easy but a friendly hand can help you get those extra marks.

BIOC
Second semester biochemestry paper, which extends from CELS, HUBS and CHEM. BIOC might be considered hard but in reality it is just LOTS content. Hence, make sure you stay up-to-date and LEARN the mechanisms – I used mmenomics lots.

ESSENTIAL: Make sure that you KNOW the GLM and LAB content inside-and-out as they test this heavily in the terms and final tests. Make use of the multiple resources that they give out – seriously, they give out so many free practice resources you will be annoyed by the end of the year.

HEAL
HEAL is the hardest paper to study in HSFY. because they give you lots of information in the lectures which is basically useless. I would recommend learning the KEY info that they point out, such as formulas and diagrams, and make sure you know how to apply it in time for the terms test.

8th Paper
If your excellent with essays I would (hesitantly) recommend MAOR102, or Maori cultural studies.

For everyone else I would recommend STAT, or statistics. It has objective marking and plumage so there is more likelihood for being rewarded for what you know!

As with anything though, choose an 8th paper (or don’t do one) at your own discretion.


UMAT
Work-in-Progress

Scores needed for Professional Courses
Note: These are in NO way an accurate representation of the exact scores needed to get in, as the deparments do not divulge this information, but it helps to give a approximate indication. The scores are not the same for Rural/Maori/Pacific pathways.

Medicine:
~180ish undergrad spots. You must score <70% on all core papers.

Ranking Score is calculated by: (((Aggregate of score in top 7 papers)*2)/3) + ((UMAT s1 score*0.45)+(s2 score*0.45)+(s3 score*0.1))/3).

Cut-offs for Previous Years:
2010: 77-77.4
2011: 78.9
2012: 79.8
2013: 79.8-80.0
2014: 78.3-78.4

Consult: 2014 Otago HSFY Ranking Scores and Offers Thread | Med Students Online


Dentistry:
~40ish undergrad spots. Pass UMAT threshold (around 50th percentile in each section) and you get offered aninterview. If you pass the interview than you are ranked by GPA. The exact entrance score is not released by the admissions offered but it is rumoured to be around an A (85-90%).

Pharmacy:
~90ish undergrad spots. Ranked on GPA. No interview, no UMAT. The exact entrance score is not released by the admissions offered but it is rumoured to be around an B (70-75%)


As for the other courses, I don't know, any info that can be added would be appreciated.

____________________________________

Frequently Asked Questions:


What grades should I be getting in high school?

Who cares! Good enough to get into HSFY would be a start :)

HSFY doesn’t discriminate based on high school grades. What it DOES discriminate on is the amount of effort that an individual puts into it. So regardless of your previous grades be prepared to work!

I'm Maori/Pacific Island/Rural, should I apply under these subcategories?
Yes. Oh yes. There is no downside (i.e. any rumours you hear of having to work in certain workforce areas upon graduation, are totally wrong, there are no formal obligations on people who have entered via these pathways after graduating), and the marks/UMAT required to get into the professional courses are lower than the normal entry pathway. They could make the difference between getting in or not.

How many people do HSFY? I've heard there's like 2000?
Roughly ~1500 people (+/- 200) are in any given HSFY cohort.

Is it better to go to lectures or stream them?
As a rough guide it is better to attend lectures. The streams sometimes have technical issues which can put you behind schedule.
Also, some courses do not release streams - namely HEAL. With that being said, looking over pre-recorded lectures is an EXCELLENT way of reviewing past content that you have forgotten or misunderstood.

Should I prepare for HSFY in the summer beforehand?
No. Enjoy it while you can, or get a job to make you some extra money for your university life. EVERYTHING you need to learn, you will be given, and you WILL be able to learn in during the year.
 
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frootloop

Doctor
Moderator
In a few months, this forum will be crawling with the next cohort of HSFY'ers all asking the same questions, the same questions I was asking before HSFY. So, in order to a) save all involved from asking/answering the same question 1000 times, b) (hopefully) avoid confusion, and dispel some of the many myths surrounding HSFY, and c) Offer a little friendly advice from someone who is currently going through HSFY. [OFFTOPIC]Anyone who disagrees with anything I say/has something to add etc, please PM me, and I'll add to this post. Also note, I am a current health-sci, and so do not know everything about HSFY, so if any seniors disagree with me, listen to them. Also, I'm not always right, any 'cut-offs' I post are (educated) speculation, and almost certainly change from year to year[/OFFTOPIC]

What grades should I be getting in high school?
Who cares. HSFY is an open-entry year, and so long as you have university entrance, you should be just fine. You have two options here:
1) Work your ass off, and try to understand everything in NCEA/CIE/IB, as the HSFY content is very similar to these courses.
2) (the option I went with...) Do the bare minimum, and enjoy it. Year 13 will be your easiest year for a long time, so enjoy it while you can. I chose this option, and it really hasn't disadvantaged me in the slightest.[OFFTOPIC]I failed 2 out of 4 NCEA physics papers, but got an A+ in the physics terms test. [/OFFTOPIC]
[OFFTOPIC]Honestly, even if you work your butt off in high school (speaking as someone who actually worked hard in year 13), it won't help much. If you're doing NCEA, it'll only really help with CELS, PHSI, and CHEM (and will barely help at all with 2nd semester). Even under CIE, there'll be plenty of new content regardless of how well you did in school. In addition, the same content is often taught differently during HSFY, which means you effectively have to re-learn it. I've seen more than one CIE student slack off during HSFY because they were familiar with most of the material from school, only to get pretty low grades because they didn't re-learn it from the HSFY perspective. The bottom line - do what you can to get confident with L3 chemistry and L2 physics (though the key word is confident, not amazing - it'd be useless trying to cram in NCEA chemistry and physics for the purposes of doing well in HSFY, because the emphasis of CHEM191 is different from that of L3 chemistry, and the emphasis of PHSI191 is different from that of NCEA physics). If you can do this, don't worry about doing anything else, because it won't be worth it.-Greenglacier[/OFFTOPIC]Overall, your highschool grades DO NOT matter once you're in HSFY, so it's an individual choice as to how much you do in year 13.
As for 'learning in the summer holidays before HSFY, 99% of the people I know would agree that it's a waste of time, unless you *really* sucked (ie: failed >50% of the papers) at chemistry/physics at highschool, or have never taken them.

OMG!! I got into the worst hall ever, I'm screwed!
Bullsh*t. One of the biggest lies surrounding HSFY. In the end, you get out of this year what YOU put into it, and even if your college really is that bad, there's always a library to study in... [OFFTOPIC]I'm at unicol, the 'party hall', and doing just fine, and better than a lot of people in the 'better' halls.[/OFFTOPIC]

How much study should I be doing?
Depends on the individual. There are people who hold part-time jobs and get into their desired professional course, and there are people who work 8am-11pm every day, and don't. How you study is up to you, find the way that you are most efficient, and do that. Because if you're studying more efficiently, you wont need to do as many hours. Simple as that. Oh, and please do try to maintain some form of balance, I know it's hard, but I can almost guarantee that having a sense of balance in your life will help your grades.

Should I do UMAT in year 13?
Yes. Please, please don't make the mistake I did, and say 'oh well, it'll be fine'. Because, even if you do terribly in UMAT in year 13, at least you'll have two chances at it, and then will know what to improve on. Unlike idiot here (points at self), who now has that uncertainty hanging over his head.

How big a deal is UMAT anyway?
Depends what course you want. For medicine, quite (although I must stress this: your grades are much more important, and can compensate for even a terrible UMAT, don't let a bad UMAT score make you lose hope. ) With that said, you can actually save yourself (to some extent) with a good UMAT. Medicine use a 66% grades, 33% UMAT weighting, so one can compensate for the other, to some degree.
Dentistry, on the other hand, use UMAT as a threshold (which is quite low), and if you pass this threshold, the UMAT no longer matters.
For pharmacy, good news, UMAT doesn't matter.
As for the other professional courses, no idea sorry, but if someone can add something, please PM me.
A quick note on 'UMAT preparation'. There is no evidence to suggest that it does anything whatsoever, and there's plenty of evidence to suggest you don't need it. For example, having done nothing more than the official 'practice tests' released by ACER, I scored 92nd percentile (on my first attempt), cathay got 98th percentile, and greenglacier got 96th, then 99th percentile, and I know of quite a few others who have had similar results with zero 'pr*p'. It isn't worth the $>9000, kiddies.

What scores do I need in order to get into (insert name of professional course here)?
Medicine: 180ish undergrad spots. Formula goes: (((aggregate of score in top 7 papers)*2)/3) + ((UMAT s1 score*0.45)+(s2 score*0.45)+(s3 score*0.1))/3).
[OFFTOPIC]Some examples of previously med-worthy scores:
30th percentile UMAT, 94% HSFY
50th percentile UMAT, 92% HSFY
80th percentile UMAT, 89% HSFY
90th percentile UMAT, 87% HSFY
95th percentile UMAT, 86% HSFY
Oh, and these are indicative only please don't live and die by them. Just so you kiddies can see what kind of grades we're talking here. By the way, I stole both the formula and the numbers from greenglacier, so he gets the credit for those.[/OFFTOPIC]
In previous years I understand the cut-off to have been around >78 (But, as Skyglow pointed out below, this is for direct entry, you may get in with something lower off the waiting list). But, as I said before, these scores do change (ie, they get harder...). Oh, and if you get <70% in any HSFY paper (except your optional 8th), then you can kiss undergrad medicine at Otago goodbye....
Dentistry: 30ish undergrad spots. Pass UMAT threshold (around 50th percentile in each section) --> get interview. Pass interview --> Ranked according to GPA. I was told by the admissions office that in 2010, a GPA of around an A- (80-85%) was enough for undergrad entry, as long as you pass the other two thresholds.
Pharmacy: 90ish undergrad spots. Only on GPA, admissions tells me that last year someone with a 'low 70's' average got in. No interview, no UMAT.
As for the other courses, I don't know, any info that can be added would be appreciated.

If I don't get in, have I just wasted a year?
No. Half of the people who do HSFY don't get a place in a professional course, that is the cold, hard truth, but there are options should you not make it into your desired course the first time around. This thread should help you answer this question in a lot more detail than I'll go into here.

The 'optional' 8th paper..
I'm yet to do it (as it is only first semester), but this paper sure does sound enticing. No consequences should you fail it, yet it can drag your average up. If your average is already sparkling, you may not have to take this one, or at least will have more freedom to choose. There are two trains of thought here: 1) Choose a nice easy (but potentially boring) paper, and rip that average up sky-high. (Word on the street is that BSNS104 and MAOR102 fit this bill nicely). (P.s, for those considering PSYC102, I've heard bad things... If you want to do it, then by all means, but this is just my 2 cents.)
2) Choose a potentially harder paper, that you're actually interested in. More fun, and as such you might put more effort in, and do well.
Personally, I'm going for option 1, no need to make HSFY any harder than it is... I'll see you in MAOR102.
This thread goes into a lot more detail on the 8th paper debate.

