JCU JCU Medicine: Interview Discussion

[bbbb]

Just thought i'd add that JCU seem to place a large emphasis on the written application- i've heard of lots of people with ATARS of 99+ not being offered an interview - Good luck

 

[Benjamin]

I don't think there are "correct" and "incorrect" responses to certain questions per se - particulary in the debating part of the interview - but rather they are looking for responses that satisfy their criteria (which is unknown to applicants).

Not to be cynical but I think there are certain responses that would certainly not be taken well and would really require a lot of very thought out answers in order to still perform well - e.g. any negative perspective about refugee health would require a LOT of explaining & similar progressive topics answered with a right-wing approach probably wouldn't go down well.

Keep in mind that JCU uses the interview to select candidates that they want, that you are interviewed by people JCU has selected, that JCU's mission statement is progressive by nature (in terms of human rights etc) and anything that blatantly works against this tends to be shunned.

 

[Queen]

Thank you very much Harry99 and congratualtions on your offer. Past threads say that JCU interview is quite laid back. Was it like that for you? Were you nervous? Do you think i need an ATAR of at least 99 to be competitive as a non rural?
Thanks

I just saw this and wanted to put my two cents in The JCU interview is formal, however from my experience last year, they are friendly and do not purposefully try to intimidate you or make you feel uncomfortable in any manner. Moreover, like many other students, I too, was quite nervous when I walked into the room however as the first few minutes passed, you find yourself starting to ease into the interview. Believe me, everyone is in the same boat as you are and very few people are completely confident before going to an interview; everyone does feel nervous and anxious to a certain extent, but this is completely normal.
In terms of ATAR, it is better if you have an ATAR of at least 99 however I can say that as a non-rural, standard applicant this did not necessarily apply for me. I am an IB candidate, and my predicted score was 44/45 (ATAR 99.85); however, due to certain surprises and unexpected turns, I ended up getting a final score of 40/45 (ATAR 98.30). Clearly, my ATAR went from being very competitive to quite concerning (in terms of medicine and the competitiveness needed). However, I actually had my interview in the first round (30th Nov, to be exact) last year, based upon my predicted score. I got an offer this year for the MBBS program at JCU, but I saw on forums where students with a higher ATAR than me got rejected -- from this, I felt that the interview and application are definitely big factors of the admissions process. So yes, an ATAR of >99 definitely puts you in a safe place, but remember to try and do the best you can on your interview and application form because they can be a deciding factor.

Since you are applying for 2017 med, if you need any more information on the application or interview, just message me. (there are probably more experienced people, however I'm just offering because it's still quite fresh in my mind and my interview/form was in the most recent admissions process).

 

[k01]

Thank you all of you for helping me! I usually become very very nervous at an interview? Just wondering how you managed it during your interview Harry99, bbbb and Queen? Are there any strategies to perform well in the interview?
Thanks

 

[Queen]

Thank you all of you for helping me! I usually become very very nervous at an interview? Just wondering how you managed it during your interview Harry99, bbbb and Queen? Are there any strategies to perform well in the interview?
Thanks

Some strategies to do well could be to try and mentally prepare yourself for some of the questions that will be asked. I can't guarantee you what questions you will get asked as it varies between students, however some of the basic questions are obviously: Why do you want to become a doctor, Why JCU, Why rural medicine etc. I don't recommend that you sit down and write out paragraphs for each of the questions and memorise them, as this clearly shows. However, there is no harm in slightly running over what you could possibly say to such questions in our head a few days or weeks before your interview, just so you aren't caught off guard during the interview.
Another great strategy on the day is to take a few deep breaths and sit by yourself. Other students may know each other and may start talking about how prepared they are, how well they know this and that etc. -- this may not necessarily be true, but this kind of talk does tend to catch some of the more nervous students, who now feel terrified and unprepared. Sit by yourself or with your parents, and just have a small chat (not about med or interviews) with your parents, or if by yourself, listen to music.

Remember, nervousness is part of the process! No one will ever feel completely confident or prepared, and the interviewers know that you are young. Some of the best performers on the UMAT, interviews and more always say they felt quite nervous both when they went in and came out, so don't feel to stressed about it. As weird as it sounds, just try to enjoy the interview and take it as a learning experience in your life

 

[Benjamin]

Sorry. You're definitely a lot more knowledgable than me on the topic! I emitted that section from my post

No stress! I think it's just an important point to bring up as people that are completely external to the medical field might not be entirely aware of that particular part.

