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Non-standard Medicine Entry

deadazzz said:
Does this mean that, now, their ATAR also now don't matter as they already received an interview
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Although UNSW doesn't say it explicitly, we believe since best of btwn GPA & ATAR is used for interview selection then best of will also be used for place offers i.e. GPA + UCAT + Interview if ATAR is less.

(I just wanted to point out in the post above that although we say GPA + UCAT + Interview, it's actually the ATAR-like Selection Rank (of the GPA) + UCAT + Interview).
 
hey, i am not sure if this is the right place, but I know you can resit the UCAT if you're on a gap year. But is it possible to do resit UCAT while you're in university and apply for medical schools?
 
cocodreams said:
oh okay, so why do people sit GAMSAT? Is it because some unis e.g. Melb Uni only accept GAMSAT while others also accept UCAT?
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GAMSAT is a test for graduate entry into medicine i.e. for a 4 year course. You need to have a completed degree to get in via graduate entry.

Non-standard entry is for those applying to undergraduate entry schools, most of which include UCAT as part of their admissions criteria currently.
 
Hi all - I wanted to ask how GPA/WAM works during university? Essentially wanted to know:
  1. What the difference between the two were
  2. What each actually mean in terms of university course marks (I hear about High Distinction and Distinctions?)
  3. What the WAM is out of (I know GPA is out of 7)
  4. How hard is achieving a 6.5+ GPA in general (b/c I have no idea how uni workload compares to high school)
  5. Is the WAM/GPA a percentile, is there a set quota/cutoff as to how many students can obtain a 7 GPA for example?
  6. Does GPA/WAM change depending on university?
Thank you for your time kind people of MSO :)
 
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aeongg said:
Hi all - I wanted to ask how GPA/WAM works during university? Essentially wanted to know:
  1. What the difference between the two were
  2. What each actually mean in terms of university course marks (I hear about High Distinction and Distinctions?)
  3. What the WAM is out of (I know GPA is out of 7)
  4. How hard is achieving a 6.5+ GPA in general (b/c I have no idea how uni workload compares to high school)
  5. Is the WAM/GPA a percentile, is there a set quota/cutoff as to how many students can obtain a 7 GPA for example?
  6. Does GPA/WAM change depending on university?
Thank you for your time kind people of MSO :)
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1. GPA is a grade system -> most commonly 1-7 where 7 is the highest, sometimes 1-4 also. These grades are calculated for each subject partaken in, and then averaged over the units. WAM is just the average of the percentages scored in the units.
2. HD and D etc. is a way which some unis like to denote their number grades for example: 7 is HD, 6 D, 5 Credit etc. And each uni has a different percentage cutoff for a 6/7 etc. Most have 85% as the 7 cutoff, where as some have 80%, depending on the university.
3. WAM is out of 100% (WAM stands for weighted average mark)
4. Cannot answer this, depends on personal interest and dedication to the course, and a range of different factors. But I would say on the whole, anything above a 6 will come with some sort of challenge at the very least.
5. No. WAM is a percentage, and GPA isn't on a curve. Although they do create the assessments and the % cutoffs for GPA to try and emulate a bell curve. There is often scaling up of marks so they follow the curve, but they will never scale down grades.
6. Yes it does, for example: UNSW uses WAM, whereas UQ uses GPA. Each have their pros and cons, but are both equally as valid as each other.

Hope this helps king.
 
1. A WAM is a simple average of all your total grades in all your courses. The GPA is the average of all your grade points (similar to bands in the HSC). Your uni mark is given a grade point out of 7 (0 - fail, 4-pass, 5-credit, 6-distinction, 7-high distinction) and your GPA is the average of all of these. (some Uni's use a 4.0 system however)

2. These classifications are just the names of the level of achievements you achieve in a course based off your marks. Uni classify them differently (e.g. UQ a 7 is 85% and ANU a 7 is 80%)

3. WAM is out of 100

4. Eh its a very personal question, but for the most part it isnt a walk in the park. Depends alot on how well you transition to uni and your interest in the courses you do

5. No WAM and GPA are not percentiles. However in some circumstances the uni's will adjust marks if a cohort does extremely poor for some reason, but otherwise they usually dont touch them

6. I'm not sure what you mean
 
aeongg said:
How hard is achieving a 6.5+ GPA in general (b/c I have no idea how uni workload compares to high school)
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I do Engineering, and keep in mind this question is subjective - my take. Relative to your HSC, you'll find that a 6.5+ GPA is easier. This is not to say it's easy. The amount of content you'll look at in a term is arguably lower than the HSC. Where you won't find it easy is the time sacrifice you have to make, whether that's in terms of social life, personal time, extracurricular commitments, work or other things. Some people can juggle everything but you're most likely not the exception, and you'll find that your mental wellbeing may suffer for it.
 
threefivetwo said:
I do Engineering, and keep in mind this question is subjective - my take. Relative to your HSC, you'll find that a 6.5+ GPA is easier. This is not to say it's easy. The amount of content you'll look at in a term is arguably lower than the HSC. Where you won't find it easy is the time sacrifice you have to make, whether that's in terms of social life, personal time, extracurricular commitments, work or other things. Some people can juggle everything but you're most likely not the exception, and you'll find that your mental wellbeing may suffer for it.
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So are the time demands more intense than the HSC because instead of maintaining a high work ethic and focus for 1 year, you're doing it over several years (over the length of your degree)?
 