How many people do HSFY? I've heard there's like 2000?
Wrong. This year, we were explicitly told (by Craig Rodger, a physics lecturer) that the 2011 cohort has 1360 people in it. Yes, your individual papers will have close to 2000 people in them, but remember that your papers aren't just for HSFY'ers (eg, the PE kids take HUBS). So any rumours that your year is the 'biggest ever', are probably rubbish.

I've heard of a friend of a friend of a friend who missed out on (insert name of professional course here) with a 98% average!
Ok, here's what I want you to do; go to the idiot who told you this, and punch them, hard. Well, maybe not, but they deserve it. There are many, many lies surrounding HSFY, and ones of this vein you will hear often. They are, 99.99999% of the time, utter garbage, and someone is just trying to psyc you out. Oh, and when your friends tell you their averages, lop around 5-10% off what they say, and that's what they really got. HSFY is such a psyc-out fest, just try and ignore it, and focus on what you are doing, that's the only thing you can control.

I'm Maori/Pacific Island/Rural, should I apply under these subcategories?
Yes. Oh yes. There is no downside (ie; any rumours you hear of having to work in certain workforce areas upon graduation, are totally wrong, there are no formal obligations on people who have entered via these pathways after graduating), and the marks/UMAT required to get into medicine (I don't know too much about how it affects entry to other courses) are lower than the normal entry pathway. Not much lower, but if you are eligible to apply under one of these pathways, then I strongly recommend that you do. Because if you're sitting on the boarder-line between making it or not, you will quite possibly be chosen over someone who is not applying through one of these pathways.
[OFFTOPIC]Please don't comment that this is 'unfair', medicine is about the greater good of the country, and the health of it's people, not just your own personal ambition to become a doctor. Just because it may help someone else you think 'less worthy' than yourself, doesn't make it 'unfair'. I hear too many health sci's whinge about this. Rant over. [/OFFTOPIC]

Textbooks
HUBS: sure there are some things tested from the textbook, but really the number of marks you gain is miniscule compared to the amount of effort you would need to put in. Why not spend those hours reading the textbook on something more useful like nailing the lecture material for CELS or CHEM 100%?

CHEM: may be useful to help understanding of some concepts, but really you shouldn't run into too many problems about concepts, and if you do just borrow someone elses textbook.

CELS: no need to learn anything from the textbook, just know every of every lecture perfectly (of course you wouldn't learn things like when the first microscope was made etc. etc.)

PHSI: because the textbook is written by the university now, it is way better. It was a different horrible textbook beforehand. If physics is your weak point then definitely get this book. It has a lot of questions in it too which are good practice.

HEAL: the textbook I found helpful when I did HSFY. Not so sure about how helpful it is anymore. I would be more inclined to borrow this book off someone else.

BIOC: no, everything you need is on the lecture slides.
-Skyglow
To add to this, the textbooks are, essentially, useless (in my own opinion, and in the opinion of most people I've talked to), so I'd say HUBS is the only one you 'need' (and even then that's debatable), but to be honest you're better to wait till a few weeks into semester one to decide if you need the books or not.
'Other' books: Just thought I'd add that some companies (which shall remain nameless...) sell books that supposedly give you all the extra information you need to ace HSFY. These are utter rubbish. The departments themselves say that many of these books contain errors, and trust me when I say that time, not the number of resources, will be your problem in HSFY. All the resources you need *will* be given to you. (And YES, that does mean that using a past student's notes will probably not benefit you in the slightest, you are *much* better off to write your own. You'll remember the content better, and note-taking is a skill you need to learn at university, and for your future career).

The 'hardest' paperThis is a question which it is impossible to give a generalised response to. In terms of workload (in hours), it seems like a fairly unanimous conclusion that HUBS>CELS=BIOC>CHEM=HEAL>PHSI. In terms of actual conceptual difficulty, the majority of people find HUBS and CELS amongst the easiest. Papers that tend to be done poorly by HSFY students (ie; that tend to get the lowest scores) often include CHEM191 and HEAL192, although to be fair, conceptually HEAL192 will appear deceptively easy in lectures and tutorials, but maybe not so easy in an exam situation. If I had to give my own (very biased) opinion, I would say CHEM191 is the 'hardest' paper of HSFY, in that (anecdotally) it seems to be the one that pushes the greatest number of people below the 70% threshold.

An overview of the papers
HUBS191-The first round of the two 'human body systems' papers. Musculoskeltal, nervous, endocrine, and immunological anatomy and physiology. To be honest, this paper is one that few find conceptually 'difficult', and most often requires brute-force rote-learning. However, due to it potentially feeling 'like med', it isn't usually too much of a drag to study for. A warning, this paper is unlikely to really cause you any problems, so don't ignore your other papers in pursuit of perfect HUBS marks...
CHEM191-Potentially the paper of HSFY which causes the most heartbreak, there are rumours abound about people with insane averages who have slipped ever-so-slightly below the 70% mark in CHEM191. In saying that, the exam structure is highly predictable (in that it's pretty much the same year to year), so doing the old exam papers for practice can be very helpful (as opposed to spending hours learning the 'concepts', many of which are far beyond what will actually be examined...)
PHSI191-In all honesty, this paper is not as hard as it sounds... Scores of people get 100% in this paper, and even I got 89% (and I got NNAA in level 3 physics...). The level of the material is lower than NCEA level 3 (although broader), and you even get a 'personal study sheet' (a.k.a. cheat sheet), which you get to take into both the terms test, and the final exam. Like CHEM, the previous exam papers are very useful here. But get your calculators ready, and a spare battery or 6, you're going to need them..
CELS191-Conceptually *slightly* harder than HUBS, although much of the material is vaguely familiar to those who have done year 13 biology. Overall, not too much of a difficult paper, although don't take it too lightly.... And, if 2011 was anything to go by, the GLMs are *not* like the HUBS ones, ie; getting 100% in them isn't actually all that easy.
HEAL192-As Cathay said, a lot of HSFY'ers like to jump on the 'HEAL fail wagon', however the paper (in it's new form) really doesn't seem quite as evil as most of the class seem to think. HEAL in 2011 has so far been about 95% 'concepts', with very little actual factual recall. This quite clearly is a change from 2008/9, when HEAL was described as 'rote-learning hell'. But if you understand the (not impossibly difficult) concepts inside out and backwards (and note that I've put 'understand' in capitals, just being able to vomit off the dictionary definition wont help you much), you should be ok for HEAL.
HEAL192 remains possibly the only place in HSFY when you are genuinely tested on your ability to demonstrate understanding of material through application to new situations.
-Greenglacier.
HUBS192-A fairly predictable continuation of HUBS191, going through the cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal, renal, and reproductive systems (with two two-lecture 'mini-modules' on blood and pH control), with some *very* simple physiological equations, which really aren't anything to stress about.
BIOC192- Strangely to me, this is often dubbed the 'hardest' of the HSFY papers. However, the material is basically a continuation of CELS191, mixed with a little bit of CHEM191 (which is hardly surprising, biology+chemistry-->biochemistry).

Approaching the terms test/final exams
-Keep your cool before the test. Sitting there listening to a whole heap of equally-stressed HSFY's banter about the test isn't going to help, and I find that barely talking to anyone for an hour or two before a test is very helpful.
-For goodness sakes, read the f**king question. It sounds simple, and really obvious, but I'm willing to bet that one of the main differences between those on an 88% average, and those on a 95% average, isn't who understood the concept better, but who worked out what the question was really asking. Quite a few questions in your HSFY exams basically boil down to reading the picky, often ambiguous, wording of the question.
-If you don't know the answer, guess. Particularly in MCQ's, where you can usually eliminate one or two blatantly wrong answers, increasing your chances of guessing correctly. For SAQ's, often if you just begin writing, you'll end up remembering the answer as you write.
-Don't listen to anyone else's 'exam strategies' (ie; 'do the easy ones first', or 'do them in order'), just do what you feel comfortable with. If you like doing it in order, that's fine. If you like doing the easy ones first for a confidence boost, that's fine too.
-Go over your paper as many times as you can. Re-read the question, and criticise your own answer, making sure you haven't mis-read the question, or just filled in the wrong box on the MCQ answer sheet (trust me, it happens).
-When they say the 'best' answer in an MCQ, they mean it. The answer that is 'right' might not really be 100% correct, it just has to be less rubbish than the other options. Yes, I know that's annoying....
-While you aren't screwed if you mess up a few terms tests, it can be rather helpful to do well in them. To use my own situation as an example, I was very sick the week before final exams, so didn't do fantastically in the finals, but thanks to my reasonable terms test results, my grades were given a rather nice boost.