Since you are applying for 2017 med, if you need any more information on the application or interview, just message me. (there are probably more experienced people, however I'm just offering because it's still quite fresh in my mind and my interview/form was in the most recent admissions process).

We definitely need people like you and Harry! At this point I'm 7 years removed from the admissions process and still working get the answers for people, but it's certainly not easy when I don't actually know any 1st years personally and haven't been involved at all in the admissions process since 2013.

 

[faysapprentice]

Not to be cynical but I think there are certain responses that would certainly not be taken well and would really require a lot of very thought out answers in order to still perform well - e.g. any negative perspective about refugee health would require a LOT of explaining & similar progressive topics answered with a right-wing approach probably wouldn't go down well.

Keep in mind that JCU uses the interview to select candidates that they want & that the medical profession tends to be progressive by political nature (in terms of human rights etc) and anything that blatantly works against this tends to be shunned.

I would disagree that you need to be super progressive, during the argument part my topic was should female athletes earn the same as men and I argued against it that men should earn more than women as it is now and defended it to successfully get an unbonded seat
I think mostly just stick to your own opinions and reasons and it should be good

 

[Harry99]

Some strategies to do well could be to try and mentally prepare yourself for some of the questions that will be asked. I can't guarantee you what questions you will get asked as it varies between students, however some of the basic questions are obviously: Why do you want to become a doctor, Why JCU, Why rural medicine etc. I don't recommend that you sit down and write out paragraphs for each of the questions and memorise them, as this clearly shows. However, there is no harm in slightly running over what you could possibly say to such questions in our head a few days or weeks before your interview, just so you aren't caught off guard during the interview.
Another great strategy on the day is to take a few deep breaths and sit by yourself. Other students may know each other and may start talking about how prepared they are, how well they know this and that etc. -- this may not necessarily be true, but this kind of talk does tend to catch some of the more nervous students, who now feel terrified and unprepared. Sit by yourself or with your parents, and just have a small chat (not about med or interviews) with your parents, or if by yourself, listen to music.

Remember, nervousness is part of the process! No one will ever feel completely confident or prepared, and the interviewers know that you are young. Some of the best performers on the UMAT, interviews and more always say they felt quite nervous both when they went in and came out, so don't feel to stressed about it. As weird as it sounds, just try to enjoy the interview and take it as a learning experience in your life

That is excellent advice!

 

[Benjamin]

I would disagree that you need to be super progressive, during the argument part my topic was should female athletes earn the same as men and I argued against it that men should earn more than women as it is now and defended it to successfully get an unbonded seat
I think mostly just stick to your own opinions and reasons and it should be good

Sure, I agree to an extent. I don't mean to say that people with non-progressive views don't get admitted to JCU medicine - they certainly do. The topics that JCU choose are debatable by nature and debatable for a reason, generally there are two equally strong sides to each argument. In saying that, there are certainly a few topics which have been brought up by JCU before that if you presented two candidates who argued their points equally well then the more progressive/more aligned with JCU's mission statement would (in my opinion) be more likely to get admitted.

That is not to say you should drastically change your response to a question if you are faced with one where your opinion does not match JCU's mission statement - all my advice about dealing with debating questions has always been that when you choose a specific debating question it should be the question you could most easily argue both sides for/are the most informed about. As in any debate, the best way to win is to know what the other side is going to say and counter it before they can say it.

My point is just that there is an inherent bias in these debating topics and that for the best chance in an interview it's probably best to play to that bias; just like everyone in JCU interviews says they want to go rural when in reality most probably haven't even thought that had about it.

Spoiler: P.S.

I have moved these conversations to the JCU Interview thread!

 

[k01]

Thank you bbbb for your help! You got many offers and congratulations! I am predicted an OP 2 which is an ATAR of 98 i think. Just wondering whether you will be able to tell me how to do well in the JCU interview? What do they look for in applicants from their interview? Were you also nervous at the interview? Were your debating and scenario questions hard? What do they look for in their debating and scenario questions? Thanks!

 

[Olives]

First of all, @Benjamin, I just wanted to say that I really appreciate your willingness to answer so many questions. I can't imagine that it's particularly enjoyable answering the same questions over and over again.

For anyone who is currently studying/has studied at JCU, I've just got a few questions about how placements work. (I've deferred my course start date until 2018, so it'll be a long time before any of this is relevant, but I'm just very excited

For placements that are organised by the student, do we approach the doctor ourselves? What if we wanted to do our placement in a hospital, would we just wander through the wards and attach ourselves to the first consultant we found?