Other random stuff which didn't really fit anywhere
-Most terms tests have an average of 60-75%, but remember that, with the possible exception of HEAL192, there are plenty of people in each paper who aren't doing HSFY, so they may be altering that average.
-HSFY (again, with the exception of HEAL192) is not really conceptually any harder than year 13, the major difference is in the volume of work you'll be expected to do, not the difficulty. HSFY arguably requires, by and large, less thinking than NCEA, but a *lot* more memorisation.
-Before you start HSFY, you might like to write down/think about why you're doing it, what you want to get out of it, why you want to get into medicine/dentistry/physio/pharmacy/medlabsci. Then you can refer back to this for motivation later.
-The number of hours you put into HSFY is not as important as how you work. You need to find a method of studying that works for *you*, and is *efficient*. I can't stress this enough, two hours of quality work is worth an entire day of sitting there aimlessly reading over your notes/textbook. Find a strategy, and modify it to suit you. Personally, I write notes in lectures, then write 'condensed' notes (ie: after I've worked out the main concepts, I write down all the picky little details), and then write them out again, and then sit there and make sure I can mentally vomit back everything I just wrote. Then a few hours later, make sure I can still do it. Obviously for papers such as CHEM and PHSI, doing worked examples is a vastly superior method. But seriously, there are plenty of people out there who work a *lot* harder than I do, and get lower grades (not due to being 'dumber'), simply because they haven't worked out an effective study method. This is probably the most important (and easiest) way of improving your HSFY grades. Work out how to study effectively. Do this as early in the course as you can.
-The 'big picture' is a favourite of HSFY exam question-writers. So make sure you understand (see that 'understand' word again? Please don't be one of those health-sci's who can only vomit lists of facts, understanding what you're doing will help you a lot come exams, and in professional courses...) how concepts relate to each other. Also, if a lecturer puts particular emphasis on something during a lecture, make sure you know it...
-I know that the intro lecture for just about every paper says 'we're not going to test ridiculous facts, just concepts', but this is the biggest lie ever told in HSFY. Yes, you can do just fine with only the 'big concepts', but if you want that last 5-10% (ie: if you want to get into a professional course), you *will* need to know the seemingly-pointless details. Except for Matt Bevin's lectures, you can trust Matt, he's awesome.
-Try and stay motivated and on top of the work in semester two. The temptation is there to simply say 'meh, I've done enough in semester one', but remember that this year is a competition, you want to *beat* the others, not just do as well as them. The same goes for after UMAT. DO NOT give up if your UMAT results are average/bad, people do get in with UMAT's of <50th%ile (refer to the table above for what grades you'd need with said UMAT).
-Yes, they do scale HSFY results. No, this doesn't really make any difference (unless you're hanging around the 70% mark in any paper), because it's a competition. If they scale your results, they've done the same for everyone else...
-HSFY final exam results are released in a staggered manner, they don't all come out at once. Typically they come out as late as humanly possible. Oh, and when they say 'unconfirmed', they mean it....[OFFTOPIC]First Semester Exam Results
Let the record state that in 2011 the first semester results were apparently later than previous years, and that they came out at the following times:
CELS191: 01-Jul, approximate 10:10
CHEM191: 01-Jul, approximately 12:40
HUBS191: 01-Jul, approximatly 12:30
PHSI191: 01-Jul, approximately 16:10-Cathay808[/OFFTOPIC]
-Maths in HSFY. If, like me, you failed year 12 maths (or are otherwise just generally numerically retarded), don't fret. The equations in HSFY are really simple, and they teach you really well how to use them. Numbers should be the least of your worries.
-CHEM191 lab exit tests: They are important, and quite a lot less of a 'free 15%' than other lab marks. Make sure you're prepared for them, even if that just means doing the pre-lab tasks (not that I did :p ).
-Please don't whinge about lecturer's slides, the speed at which departments get results back to you, etc. These people are mostly researchers, most of them don't want to be teaching you (and have better things to be doing), and they're doing their best. So cut them some slack, or you'll have me ranting at you.
-Health-sci really is quite a fair system compared to a lot of medical admission systems. Yes, it's a drag at times, but just thank your lucky stars that it's not like Australia, where your subjectively-marked high school essays determine whether or not you make it into medicine. So don't whinge that it's 'unfair', because I'm yet to see evidence to suggest that.

In closing
Sleep. Get some of it. There is little better for your brain than a good night's sleep, no matter how much you think you should be studying at 4am, you shouldn't be. You should be sleeping. And, if like me, you have trouble sleeping/your hall is too loud, take action. If it's too loud, buy earplugs. If you can't sleep, or are too stressed out (they often go hand-in-hand) there is a shrink at the student health clinic for like 6 bucks an hour (or some ludicrously low price). Go and see them it might be 'embarrassing', but those shrinks have seen worse than your stress before, and it isn't like any of your friends need to know. They are a resource there to be used, and if you are having problems (homesickness, stress, etc.) they are very helpful.

Disclaimer: The opinions I have stated here are not concrete facts, they are information I have gathered from this website (but do not necessarily represent the views of MSO), the health sciences admissions office, and my own personal experiences. Any moderators wishing to make modifications to this post, feel free, and any who disagree/have something to add, PM me, and I shall make changes. Best of luck to future (and present!) health-sci's. :)
Cheers, frootloop (HSFY 2011).
Thanks to:
Obviously I didn't write all of this, nor am I some all-knowing God of HSFY. There were a *lot* of contributors to this page (some unknowingly, as I've paraphrased stuff from the 'monster thread' here). The main ones are: greenglacier, Cathay808, Skyglow1, Koochkooch, ChickenPie, gtr8, patkirtan, and any other contributors I've embarrassingly forgotten.

Here are some posts for the extremely interested/bored, which have been selected as useful by the NZ forum development team. Not all the information in these posts is still relevant, and much of these posts are for interest only.
[OFFTOPIC]
I'll just add a couple of things:

How hard should I try in high school?
Honestly, even if you work your butt off in high school (speaking as someone who actually worked hard in year 13), it won't help much. If you're doing NCEA, it'll only really help with CELS, PHSI, and CHEM (and will barely help at all with 2nd semester). Even under CIE, there'll be plenty of new content regardless of how well you did in school. In addition, the same content is often taught differently during HSFY, which means you effectively have to re-learn it. I've seen more than one CIE student slack off during HSFY because they were familiar with most of the material from school, only to get pretty low grades because they didn't re-learn it from the HSFY perspective. The bottom line - do what you can to get confident with L3 chemistry and L2 physics (though the key word is confident, not amazing - it'd be useless trying to cram in NCEA chemistry and physics for the purposes of doing well in HSFY, because the emphasis of CHEM191 is different from that of L3 chemistry, and the emphasis of PHSI191 is different from that of NCEA physics). If you can do this, don't worry about doing anything else, because it won't be worth it.

How much study?
Whenever I get asked this I always say the best thing is to be consistent. If you spend a good 2 hours every night (except Friday and Saturday night of course) keeping up to date with the material, and spend a few hours before each test revising it then I can guarantee you'll be better prepared than any of the people you see studying until 4am. Studying until 4am is called cramming, and doesn't work nearly as well as consistent work throughout the year. If you see someone studying on a Saturday night, chances are it's because they've let themselves fall behind and need to study on a Saturday night just to catch up to where you'll already be if you put in that 2 hours of revision every night.

What scores?
Just to emphasise that the >78 referred to by froot relates to the ranking score (calculated by the formula), NOT the UMAT or HSFY average.

8th paper
Most people do MAOR102, BSNS104, or PSYC112. Sometimes people do other papers, but they do so in the knowledge that they will not get a good mark (and do so out of interest). About PSYC - I've seen lots of people do it, and nearly everyone really enjoys it, and for the most part, gets good marks (along with gaining knowledge far more relevant to any of the professional courses than can be gained from MAOR or BSNS). They often work hard, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't interested in it (because it is a harder paper than MAOR and BSNS), but if you are genuinely interested in psychology I'd say to seriously consider it because it's quite possible to get a decent A+ out of it (and enjoy yourself far more than you would taking MAOR or BSNS).

Easiest paper
Just to emphasise that the "easiest" paper (just like the "hardest" paper) varies between people. I've seen HSFYers call each of HUBS, CHEM, and PHSI the "easiest". I've also seen HSFYers call each of CHEM, PHSI, BIOC, and HEAL the "hardest" (note the considerable overlap between the two lists!).
-Greenglacier.
Should I read HSFY textbooks beforehand?
Not really. I have done some parts of it, and it's not all that helpful, mostly because the books aren't written for the course (with the exception of PHSI, and, to some extent, CHEM), and, particularly in CELS and HUBS, will cover things in more detail than we are required to know. I have read the whole first 9 or 10 chapters of the CELS textbook (up to photosynthesis) in the holidays, and all it really did was make me a bit complacent with the content. I wouldn't recommend going out of your way to read them beforehand, and even if you must, only try to understand the big picture - let your lecturers fill in as much or as little detail as they want, because after all they write the questions for the exam. Learning the actual course content beforehand is NOT at all necessary, nor really advisable, to be honest (now I sound like what ACER says about UMAT: "intensive preparation is not necessary nor advisable.")
What should I do in the summer before HSFY?
As GG and froot have pretty much said, don't bother with the actual content, although a good, sensible thing to do, is to do some thinking. Having skimmed through the 258-page thread (and a few others) for this information, it would appear that there are two things you should think about:
1. "Why am I doing this?" One of the more problematic issues during HSFY is if you happen to suddenly look up from your exam revision notes and go "wait, why am I here? Why am I putting myself through this big mess??" HSFY is not just some cruisy first year course, and the going WILL get tough, so imagine yourself in Neo's shoes in Matrix Revolution, after you've just got thrown on the ground so hard it made a crater, Smith is asking you "Why, Mr Anderson, why? Why do you persist?!" - and generate an answer that will keep you going when the going gets tough.
2. "How will I take notes?" - Lectures have you sitting in a tiny space with a tiny bit of solid plastic in front of you to put whatever you're taking notes with onto, and the lecturer generally speaks reasonably fast (some faster than others) and won't pause for you to catch up. Luckily most of the material is on the slides, available the day before (HUBS being the exception, slides available in the evening, on the day of the lecture, and possibly other 2nd semester papers), but still, you must decide how you want to keep up with the lecture, and more importantly, how you want to maintain a more permanent set of notes that you can go back to easily. I personally use pen and refill in lectures, then go to the library, sit down with my laptop and type the material in - incorporating the slides and the written notes (usually verbal explanations and what not from the lecturer), this set of notes then gets checked over each weekend against slides, objectives, and written notes, to make sure it's all correct, and eventually gets printed into booklets so I can read them casually. But, everyone works differently, some would prefer to use pen and paper, while others would prefer using a laptop in the lecture as well, you'll have to develop your own system. You may or may not be able to plug in your laptop in a lecture though, so do take your battery life into account.

In planning your way of taking/making notes, take your learning style into account (http://www.vark-learn.com/english/pa...=questionnaire- this was actually from the first HUBS GLM, where they will actually ask you to find out your learning style and develop your methods - but I know it's better to have one ready before lectures begin because they won't slow down), and always keep in mind that your method will change as you go - mine wasn't always the way it is, but I've settled into this and it seems to work.
-Cathay808
While we're on the subject of textbooks
I don't know how other people in HSFY learn, but to be honest, I've only used the HUBS and PHSI textbooks. The CELS one is ok(ish), but mostly just if there's a concept you don't fully get (in which case I find the internet more useful anyway...). As for the CHEM book, biggest waste of 150-odd dollars I've ever seen. The questions in it are alright to some extent, but I've found no real use for that book whatsoever.
Any who are on a very tight budget, the CHEM textbook would be what I'd recommend leaving on the shelves. Or just PM me and you can have mine, free (that's how useless I find it..)
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To add to what Cathay said about concepts (and possibly to disagree a little), there are some concepts in high-school which are deceptively similar, but not the same/taught differently in HSFY, you do not want to make the mistake of going 'oh well, I know this bit, I don't need to look over it again'.
I've had to do a little bit of un-learning of NCEA stuff (CIE sounds different, if you're lucky enough to be doing that, then make the most of it) this year (esp. in chem, where you find out that your school may have been telling you lies about chemistry...), and I wouldn't get too hung-up about how much you should know coming into HSFY. It isn't the concepts which are hard (for the most part), it is the sheer volume of information you are expected to maintain (hence half the tests are multi-choice), and the pressure.
-frootloop [/OFFTOPIC]

[OFFTOPIC]
Archived posts from the monster thread (pre-2011):
I think one of the reasons people point out the CHEM191 paper as an important one is because the L3 chem doesn't cover a couple of topics in CHEM191, and learning something completely new while having to worry about the rest of the course and 3 other papers can be difficult. The pace of this course is also fairly quick. Take the NCEA L3 chem syllabus, add on a couple more topics and detail, squeeze it into half a year, and you get an idea of the rate at which you go through the stuff.