For placements that are organised by JCU, do we get to preference areas/hospitals, or is it randomly assigned?

Do multiple students get assigned to the same site?

Given that Townsville Hospital is across the road, are many placements conducted there?

How do students who don't have cars get to placement? Are there opportunities to organise carpooling?

Are there significant costs associated with placement?

For rural placements, how do students typically get to their placement site? I'm assuming not all of them would have cars, do Greyhound buses go all the way out to Charleville? During rural placements, particularly longer placements, is there university accommodation, or are students expected to sort out their own accommodation?

Thanks!

 

[Benjamin]

First of all, @Benjamin, I just wanted to say that I really appreciate your willingness to answer so many questions. I can't imagine that it's particularly enjoyable answering the same questions over and over again.

Always happy to try and help out, there's a pretty heavy lack of information specifically re: the questions you've asked. In reality I doubt many of the 1st years actually know the answers to these questions themselves! I'll answer as best I can.

For placements that are organised by the student, do we approach the doctor ourselves? What if we wanted to do our placement in a hospital, would we just wander through the wards and attach ourselves to the first consultant we found?

This depends on whether you know any consultants or not. If you happen to have a family friend in a field that interests you/that works in a senior position at a hospital often they can help you organise a placement or at least lend their name to the organisation process which will speed up the process a little bit. Generally though (even if you know a consultant) you contact the Medical Education department at the hospital - almost every large hospital will have one - or if it's a smaller hospital (i.e. rural) often you will have to go through the Medical Superintendent.

The best way to do this is generally by a combination of e-mail & phone call. I have had the best success with sending through an e-mail and then calling ~1 hour later to say, "Hey, I'm applying for a placement here and I've sent an e-mail through - can you have a look at it and tell me what you think/what else you want to know/is this possible or should I apply elsewhere?". If you can't find a phone number for the medical education department you can usually call the hospital directly & get forwarded through the switchboard.

For placements that are organised by JCU, do we get to preference areas/hospitals, or is it randomly assigned?

Yes, you get preferences. Are those preferences well allocated? Ehhhh, depends who you ask. The issue that JCU has in this regard is that there are a few VERY sought after placements - e.g. Proserpine (Whitsundays), Atherton (close to Cairns), Thursday Island (actually a really good placement), Innisfail (large-ish hospital close to Cairns), Ingham (large-ish hospital close to Townsville) - and a tonne of placements that no one really wants, e.g. Winton/Blackall/Boulia/Moranbah etc. The result of this is that a lot of students apply with their first 4-5 preferences as the popular ones and then JCU is left with 200 students all applying for 40 spots and another 160 spots to fill "somehow". Everyone that doesn't get those preferences tends to be subsequently randomly balloted which is the cause of a great amount of angst.

I'm obviously a little bit removed from the situation now but it certainly was an issue when I went through and was 'being solved' but was also certainly still an issue this year. I don't think it will ever get 'solved'.

Do multiple students get assigned to the same site?

Depends on the site! Some places get a lot of students, some get 1. For example, Mt Isa has a fairly reasonable capacity for students and tends to have ~10-15 medical students at any one time. In contrast, Winton will only ever have 1 student at a time. Most placements that they send 2nd - 4th years on are in groups, while in 6th year they tend to throw you in the deep end a little more and send you to the middle of nowhere on your own.

Given that Townsville Hospital is across the road, are many placements conducted there?

The medical cohort is split up in 4th year. 1/3 of students go to Cairns, 1/4 to Mackay and the rest stay in Townsville. Those that stay in Townsville for 4/5/6 will do their placements at a mixture of the Townsville Public & Private (Mater) hospitals.

How do students who don't have cars get to placement? Are there opportunities to organise carpooling?

Great question. Again, you're pretty much on your own in this regard. If you have another student that's going to the same placement as you then absolutely, if not... well, yeah. For the most part this isn't really an issue until 4th year when you get sent to a million different places all across your city.

Are there significant costs associated with placement?

Yes. Most places JCU will send you have either free or very subsidised rent. In saying that, you will still need to pay rent at the place you were living before the placement - i.e. just because you're on rural for 4/52 doesn't mean you don't have to pay rent + utilities for your original accomodation back home while you're there. Similarly, you often have to pay for fuel/travel costs to get there. In the first few years there's also a significant cost re: clinical clothes. Very few undergraduate students will have a warddrobe appropriate for clinical placement without having to buy a few things, heck I just bought a bunch more clothes today! Some JCU placement accomodation won't have EDUROAM (internet) and so you'll have to pay for extra data on your phone plan .. this was honestly probably one of my biggest expenses.