Since you've only just completed L1, there's still alot of time before L3/scholarship, let alone HSFY
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I'd say if you were able to pass scholarship chem then you shouldn't find the CHEM191 paper too much of a trouble.

Uni tests are quite different to NCEA ones. Firstly, multiple choice questions feature alot in the tests which can throw off some NCEA students if they dont have much experience in MCQs. The rest of the questions are nearly always made up of short-answer questions, which are usually worth 1 to 4 marks. There is a distinct lack of questions that require the skills which NCEA seems to talk to about in their scholarship exams, like integration and being able to see the 'big picture'. Instead, both the MCQs and short-answer questions test your knowledge in a specific area. I didn't come across a single question that required you to pull knowledge from many different areas and synthesise/integrate/whatever an answer out of that. It was basically, you knew the name blood vessel or understood that concept about radiation or you didn't.


The hard work is much more than just making notes if you want to do well. It's about all the hours you put in to fully understand and memorise the material. Having notes on their own doesn't help you memorise anything. It's the process of listening in lectures, processing the information, and then physically making notes that helps you with the understanding and memorisation. Listening engages your aural part of the brain, processing the info engages your logic/language parts, writing notes engages the motor/coordination part of your brain, drawing diagrams and pictures engages the visual part, reading your own words while you write them further engages the language/visual parts and so on. Each of these steps helps you to be as fully engaged with the material as you can. Making your own notes is a process that immerses you in the material and thus stimulates learning.

That's also why casually copying the info on the lecture slides down is useless. I'm sure you've had that feeling when you copied out a couple of lines and have absolutely no clue what you just wrote. The danger of falling into this trap is also more serious when you're tired. Similarly, reading someone elses notes will not get you engaged much in the material. Instead, you have to listen to the lecturer while reading and processing the info on the lecture slides, then consider what is important/what you'll need to know, and write that down. Alot of students opted to print the lecture slides out before the lecture, then annotate them with what the lecturer says. Although the notes will be comprehensive, I feel a bit iffy about how engaged you are when you do this.

Notes that weren't written by you are nearly completely useless in this respect. The only thing they might be useful for is to check if you have not missed out some stuff in your learning, and even then that's dodgy because the syllabus changes from year to year. Everyone I know who did well did not need to rely on extra materials at all. Those who did have these materials would desparately read over them just before tests/exams and inevtiably didn't do very well. The notes gave them a false sense of security. The people who sell this sort of material know this and they know how enticing it is to a new HSFY student. Don't get conned by these people.


With multichoice, when they say the BEST answer, then the answer they want is the only one that can be DIRECTLY concluded from the opening statement in the question. In that feedback file they go through that question on the secreting cell. B is the ONLY answer that follows DIRECTLY from "a cell that is secreting proteins". The other answers require assumptions. Other than that the multichoice section should be easy.

With the short answers, be as succint as possible no matter what. Write very short sentences that get the point across with minimal words. Never ever ever try and waffle. It's fine to put down some points that may not directly be answering the question, but put them at the end and do not spend much time on them. Sentences should be less than a line long on the page preferably. Make sure you answer the questions too. Think carefully about what they want you to write down, not what you think you know about that question. In our MSO meetups alot of the time you guys would offer words that were related but it didn't answer my question at all when I asked you. Write what the examiner wants to hear.

There's no magical number or goal that you should be aiming for. Everyone has a different study method and as a result you can't really say that you need to study a minimum of x number of hours. It depends on so many things like how you study, other involvements, your previous knowledge relevant to that paper, which papers are your weakest and strongest etc etc.

You'll need to find a method of studying that works best for you so you're working as efficiently as possible. I hear alot about other students putting in CRAZY hours for studying and so on, and not to brag or anything, but I ended up doing better than alot of them even though I put in nowhere near the number of hours they did. The key is to always be evaluating how you're studying, and thinking "am I doing this efficiently?" and "how could I improve my study techniques?" When you work efficiently, there really is no need to put in crazy hours especially since you really really don't want to burn out. I started to get annoyed at people who automatically assumed from my marks that I must be putting in those crazy hours too and when I told them I was studying only so-so and so hours they'd be like "sure sure". That's not the mentality you should have. More hours of work does not equal better marks if you are working poorly.

You'll be pretty much forced to keep at it because the mid-semester tests are pretty spread out so what happens is you basically have like a test every 1 week or 2 weeks, so in that period you'll end up constantly studying for the next test coming up. But ya if you take the tests very seriously as preparation for the final exam (but make sure you know of the papers that do not test material in the mid-semester test in the final) you'll find your job of preparaing for the final alot easier. Keeping at it every night is obviously better than cramming hard the night before the test (which is what tons of people have to resort to) is obviously better to. The number of hours is not really relevant. You should just plan it out so that you have ample time to prepare for all the tests and all the finals.


For those who are starting health sci next year: getting alot of rest now, mentally preparing yourself for the workload at O-week, writing down and working out what your goals are to keep you motivated when you start health sci will already give you a significant advantage over others. There's really nothing to be scared of in health sci
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(unless you don't do the work and you're unprepared of course :p) I looked through my friend's courseguide for auckland biomed papers, and in my opinion some of their papers like biochem are to be truly feared haha.

One of the major things that helped me was the fact that I did the CIE pathway. If I wrote up that list for all the papers again but showed what things were covered by CIE and what weren't, then easily more than half of it would be covered for most papers.

In 7th form I made myself a system of using tons of pages of refill and organising it into folders as my method of taking notes (luckily my teachers allowed us to use any method of note taking we want....it gets annoying having to do everything in books). I found repetition was the best way for me memorise things, and this was a big focus for me seeing as CIE is also alot of memorisation and so study methods for CIE usually work really well for HSFY. So the system I came up with was basically all focussed around rewriting notes over and over again until I got better at recalling everything, each time would be a new "version" and I'd improve the notes as I rewrote them too by adding things or correcting them. It worked well for my CIE exams, and I had a feeling HSFY was going to be fairly similar in style, so I knew I had a good chance that I had a system that would really suit me and HSFY.

One of the "problems" with coming into HSFY from the NCEA course, apart from it's poor overlap with paper content, is that you don't have to memorise anything close to the amount of material you need to memorise for CIE or HSFY. Alot of students coming from the NCEA course who I know are very bright and pick things up quickly struggle with the memorisation side of HSFY. I think it's pretty important you experiment now and find out what works for you in terms of making notes and how to memorise stuff because it will help greatly when it comes to certain papers like the HUBS191 and 192 papers - the concepts are very easy and everyone understands them, but some people simply know more lecture content than others and they are the ones that generally do better in the tests.

I also heard alot about people last year getting in with so-and-so marks and so-and-so UMAT. The numbers seem to be highly exaggerated after it has gone through a chain of a couple of people, because one person will say so-and-so and another person will say something that completely contradicts it lol. My advice is to ignore all of that as much as possible when you're going through HSFY and simply focus on your goals and your work. Speculating about requirements doesn't really get you anywhere in terms of improving your marks (this type of gossip is hard really hard to resist...I got sucked into it alot lol), and at the end of the day it's your marks and UMAT that will decide if you get into the course you want.

Noone really knows anything about the marks required. The only indication of where you stand comes from tests where they release everyone's marks, and you go through the marks and see what rank you place out of everyone. There are 150+ spots for people coming in through HSFY into med, so you had a way of comparing that to what rank you were placing from your tests. From memory getting 90% in every test would easily land you in the top 150 bracket. But then there's the problem of UMAT and how that factors in (we know its 34% and 45 45 10 weighting for the sections but not sure about other aspects) and there are a huge range of marks you can get in UMAT. So in the end if you're doing HSFY you should simply aim for the very best in every test i.e. 100% That's not to say you should murder yourself if you fall short of that mark, or study so hard for it that you burn yourself out, but I don't see the point in aiming for anything lower. Getting 100% is not as impossible as it sounds considering they scale marks up sometimes and also things like plussage in the PHSI paper, and it is a real possbility if you think carefully about how to prepare for the tests.

CELS191 - Used it a decent amount. My idea for this paper was to learn everything in the lectures really well then just absorb as much as I could in terms of further detail from the textbook, and it worked!
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CHEM191 - Didn't really need it (CIE chem for the win lol) or liked it. I opened it a few times then it collected dust after that. It looked like there were some good questions in there and the lecturers release answers for those questions too so it can be helpful.
PHSI191 - Everyone hates this textbook but for me it was sorta ok. Again didn't really need to use it.
HUBS191 + 192 - I used it mainly to clarify really minior details that I wasn't sure of.
BIOC192 - Was all motivated start of semester 2 to attempt my CELS191 strategy and learn things further in detail, then got lazy and gave up. I studied only from the lectures and that was enough.
HEAL192 - Oh god I'd be so lost without this book haha. Most useful one by far. Has really good explanations for all the concepts that the lecturers more often than not cannot explain well :/

Oh and also when you start health sci they'll be all like DO YOUR PREREADING OR YOU DIE (prereading is just certain pages they expect you to do read from the textbook before lectures). Well since everyone is so motivated for the first week, most people do complete the prereading. About after a month pretty much everyone has stopped doing that haha. It's annoying and I completely gave up trying to do it after about a week in. Basically just pay really close attention in lectures lol cause the lectures have everything. That said, to survive first half of HEAL192 I had to preread like mad to keep up with what was going on in lectures.

I was so eager to get the textbooks asap and everything and more than half of them just ended up sitting on the floor whole year so yeah don't get overly excited. That can be detrimental too if you spend your time studying things from the textbook that just simply won't be tested.

Video and audio:
CELS191 - Audio for all lectures
PHSI191 - I think there was audio...
CHEM191 - none
HUBS191 + 192 - Audio for all lectures + a couple of video lectures
BIOC192 - no audio
HEAL192 - no audio

I was also eager and bought books in the holidays and read them, but it wasn't really of much use in terms of preparing for HSFY (only my experience of course). The lecture material is very specific and sometimes very distant from what is in the books. I hardly used the books, and if I did use them, it would be just to check up or clarify something really minor. Everything they want you to learn will be the stuff they state in the lectures, not in the books. Hardly any of the stuff in the books actually overlaps with the precise content in the lectures from my experience. I concentrated all my time on learning lecture material and it worked out very well (didn't do the prereading from the textbook they expect you to do from the book before each lecture because I felt it was a waste of time).

If you still want to go ahead and do a bit of reading I took this from an earlier post of mine. It only gives you an idea of the topics but no idea of how detailed you'll have to go into it. Knowing what level of detail you need for the tests/exams is very important, and you'll find that out in the lectures themselves. You'll find Arutha's experiences with the book earlier on in the thread too.





If you are gonna do reading, don't get caught up trying to understand anything if you can't get it, and definitely don't get caught up in memorising any details. For the CELS book the amount that is actually relevant is maybe 1/10th of the book or maybe even less I'd say. I found I hardly used this book and just went with what was in the lectures. The HEAL book was the exception for me and I found it much more useful than the other books. I read it before starting the course and struggled to understand some of the concepts. It was only after actually starting the paper when the book was actually helpful to me.

HSFY sounds intense, but really if you stick to the lecture objectives and you stick to lecture material, you can't really go wrong.

If you did NCEA then I would suggest doing light reading on the topics that look completely new to you, so when you start the course and come across it again it won't be completely new then. If you did cambridge or IB then I'd say don't sweat it. Holidays are good for getting tons of sleep. Unless you're a genius, you'll be missing those long hours of sleep when you start HSFY
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Carrington is one of the "academic" colleges. I've never been there but it sounds like a nice college. They have many students from that college getting into med each year; maybe cause the people who go there are more likely to get in, or maybe the college atmosphere is better or something. Anyways don't get too caught up in what college you're going it. In the end it's yourself that determines what marks you're gonna get.

Originally Posted by greenglacier
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Originally Posted by skyglow1
Greengraclier, the ones who got in with 50th percentile are almost definitely rural/maori. I can't see how 50th percentile could get you in through normal entry.
Last year (before they changed the rules surrounding doing the UMAT twice), in deciding whether or not to do UMAT, I went after some relevant information. As part of this, I got my dad (who teaches 4th year med students in Christchurch) to ask around as to what sort of UMAT results are required. He definately found some students with marks as low as 50th percentile, and I'm pretty sure that some of those got in through standard entry. It makes sense too - if you look at the percentile graph, 50th percentile = 50 raw score and 80th percentile (which is the picture he got as what you should aim for to be competitive) = 56 raw score. That's a difference of only 6, or 3% in terms of the average paper mark. It's certainly not implausible.
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Originally Posted by skyglow1
If I had to hazard a guess at why our year did so bad in HEAL, it basically follows the trend that any of the papers which require more understanding than memorisation have poor results because health sci students struggle with concepts. Anyone can put in the hard work and hours to memorise information for HUBS, but to understand some of the harder and new concepts in HEAL, and apply them to new situations, requires quite a bit of insight.

I found this when I was tutoring PHSI and HEAL. Having to explain things that you simply just "get" when you in a lecture made me realise I really take those sort of things for granted. It also made impatient and frustrated because I assumed others would just get it too.

I think another things that separates the 95+% student from say an 80% is how good they are at taking tests. I'm not talking about those little exam tips that are cited alot by lecturers/tutors. The 95+ student is able to understand precisely what is required of them in an exam.

When I sat the hsfy papers, I was confident enough in what I memorised and what I understood, so I didn't need to worry about what was the actual "answer". Instead, I spent nearly all of my time thinking about the "psychology" of the paper. What I mean is that I considered what the lecturer was thinking when they wrote that question. What was going through their mind when they wrote this question, why did they write this question, what do they want me to demonstrate? Similarly, when I write my answer I consider how the marker is going to react to my answer. Where am I going to get my ticks, how will I impress the marker, how will I show that I have understood what is required of me, what would the mark scheme look like so I come close to it as possible? I also sometimes consider what other students will probably be thinking when they read the question, and try to avoid the mistakes they will make and traps they will fall into.

When I read other people's answers, it seems like people read the question and think it is a prompt for them to write about what they know on that topic. The skill in exam taking lies instead in being able to decipher those instructions from the lecturer, which are given in the form of questions (and can be very vague/cryptic at times). Alot of students are not confident enough in their preparation, so worry about what is the "right" answer. They need to have more solid preparation, and take the time to really consider the psychology behind the questions.

That's why you often hear lecturers and other people saying "answer the question!" over and over again. On a basic level, this is students who put down info that is completely unrelated to the question. On a more sophisticated level, "answering the question" is very difficult because it requires you to be able to understand how the lecturer thinks.

These exam taking skills definitely come from extensive experience in taking exams which are similar in style to health sci ones. Cambridge exams were great preparation for this because the same exam taking skills are required to achieve high percentages. Pouring over endless years of past papers, and gaining a ton of exposure to questions and more importantly what the mark schemes. Students can work on it by making sure their preparation is solid so they can focus their attention in the exam to thinking more deeply about the questions. But really, the major hurdle is the preparation, because alot of students struggle with the memorisation component, and also lack the insight to really understand the concepts.

It's especially important in exams like last year's HEAL test and final exam, where some questions were written poorly and you were left thinking "what on earth do you they want me to write?" That, along with the students struggling with the concepts, is what I think resulted in fairly poor results in that paper.

History of HSFY, told by GG
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Originally Posted by greenglacier
HSFY has undergone quite a lot of change in recent years - makes for interesting reading.

It has obviously beeen in its current form since 2007.

From 2005-06 it was slightly different - things like the 1 semester BIOL 115 paper instead of HUBS, no eighth paper, physics being a full year paper, and the compulsory english paper.

UMAT was introduced in 2003. Before that, entry was determined solely on marks (and I think that is how it had always been - my Dad started med in 1980, and his entry was based solely on his marks, though there were some differences - my Mum got in the same year based on her results from scholarship exams (year 13)...).

2004 and earlier, there were only 4 compulsory health sci papers: Biochemistry (identical to BIOC192), cell biology (very similar to CELS191), BIOL 115, and chemistry (similar to CHEM191, but more physical). There was also a physics paper, an english paper and a biostatistics paper (instead of epi!) - but you could choose not to do these if you had a decent mark in the corresponding subject (physics, english, stats) for year 13, and could instead take a paper of your choosing for admissions purpose.

Interesting quote from the medicine webpage in 2002 - "in recent years all successful students have a grade average better than A-".


Oh, and yeah I've heard some surprisingly low epi marks. I don't know how telling it'll be, but I'm keen to get my exam paper sent to me in January to get some insight into the marking.


Hey g.walker - yeah, we now know all of the results used to rank us for admission (no interview around the corner!). Oh, and yep, A+ is always 90% or above, though they occasionally adjust marks (I don't know of them doing so this year though) - officially Otago opposes norm-based marking (the idea of a certain percentage of people always getting A+). It also means that for admissions purposes our mark (e.g. 96%) is used, rather than the grade.

We get emails saying if we're in medicine by the 23rd of December.

Originally Posted by skyglow1
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Originally Posted by lock_on
ill give you healthscis a tip for hubs. its called aptitute (a book for hubs). it comprehensively covers each of the lectures and their objectives (about 3 pages of reading per lecture) all for $35. this is a lot better than hte weirdos you see around campus selling their photocopied notes for like $80. Its written by a group of med students so its quite high quality although you will find a mistake or two every few lectures. Its nothing major if you check what they write with your own notes/lecture slides.

The guys that make it have a useful site aptitute.co.nz where they give their opinions on the umat and each of the healthsci papers. no doubt u will see this book around campus a lot. you can get at the uni book store. but dont use this is your only source for info, use the lecture slides as well and the occasional podcast for the tougher lectures. For the exams go over ur glms - i didnt and that probably cost me a couple of %'s.

I have to say I am very against using resources from second years or the like. Students already have all the resources they need with the lecture slides, podcasts, and the textbook. Sure, the aptitute book may provide you with some tiny little details you may have missed, and that's how I would have used it if I had it.

More often than not though, I see students using it in a much poorer way. For example, they concentrate on it when they should be concentrating on lecture slides instead. They might even use them as replacements for notes of their own. Some develop a false sense of security because have this book, and end up being woefully prepared for the exam. It's just too easy for students to fall into the tempting trap, and very few students will actually benefit from having the book in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by greenglacier
I think most people sell their textbooks because for the most part they're only really relevant to HSFY.

My opinion:

HUBS textbook - very good to get, especially for HUBS191 where they follow through on a policy of assessing stuff if it is in the pre-readings but not in the lecture. Probably should buy this one new as HUBS are going to use the 7th edition this year (and that'll be near-impossible to get 2nd hand).
CELS textbook - alright to get, but far from necessary. You do occasionally need a copy of the latest edition, but you could always just borrow from someone on your floor.
CHEM textbook - only get this if you want LOTS of practice questions (and you get a fair few of these from the chem department/old exams anyway). The content in the textbook isn't necessary to read.
PHSI textbook - definately get this one, and new. It's only $40, and written especially for the course. This years one will be a lot better than last years (e.g. minor errors and typos removed, practice questions included).
HEAL textbook - most reckon this is indispensable but I'm not so sure. The way I used it was I read it in the mid-year break (it's really short as far as textbooks go). This was good as I had some sense of where the course was going throughout semester 2 (when you experience the disorganisation of the course you'll appreciate the advantage of this), and I honestly think it helped for UMAT (seriously, one of the questions in UMAT section 1 was almost identical to an example in the HEAL textbook). Throughout the semester though I barely used it at all, though it was occasionally useful for presenting the content from a really badly delivered lecture in a more organised manner. You are not expected to know stuff from the textbook though that isn't presented in lectures.
BIOC textbook - you don't need this. I was enticed into buying it because the lecturer we had for the enzymes module kept talking about how the relevant chapters would be really good to read to further understanding. I read them and they were pretty cool. That was the only use for this textbook.


I completely disagree with lock_on regarding aptitute (and the two of us have had our debates on this matter). It's a book produced by students, not academics. It may have a pretty cover, but it is unreferenced, unreliable, and has no guarantee of lining up with the course (which may lead to you learning stuff you didn't need to, and not learning stuff you should have). In any environment apart from the paranoid one of HSFY such a source would not survive. If you take good notes throughout the semester that's all you need, while paying for someone elses notes (that's essentially what aptitute is) will not compensate for this.


I still have CELS, CHEM and BIOC textbooks to sell, but don't worry about any of this until you get to Dunedin (and it isn't difficult to find textbooks there!).

Originally Posted by skyglow1
I don't think there's dedicated rural spots, and the rural students compete for those. Instead, if you put yourself down as rural and get they approve that, then I think they add a compensatory increase to your mark, which helps you in your rankings against the non-rural students. How well other rural students did shouldn't have too much of an influence on the chances of getting in via rural.
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Originally Posted by greenglacier
Hmm... I would like to raise just a couple of points here.