The other significant 'cost' of rural placement is your inability to work and the fact that it hinders your ability to get a job. It's very hard to find a job on a rural placement for the 4/52 you're there and at the same time it's difficult to keep a job when you tell them you'll be away for 4/52 during the busiest seasons (i.e. holidays at end of year etc). This is something you really have to keep in mind.

For rural placements, how do students typically get to their placement site? I'm assuming not all of them would have cars, do Greyhound buses go all the way out to Charleville?

Ideally you have your own car and JCU will reimburse you for travel costs. I strongly caution anyone going to a rural area to go there without their own transport - JCU will fly you to most places free of charge but it also means you don't have a car/transport/escape etc. Not having transport of your own in a place where you are already isolated is an incredibly isolating experience. JCU will reimburse you per km you have to travel for fuel but they won't pay this to you until AFTER you complete your placement ... which if you're driving from Cairns - Mt Isa and back usually means finding ~$500 for fuel which isn't terribly easy as a student.

During rural placements, particularly longer placements, is there university accommodation, or are students expected to sort out their own accommodation?

Brought up earlier but in general JCU organised placements will have their own either free or heavily subsidised accomodation. This accomodation will vary in quality - some places have JCU internet, some have no internet, some are like refurbished ex-drug dens (looking at you, Babinda), some are like mansions. If it is a placement that isn't organised by JCU then you'll have to sort it out yourself and generally the hospital you organise the placement through will have their own hospital accomodation, generally this is in the ballpark of $100-150/week but can also be cheaper.

 

[Awat]

@Benjamin I just rang JCU in an attempt to find out my GPA. I've got a 3yr degree (finished in 2014) with a GPA of 6, then I did 1/2 semester on exchange as part of this degree (GPA7), 1 year of non-degree study (GPA 6) and now I'm doing another degree (1 yr in by the end of 2017) in NZ with a current GPA of 7. They said they'd look at both my most recent year and my degree but that the degree would be more heavily weighted in the final analysis? What sort of GPA should I be calculating then? Cheers.

 

[Benjamin]

What sort of GPA should I be calculating then?

Great question but I don't have an answer for you beyond what JCU has already told you, sorry! If you finished your previous degree with a 6.0 & are currently on a 7.0 then arguably you're going to have a GPA between 6-7 range. The likelihood is that they will just aggregate all the scores together and average them over each semester - i.e. your average over 6 semesters (3 years) was a 6.0 & now over another 2 semesters is a 7.0 (assuming continuing HD's), this means your previous degree is more 'heavily weighted' .. a safe bet would be that you'd be somewhere in the 6.25-6.5 range but honestly unsure/JCU may well add some further weighting that I'm unaware of.

Sorry, it's been a while since I've been directly involved in the non-standard entry pathway. I'm also not certain how the NZ GPA scoring system translates across to JCU but in general a HD = HD = 7.0GPA in Australia.

 

[Grape]

Hi there,
I realized that I have an exam on the 14th of Nov, I believe this is the same date as the JCU interviews. If I get an interview, and it happens to be on the same date will I be able to change my interview date? I'm also from NZ so transport is a bit difficult haha.

 

[A1]

I realized that I have an exam on the 14th of Nov, I believe this is the same date as the JCU interviews.

14th may be the date they send out offers, this year's interview dates will be 28 Nov - 7 Dec
https://www.jcu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/272756/2018-MBBS-Info-Sheet.pdf

 

[cobe0515]

For anyone in their later years of the course (4th 5th 6th years) what are the internship allocations like? Do most JCU graduates still apply to stay in north queensland where they did clinical placements during their course? Do some people also recieve internship placements interstate or even into the city?

 

[Concon]

Hi!
I was wondering if JCU held interviews outside of the Townsville campus ie other states? As I'm in WA I wanna try figure it a way of minimising costs especially when return flights are upwards of $500, but if necessary of course I'll fork out the cash.

 

[Mana]

Hi!
I was wondering if JCU held interviews outside of the Townsville campus ie other states? As I'm in WA I wanna try figure it a way of minimising costs especially when return flights are upwards of $500, but if necessary of course I'll fork out the cash.

I doubt it. If you can't make it to JCU to interview there are many others who would gladly take your spot. JCU are well aware of this as well.

 

[Sen]

Hey everyone. I had my jcu interview last week and got offered a place yesterday. Happy to help anyone regarding the interview!