1 - From what I've heard, I would agree that cambridge does tend to prepare people for HSFY better than NCEA in that it is closer to HSFY. This does not imply that it is a better system. In my opinion, much of the HSFY system is in itself flawed. Also, note the use of the term "tend to". A student who had studied L3 chem, physics and biology, L2 biology and L1 human biology under NCEA would have covered a good half of the HSFY material at school already. I also found that NCEA students tended to have better SAQ exam technique, and that some cambridge students didn't do quite as well in their exams as they had intended because "I don't need to study, I did this at school" and "I didn't work under cambridge and got A+, therefore, I will get A+ despite slacking off at HSFY". I would also point out that while cambridge students had already covered some concepts that NCEA students had not, the NCEA students tended to be very good at picking them up, given the thinking skills they had developed under NCEA. Hence, personally I failed to notice the "huge advantage" that you talk about.

2 - The distinct advantages of NCEA are significant - the fact that it aims to give students knowledge and skills relevant far beyond exams, the fact that it has a large basis in item response theory rather than classical test theory, the fact that it is completely transparent, the fact that it aims to develop thinking rather than memorisation skills, the fact that there is significant evidence to suggest that it is far better than cambridge at predicting first year university marks,... (just to name a few)

3 - Although NCEA has (compared to cambridge) little examinable material, doing well in it often requires full and complete understandingof that material, along with a lot of additional background knowledge and supporting material. This means that 6 months after the exams, when you have forgotten a lot of the facts (unless you go on to study the same material at uni), you are still well familiar with the reasoning behind a subject (and how to acquire knowledge in that subject) and are well equiped to relearn that subject and develop on it if necessary.

NCEA is something that I very much support and I could go on for much longer about it. I would just like you to consider the bottom line - if you are going to judge NCEA, please don't do it on the rather tenuous criteria of how similar it is to HSFY, and please don't get swept up in the widespread NCEA bashing that occurs in the media, much of which is completely uninformed, illogical, and fuelled by figures who (despite what they claim) are not purely driven on the desire to deliver the best possible education.

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Originally Posted by greenglacier
You make a good point about the grading system. The thing is, as I see it, this is the case for almost all systems. Take cambridge, or university. Remembering that "C's get degrees" the same applies - a C average student can leave with the same qualification as an A+ student, just as an "excellence" student gets the same basic qualification as an "achieved" student. Common to all assessment systems is that ultimately students are driven to achieve higher not inherently by the system in itself but by their own motivation and/or rewards attached to high achievement in that system by others. This is not an issue unique to NCEA. In terms of it being "easy" to get excellence, while in many cases for individual standards this is easy, I found it difficult to get consistent excellences across a subject. The data released by NZQA shows that only the top 5% of students get excellence for at least 42% of the credits available. I think getting the full 24 excellence credits in a subject is a greater achievement than getting an A+ in a first year university paper. Even then, the capping of NCEA with the NZQA scholarship exams (in which there really is no limit to how well you can do) ensures that top students can be extended. You are right about employers having little understanding of the system, but I believe that the clarity of grades (i.e. they report exactly what you can do, and at what level) along with the far greater information they give than cambridge will ensure that over time this will turn into a strength of NCEA rather than a weakness.

In terms of there being only 3 possible pass grades, yes this does have some definate disadvantages (including some you haven't identified). Personally I think however that the advantages (such as the ability to use fairly accurate item response theory) outweigh these. Certainly I don't see the need for the excessively large number of pass grades at university.

On the stuff about unit standards I completely agree with your concern and I hope that the upcoming review of the standards weeds out some of the more ridiculous ones available. At the same time some of them do serve a purpose - I know some people with NCEA L1 who would never have passed any of the other popular assessment systems. While some may say that this just shows that NCEA is too easy, I think it is a strength that people who would have otherwise given up on school have been able to develop skills in unconventional areas and so leave school with a better training.

The marking - you are right, this is a big problem, but I think most of the stories like the one you have told come from the first couple of years when there were some big teething problems. If you look at the L2 and L3 science and maths exams for 2009 there has been a huge shift in marking that should eliminate such horror stories.

Still SASOL, thankyou for putting forward some valid and intelligent objections to NCEA. It certainly beats most of the utter rubbish in the media.

Oh and yeah, SASOL is right - the stuff I've been saying applies most heavily to the science and maths subjects. Interesting thing about history though - I took it in year 13, and we did practice bursary papers dating back to the 1980's. The year 13 history curriculum in New Zealand is the same now as it was then. All NCEA has done is change how results are reported!




EDIT - skyglow, just saw your post. Comparing NCEA students and cambridge students in HSFY is, as you have alluded, a pretty difficult thing to do accurately. The huge confounding and the fact that no one has done the relevant Y13 subjects under both systems makes this difficult. Also add the fact that you do fewer subjects under cambridge in a given year, so of course the education in a given subject will be more rigorous. I myself am judging cambridge largely on some of the cambridge final exams which I have seen. You are probably in a better position given that you have done scholarship exams (though I must point out that scholarship is a completely seperate qualification from NCEA, and though it is based on the same curriculum and underlying ideals, scholarship exams differ significantly from NCEA exams) and I was looking forward to hearing what you had to say on the subject, but I would just like to state here the underlying principle of NCEA as I see it (at least for science subjects):

Under NCEA a subject is examined to find the basic core principles underlying it, along with the associated reasoning. With this in mind, a lot of the less relevant material is made non-examinable. As a result, where in cambridge a teacher might have to devote a lot of teaching time to cover additional factual material not covered in NCEA (and which most students will have completely forgotten a month after the final exam), under NCEA that teacher can use that time to ensure that the core principles are rock solid in the minds of the students, and that the students fully appreciate and understand them. As a result, when it comes to exams, students are not rewarded based on how many facts they have memorised, but at what level of thinking they have grasped them.

This is why I made the comments about understanding and SAQ exams. A big part of testing for the level of understanding in students in NCEA is through how well and insightfully someone answers a given question (even if the resulting answer is only a paragraph long) - for example most explanations in physics would require only 3-4 sentences (and there was often penalisation for writing too much), but the quality of those sentences determined whether you were performing at excellence level (top 3-10% of students) right down to not achieved (bottom 25-40%). This meant that at school I had to learn to look at a given question, carefully think about what it was actually asking, and then very carefully write the best answer I could making sure to make absolutely no errors. Often in a physics exam there would be more time spent thinking how to answer a question than writing the answer.

Now, I don't know how well this applied to cambridge as well, but my interpretation is that given that cambridge students attend school for the same number of hours and work just as hard, the extra material in cambridge must have come at the cost of something else. I could of course be completely wrong here.

You are absolutely right about MCQs - a lot of us NCEA students never really adjusted to MCQ assessment even with experience in the australian science/maths competitions.

I'm very pleased to see you agreed with my last comment - this is the main issue I have. I think cambridge has some definate advantages but I am sick to death of all the comments throughout HSFY (and on this forum) of how "NCEA is rubbish", and "us cambridge students are going to do better than everyone else by virtue of having done cambridge" (no - you may have an advantage in that there is less new material, but you are still going to have to work bloody hard if you want to do better than an NCEA student of the same ability in the exams), not to mention the blatant and uninformed bashing in the media. Sometimes I can get a bit over-the-top in defending NCEA but this is really because I think there is quite enough negativity surrounding NCEA already. NCEA isn't perfect, but it is far better than the media would have the public believe.

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Originally Posted by koochkooch
I would definitely have to agree with skyglow and lock_on on this one. CIE definitely overtakes NCEA in terms of preparing a student for HSFY. Similarities between HSFY and CIE:

-MCQs
-Essay questions for HUBS are VERY similar to A2 bio essay questions
-CHEM191 covered many of the concepts in A2 Chemistry including Energetics and MECHANISMS!! Not to mention module 3 (Redox etc) which was covered almost entirely by A2 Chem, aside from the guest lectures.
-PHSI191 is apparently similar to AS physics. I did A2 Maths and that was enough for me to get an 87 in PHSI having not done physics since 4th form.
-HUBS192 was very similar to AS and A2 bio. For example: homeostasis, urinary system, spermatogenesis/oogenesis. Some of the content (such as GI) was also briefly covered in IGCSE bio.
-BIOC192 module 5 (pathways of glycolysis, krebs, oxidative phosphorylation, ETC, structure of ATP etc) was covered in A2 Biology.
-The large volume of information in CIE encouraged students to push themselves in terms of memorisation as well as understanding many concepts in a short span of time...A stark similarity to HSFY.

I always heard students complaining about how different NCEA was compared to HSFY. It's a rare occurrence to hear of positive feedback from HSFYers who have had previous experience in NCEA.

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Originally Posted by SASOL
I think they were short answer, can't remember though. There were maybe 5 questions? Unsure on that aswell sorry!

Labs - Yes, most stuff in lectures is covered in labs but some stuff covered in labs isn't covered in lectures. This goes for HUBS, BIOC and a wee bit of CELS I think. However, this stuff is usually assessed elsewhere in GLM's or exit tests. Usually you will have covered the lab material already in lectures, but it's possible you will be introduced to the lecture material in a lab if you have it before the relevant lecture, which sometimes makes the exit tests a little harder.

CHEM exit tests - BEWARE! These are hell if you aren't prepared. I had no idea what was going on in my first lab, and when it came to the test I had forgotten all the reactions we did during the lab. So PAY ATTENTION to everything in the labs! You do 6 exit tests, one for each lab and they take your best 5 to calculate your percentage out of a maximum of 15%. So you want to get 5 100% results on these to get the full 15%. This is vital. I screwed up my first test just because I didn't get how they worked lol. Generally the lab demonstrator hints at what will be in the test.

First topic covered in CHEM is thermodynamics and equilibrium/aqueous, so enthalpy, acid/base, titrations etc. Not much new stuff is introduced if you have done NCEA L2 and 3, I assume this is the same for CIE. Entropy and stuff to do with calorimetry I think is the only new thing I came across and it wasn't hard to understand. They cover 2 months info of NCEA in about one lecture of CHEM, so make sure you know your excellence level stuff from NCEA and you will be fine. Questions from the first topic are generally the hardest in the CHEM exams if they are worth quite a few marks.

Oops just read your last sentence. Yes you will be disadvantaged, as they whizz through aqueous and it's generally expected you know this already. However, they offer weekly help sessions for CHEM I think.

Feel free to ask more, and I know the others on here will be more than happy to give you info
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Originally Posted by greenglacier
Truth be told, the only really hard thing I remember about the first chem exit test was that you were expected to have memorised all the solubility rules (and they weren't covered in lectures), and that the question on them was also fairly difficult. Thankfully I'd gotten a bit of a heads up from the people with a lab the day before me, so learnt them that night. Everything else was just lecture material, though there was a question that many people would have found difficult in the final exam (let alone two weeks into the paper). Later exits tests did focus far more on the actual lab though.

I think the thing about the chem exit tests is not that they are that difficult in themselves, but that, making the natural comparison to the lab marks for the other papers, they aren't free marks and are actually worth quite a lot. Oh, and you probably do need to hope that your lab demonstrator isn't completely stingy in the marking (I've heard a couple of horror stories there).

healthsci offers some good advice. The whole crux of medical admissions is of course achieving the (almost unachievable) goal that all students accepted will become "better" doctors than all students rejected, and I think Otago does pretty well here. Certainly there don't tend to be any huge upsets when the offers for medicine come out, and the "measurement error" only really prevents the achievement of that goal in the borderline students.

But yes, I think there would be very few exceptions to the rule that if you are clearly capable of getting into med, then you will, and if you are borderline then you will with enough work. HSFY is a fair enough system for this to hold true. I don't know if this would work for anyone reading this, but something that kept me motivated to do well in HSFY was that I knew that I had the ability to get into med, therefore not getting into med would be not performing to my full ability and hence letting myself down.

Originally Posted by greenglacier
For CELS and HUBS natural ability and intelligence can only take you so far... and that's nowhere near where you need to be to get into med. The people who do really well in CELS and HUBS are not necessarily the smartest people in the year (though intelligence does help) - they are the people who are prepared to put in the work and learn the material. Why? Because so much of the material cannot be reasoned out reliably, and even if it can the lecturer will mark any associated question harshly (such that you can only really get full marks if you memorise all the points they raise and remember to write them all down in the exam - not that memorising the points will on its own get you full marks - you also need to know how to write a decent answer to an exam question).

CHEM and PHSI are completely different - through understanding of the underlying concepts and principles you can reason your way to an answer to almost any question (the notable exceptions being the hot topic lecture questions for CHEM), and in fact you need that understanding to be successful (the fact that you are allowed a cheat sheet in PHSI suggests that the paper isn't about memorising facts) - hence the best way to prepare for these papers is practice questions - lots and lots of practice questions (thankfully there isn't a shortage of these).

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Originally Posted by skyglow1
A trap that some students fall into too is thinking that if they just do enough questions then they'll know how to do all the different questions. I've seen some students do this "bruteforce" approach. The problem with that is of course new types of questions that the examiner can throw at the students, and also variations on past questions.

If you truly understand a concept and can apply it well, then it should be possible to do any type of question, even if you have not seen anything like it before.

Originally Posted by greenglacier
The convenors of all the HSFY papers have to meet and compare the mark distributions across the 4 papers before releasing marks. This is to help them decide if a paper should be scaled (e.g. if the mark distribution for PHSI is worse than usual, but the mark distributions for CELS, HUBS, and CHEM are the same as usual that suggests that the physics exam was particularly difficult and so marks should be scaled up).

What this means in practice is that all the HSFY papers will release marks at pretty much the same time, because none of the 4 papers can release marks until all 4 papers have finished marking. Chances are PHSI has been marked but is waiting on the other papers to finish marking so that the distributions can be compared.

If the marks are released at the same time as last year, PHSI will come out on Thursday afternoon and HUBS, CHEM, and CELS will all come out on Friday morning.

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Originally Posted by greenglacier
When people refer to HEAL192 delivering low grades generally they just mean that hardly anyone gets an A+ (I think someone said earlier in this thread that last year only 50 people got over 87%). Like you, I got a 97 average first semester and while I felt pretty confident of an A+ in HUBS192 and BIOC, I went into the HEAL192 exam honestly feeling that it would be 50/50 whether or not I got an A+ for the paper (I got 92 in the end).

I think it would definately be possibe to get a decent A+ in HEAL if you put in lots of work, but the downside is that most people find HEAL exceptionally boring to study for, especially in terms of getting a good A+ (expect to memorise a lot of lists word for word, know all the lecture slides pretty much off by heart and be able to reproduce the trends on a lot of graphs - not fun stuff), and even then, a good A+ in HEAL is something like 94-95 (anything above this is exceptionally rare, at least with HEAL192 in its current form - the paper changes all the time). I decided about halfway through semester two to let HEAL be my lowest mark and cover it with BSNS, not because I didn't think it would be possible to get a good mark in HEAL but because I honestly couldn't be bothered.

Definately possible to get a good A+ in PSYC - I have heard of a few. If you are interested in it, I'd say go for it (don't do Maori or economics if you won't enjoy it. Personally the main reason I did economics was because I'd never studied it before and really wanted to learn the basics of it and understand what was going on in the news. As a result I found it fascinating and, even though the exam didn't require any serious thinking, it was quite easy to get intellectually engaged by using the content of the course as a nucleus for further thinking and learning).

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Originally Posted by skyglow1
I had a similar GPA coming out of 1st semester, and decided not to take an 8th paper. Having only 3 papers to deal with means that you're timetable is down to only 2 lectures a day max, with tutorials for HEAL instead of labs. It really gives you a TON of time to study (if you don't succumb to being lazy like a lot of students did including me
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) for those 3 papers.

If trends continue, the HEAL paper will get more and more strange. I was fairly confident in 2008 that with enough study and hard work I could guarantee an A+ in the paper, but I don't think it's so clear-cut nowadays. Have to agree that HEAL is intensely boring to study for. The actual science in HEAL, the epidemiology, I found really interesting. It's the public health part of HEAL that really sucks. All these random people come in to give you a lecture on their topic, and you have to memorise everything they are telling you. It's a huge bore and tedious. That's the endless graphs and lists that greenglacier is talking about. I agree that you can definitely brute-force HEAL. Whether or not you can endure the mind-numbing work is another matter lol.

Structure of MAOR102
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Originally Posted by gtr8
Final is 40% Internal 60%. Internals are comprised of two essays one of them is woth 10% and other one is worth 20%. There is a group presentation which involves speeches worth 10% and a midsemester test (which you sit online) worth 20%. Dont worry too much about the number of internals its not too hard getting a good mark on these. Likewise the finals are quite straight foward. You wont have to spend much time getting a good mark, but do go to the lectures and keep up with the readings.
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Originally Posted by skyglow1
The only one where reading has a chance of being examined is HUBS. Even then, I really don't think it's worth it putting that much time into the readings to gain such a small number of marks. Then again, a significant number of students find that doing the readings helps them understand the material etc. But yeah stuff in the readings beyond the lecture slides should not be examinable. There's enough to worry about in the lectures already lol.
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Originally Posted by koochkooch
Try to remain focussed on your papers this semester. I know of people who lost motivation after sitting this test which dragged their average down signficantly. Keep in mind that your grades are FAR more important than the UMAT and although UMAT has a heavy weighting, it's not the be all and end all that it's made out to be. So keep yours heads up, this semester won't be easy but try to keep it together!! I'm sure most of you will make it
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Originally Posted by skyglow1
I'd like to point out something here for all those prospective healthsci students thinking about which hall to apply to. Although it may be true that Carrington and St Margs consistently produce a large number of med students compared to other halls, as you will learn in Epi this correlation does not imply causation. If anything, it is more likely that the sort of student that these halls get applications for and accept are more likely to get into medicine.

Sure, tutorials held by Tony Zaharic and what not may be of a slight advantage (although even on that point, the most capable students seem to prefer to spend time doing their own study rather than sitting through a basic tutorial) but really what hall you are at will not significantly impact on your chances of getting into med in my experience/opinion. I feel that the idea that you're disadvantaging yourself by going to a hall that's not Carrignton/St Margs is total rubbish. If you have what it takes to get into med, then you will get in no matter what hall you are at pretty much. Going to St Margs/Carrington does not mean you can slack off because you have godly tutors. You will have to work your arse off to get into med whichever hall you are at. You should choose a hall for different reasons such as location, how the rooms are etc. I have a feeling the other 2nd/3rd years have the same opinion.



There are a lot of factors at play - you definitely can't say that every Cambridge student has an advantage over every NCEA student because that's FAR from the truth. It depends on how much the student applied themselves at high school, what subjects they took etc etc. Personally I found that the subjects I did in Cambridge prepared me well for HSFY. That being said, if I had done NCEA and worked as hard at it as I did in Cambridge, I would not have felt worried or disadvantaged at all coming into HSFY, so don't worry about it.

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Originally Posted by greenglacier
It's a bit of a shame that the test is getting easier, but to be fair, the mark distribution for the 1st test last year was pretty good - heaps of people got above 70% (it's just very few got above 90%). Last year heaps of people got the prevention questions wrong and it sounds like they've decided to remove the prevention lecture from the course as a result, so that would have been a strong contributor to any change in difficulty (it's a recurring theme in the epi paper - if students have difficultly with a topic they remove it from the paper). Anyway, I wouldn't rest easy - I don't know the averages but I very strongly suspect that they dropped throughout the course (i.e. average in 2nd test lower than 1st and average in final lower than in 2nd test), so there could quite easily still be a lot of separation to come in this paper.
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Originally Posted by greenglacier
HEAL192 remains possibly the only place in HSFY when you are genuinely tested on your ability to demonstrate understanding of material through application to new situations.
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Originally Posted by patkirtan
I think you can't compare NCEA and Health Sci performance AT ALL.

1- In health Science we all get the same/similar quality of education from the lecturer and lab demonstrators.

NCEA looks at a wider range of the population, some schools are more disadvantaged than others, there are different teachers,teaching methods, facilities involved in educating students. Within the classroom one might see 20 percent of students getting E's, but within 3 classrooms it might be lower, i really think this is a really important factor, i remember 30 percent of my class got E for our Bio Essay last year, whilst in the other classes it was around 10-15 percent. This was heavily moderated, so i don't think there was a certain bias towards my class.

...just saying...

2- NCEA focusses on Concepts and Critical thinking [ which in my opinion is HARDER to do well in]

Health Sci is just memorizing, A LOT of it. ><" [ there is quite a bit of understanding involved, but when i did Cels and Hubs exams last semester, i realized if i just memorized the slides, it wouldn't have disadvantaged me much]

I know that the guy who got the Science Cup in our school last year got straight E's for Chemistry and Physics last year, yet he got an A for Chem. It really depends whether you're a Uni or NCEA person, tbh?

Originally Posted by skyglow1
Being accepted into Carrington probably says quite a bit about your potential chances of getting into med, but I doubt it helps/hurts your chances of getting into med significantly.

Thinking epi wise......for the relationship "Being in Carrington <--------> Accepted into med", "being a well above average student" is probably a confounder
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Randomisation is the best way to deal with confounding, but the only problem is it's completely unethical to randomise students into different halls!
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These are really spot on in the execution department, but the things I consider most important for success in any field/activity are motivation and self-assessment/efficiency.

New healthscis will be extremely motivated to the point where everyone is scribbling down what's on the lecture slides for the first lecture onto their neatly titled refill page, with their colour-coordinated highlighter set only a fingertip away, despite the lecturer saying not to copy anything down because you don't need to know it
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The problem lies in keeping up this motivation throughout the whole year, so make sure you write down somewhere 3 or more of the best reasons why you're putting yourself through the hell that is HSFY
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You can refer to this every time you want to stab yourself in the eyes with your pen from too much study, or when you really really don't feel like getting up for that 8am lecture you know you should go to :p This is also where goal setting falls under, which is a good habit.

Self-assessment is being aware of how well you are carrying out the tasks you need to do in order to achieve your goal. This where all the stuff like "study well, memorise everything, answer the question" falls under. You want to be as efficient and effective as possible in everything you do. Questions you should be asking yourself every day for example: Am I studying well? Is there a way I could study better that suits me? How? How well am I memorising stuff? Is there a faster way to memorise this stuff? How well am I answering questions? How could I improve this? etc. etc. Basically, you need to ask yourself "am I getting what needs to be done (your execution) in the fastest and most effective way possible", and if the answer is no (which it usually is), ask yourself how you could improve your execution.

This approach can be generalised to pretty much anything actually. If you apply it to healthsci, it becomes clear how you use all that information bombarded at you in the form of "study tips" and all that: advice from other people provides ideas for how you could improve your execution. E.g. Don't think your current sleep schedule is optimal? You could try
polyphasic sleep
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Note: I'm not actually recommending polyphasic sleep...it takes too long to get used to and its longterm health effects are a bit unknown :p

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Originally Posted by greenglacier
Last year we got our marks immediately after sitting the GLM tests for CELS (this year you only get them after the test closes), and in fact for the first GLM we got 2 attempts. This led to people collaborating, using their first attempts to try out possible answers, or using "lesser students" (BSc students taking CELS) attempts to do the same thing, trying to find the correct answers and then upon finding them passing them around their friends/study groups. At the time it was just what you did to get a good mark, but it could definately be regarded as cheating.

You'll see when you do the GLM tests (particularly the second one) that many of the questions are very vague in what they want, and not really written from the perspective of a student sitting the test (e.g. a sentence with gaps to fill in - while the correct complete sentence may make sense, there are many other possibilities that would also make sense - something that didn't seem to have been considered by the writer. For example, there was one question last year where a few of us were debating the best grammatical interpretation of a comma, just because that interpretation would change the best answer). There are also questions where the answer could be so easily debated (classic one from the second test last year - which 3 of these 6 diseases would an unvaccinated first year university student be most likely to get?), yet you are expected to choose one definate answer. There were also instances where the "correct" answer directly contradicted the textbook readings and resources you were told to refer to in the relevant part of the GLM booklet.

So yes, while the material is harder than HUBS, the hard part comes down to working out how you are meant to interpret many of the test questions, with subtleties in the wording becoming very important, and in the end it can just be a matter of "does my opinion agree with the examiners?". This is why so much cheating resulted - I doubt it would have happened if doing well on the test had just been about knowing the stuff. This is also why I would rather it was in the exam - at least then you demonstrate your knowledge and understanding through the quality of your explanations (rather than having to approach a question with exactly the same mindset as the writer).

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Originally Posted by koochkooch

Oh, advice for CELS Term's Test:

1. Synthesise the lecture audio and slides into one set of notes then memorise the HELL out of those notes. But remember not to only memorise, but (more importantly) to understand what is trying to be conveyed and to relate it to the 'bigger picture'.

2. As greenglacier pointed out, it's a good idea to have a look at the lecture objectives as the lecturers tend to write their questions based on these.

3. Only use the text book if you're still unable to understand a concept after listening to the audio, reading the slides AND asking someone.

4. Never, and I mean NEVER underestimate the difficulty of this test. The questions can be very tricky at times.

5. Do the past exam papers! Page 13 of the 2007 CELS Final exam was copy pasted in the 2009 Term's Test - it could potentially happen again!

6. Don't neglect the second module - you have NO idea how dodgy that genetics lecturer's questions can be. I remember a question last year about sweat glands in females being X-linked or something. It was a multi-choice question. Learn that concept if you know what I'm referring to

7. Again, as Dr. greenglacier rightly said, use the study questions! They give them to you for a reason: because the questions there are likely to be similar to your Term's test/Final exam questions!!

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Originally Posted by koochkooch
Just some thoughts..

Final tips for the test:
1. Keep your cool before the test. A lot of people will be stressing out, asking each other last minute questions. Ignore it all. If you can, just put on some headphones and listen to some music to keep yourself relaxed. Staying relaxed will clear your head.
2. Read each question at least twice before answering --> probably the most important. This is this especially the case for the genetics questions!!
3. Use elimination for MCQs
4. Answer the SAQs directly (don't waffle...just get straight to the point). If you feel that your answer isn't long enough, think of what you could have possibly missed. Then, just for safety purposes, write down any extra information you know on that topic (even if it's not directly linked to the question). They won't penalise you for adding extra information.
5. Do the easy questions first and leave the difficult ones till the end. This boosts your confidence and by the time you come back to the hard ones, the information from the easy questions would have triggered your memory.

Good luck future Doctors =)

Originally Posted by skyglow1
I think it's being a bit too eager beaver haha. Just wait until you can log in to the system then you can have a look at past papers.

Here's a note about textbooks from me seeing as HSFYs will probably be thinking about them right now. This is only my opinion and I'm not so sure its a popular one. If I was sitting HSFY in 2011 I wouldn't buy any of the textbooks. I think the textbooks are mostly a waste of money, and I also think that people waste SO much time looking at the textbook. The best resource and the most important resource you have by far are the lecture slides and what the lecturers say out loud. THOSE are the things that will be tested on. The textbook is there to aid in your understanding of concepts you may find difficult, in which case you could easily just borrow your friends one from your hall to have a brief look.

HUBS: sure there are some things tested from the textbook, but really the number of marks you gain is miniscule compared to the amount of effort you would need to put in. Why not spend those hours reading the textbook on something more useful like nailing the lecture material for CELS or CHEM 100%?

CHEM: may be useful to help understanding of some concepts, but really you shouldn't run into too many problems about concepts, and if you do just borrow someone elses textbook.

CELS: no need to learn anything from the textbook, just know every of every lecture perfectly (of course you wouldn't learn things like when the first microscope was made etc. etc.)

PHSI: because the textbook is written by the university now, it is way better. It was a different horrible textbook beforehand. If physics is your weak point then definitely get this book. It has a lot of questions in it too which are good practice.

HEAL: the textbook I found helpful when I did HSFY. Not so sure about how helpful it is anymore. I would be more inclined to borrow this book off someone else.

BIOC: no, everything you need is on the lecture slides.

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Originally Posted by ChickenPie
I don't entirely agree with skyglow that textbooks are unnecessary, but in all honesty you can just go the library and use them there.

I found that textbooks made it simple to learn a concept - especially for papers where you can't rote learn the slides, such as physics and chemistry (memorising the slides for those wouldn't be very useful and would just give you a false sense of security)

For CHEM they were a good source of questions, which I thought helped me for that paper. You could just use it before the exam in the library though.

For PHSI I found the textbook immensely helpful. I didn't even really look at the slides - just the textbook. It is written for the course and contains very little "non-essential" information. The questions aren't liked by everyone, but I wasn't too fussed.

You can certainly do without CELS. In fact, using the CELS textbook is probably a disadvantage - the prescribed readings are usually much wider than the actual coursework.

Same for BIOC. I didn't buy a BIOC textbook and wouldn't have used one.

HUBS is useful, even just for diagrams. That was usually the reason I used it.

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Originally Posted by skyglow1
In terms of preparation, no I don't think skimming through the HSFY text books would help. Refer to GG's good post on prep over the summer:



Personally, if I were doing HSFY again and wanting to prepare myself over the summer, I would:
1. Get as much sleep, rest and relaxation as possible. Might not be so luxurious once you start HSFY.
2. Write down on a piece of paper/word document the reasons why I am doing HSFY and why I would like to gain entry into medicine/dentistry/etc, and I'd update this throughout the year if it changes. Being able to look back at this to remind yourself why you're putting yourself through hell is so important come halfway through semester 1. You'll be extremely motivated and excited at the start of the year, which is the case for everyone, but people lose motivation so quickly when the course starts getting really hard with tests etc., and people lose sight of why they entered HSFY in the first place.
3. Have a rough idea of how you're going to approach lectures and study. I say only 'rough' because it will surely change and adapt once you star the course. How are you going to make notes? How are you going to learn from your notes? Are you going to use a laptop in the lectures? How are you going to use your laptop? etc. There is some degree of experimentation when HSFY starts as to what the best system for you is, but don't be one of those that tries and wings it throughout the course.

The website with lecture slides, called "Blackboard", isn't available until the course starts, and the slides are put up as the lectures take place over the semester, so you don't have access to all the slides immediately or anything.

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Originally Posted by greenglacier
No - there isn't anywhere near as much thinking involved in HSFY compared to NCEA. With the exception of CHEM and PHSI the concepts are all really basic and never tested to a high level (you never have to understand anything in as much depth as you need to in NCEA). You don't need to worry about explaining stuff in physics either because the exam is all MCQ (which doesn't really help with the calculation stuff but makes the conceptual stuff SO much easier). The biology paper covers cell biology, genetics, biotechnology, and microbiology - so definitely playing to your strengths.

The catch is however that the amount of content in HSFY far surpasses anything in NCEA - so while you won't have to think that hard about things, you'll have to work hard due to the sheer memorisation involved.

Quotes from GG on BIOC192
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Originally Posted by greenglacier
BIOC is a CELS-style paper, but way more organised/run by much better administrative staff, and with a definite chemistry slant to the topics. Kinetics and thermodynamics/equilibria comes back, and there's stuff on molecular forces in the "protein structure and function" module, and you've got to be able to name organic molecules/be familiar with the reactions they can undergo, but there's minimal reaction mechanisms - just a little bit in enzymes

Agree re textbooks, was a complete waste of money for almost all of them - especially the online textbook for Cels.
Phsi and Hubs are the only useful ones.

Imo, the Heal textbook wasn't bad at all either, it was at perfectly the right level, with extra explanations if you wanted it. But yeah, PHSI and HUBS textbooks are definitely worth the buy, if it isn't too troublesome to get them second hand.
Agreed about the stats thingy - if you think that you're pretty decent at maths, not downright horrible, stats gets a lot of people high grades, the final is completely multi choice, and there's plussage as well so assignments/tests don't really matter that much. They do teach some new content, but a good 1/3 of the course(at least) is NCEA lvl 3 + there's some HEAL coverage too.
Nice tips, inflow, not sure about starting a whole new thread, but very good nonetheless (y)
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