threefivetwo said:
I do Engineering, and keep in mind this question is subjective - my take. Relative to your HSC, you'll find that a 6.5+ GPA is easier. This is not to say it's easy. The amount of content you'll look at in a term is arguably lower than the HSC. Where you won't find it easy is the time sacrifice you have to make, whether that's in terms of social life, personal time, extracurricular commitments, work or other things. Some people can juggle everything but you're most likely not the exception, and you'll find that your mental wellbeing may suffer for it.
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Wait what, the workload is lower but the time commitments are higher? Isn't that paradoxical?
 
jdog said:
Wait what, the workload is lower but the time commitments are higher? Isn't that paradoxical?
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At university level you’re expected to be an independent learner. Your time commitments for attending lectures and pracs may be different/seem less (though Uni can be very different hours to high school, anywhere from 8-6 in my experience), but they barely scratch the surface of what you need to put in yourself behind the scenes if you want to do well (especially 6.50-7.00GPA well). This time isn’t timetabled and you can choose to do zero - lots. And this obviously doesn’t include the time you’ll need for other things, ie. work to pay rent/other expenses if you’ve moved away from home (or even if you haven’t, some people will need to work regardless - I did).

Also, the workload might be lower in that you have less overall assignments to do*, but those assignments are entirely completed outside of timetabled hours, often over the course of several weeks, and are frequently a fairly substantial undertaking. It’s not considered ‘homework’ as it was in high school (and where some schools shied away from giving students any/much), it’s completely standard.

*this will be course/unit dependent

ETA: an observation; your replies here routinely indicate that everything about university shocks you, “wait, what?” is your standard response, it seems! It might be useful for you to do some general reading up across various topics!
 
LMG! said:
At university level you’re expected to be an independent learner. Your time commitments for attending lectures and pracs may be different/seem less (though Uni can be very different hours to high school, anywhere from 8-6 in my experience), but they barely scratch the surface of what you need to put in yourself behind the scenes if you want to do well (especially 6.50-7.00GPA well). This time isn’t timetabled and you can choose to do zero - lots. And this obviously doesn’t include the time you’ll need for other things, ie. work to pay rent/other expenses if you’ve moved away from home (or even if you haven’t, some people will need to work regardless - I did).

Also, the workload might be lower in that you have less overall assignments to do*, but those assignments are entirely completed outside of timetabled hours, often over the course of several weeks, and are frequently a fairly substantial undertaking. It’s not considered ‘homework’ as it was in high school (and where some schools shied away from giving students any/much), it’s completely standard.

*this will be course/unit dependent

ETA: an observation; your replies here routinely indicate that everything about university shocks you, “wait, what?” is your standard response, it seems! It might be useful for you to do some general reading up across various topics!
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This. Additionally, the environment of university (and concurrent life stage) is different to that of high school. High school is much more regimented, you're monitored and assisted a great deal more than in university wherein it's expected you are self-motivated and responsible for yourself. Socially, you might be moving to a new place (and/or out of home), starting part-time work, and meeting new people and forming relationships outside of the reasonably narrow constructs of high school - all often for the first time in your life. In this sense, some people thrive whereas others find adjusting to the newness of university and its idiosyncrasies much more difficult (which in turn may be reflected in their GPA).
 
LMG! said:
At university level you’re expected to be an independent learner. Your time commitments for attending lectures and pracs may be different/seem less (though Uni can be very different hours to high school, anywhere from 8-6 in my experience), but they barely scratch the surface of what you need to put in yourself behind the scenes if you want to do well (especially 6.50-7.00GPA well). This time isn’t timetabled and you can choose to do zero - lots. And this obviously doesn’t include the time you’ll need for other things, ie. work to pay rent/other expenses if you’ve moved away from home (or even if you haven’t, some people will need to work regardless - I did).

Also, the workload might be lower in that you have less overall assignments to do*, but those assignments are entirely completed outside of timetabled hours, often over the course of several weeks, and are frequently a fairly substantial undertaking. It’s not considered ‘homework’ as it was in high school (and where some schools shied away from giving students any/much), it’s completely standard.

*this will be course/unit dependent

ETA: an observation; your replies here routinely indicate that everything about university shocks you, “wait, what?” is your standard response, it seems! It might be useful for you to do some general reading up across various topics!
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Ah ok I see, so I've been told by teachers that this year is good practice for uni due to Victoria having online classes for like 5 months, would you guys agree? I mean that in the sense that you tune in for a lecture and are set work - but instead of normally doing this in class and constantly having a teacher there to push you or help you do it - you have to rely on your own motivation, and have to figure out concepts independently without constant handholding (or wait an hour before they respond to emails :p)

Another parallel is with more free time as we didn't have to commute to and from school, or have lunch breaks where you don't have a class - I guess that would be similar to uni since with less contact hours or class time, you will naturally need to study more in your own free time to perform well?

Also - I know that utlizing hours to measure study is absolutely terrible - but I was wondering if this estimation is generally right. So in VCE - a full day (without frees where you may come home early) - is around 7 hours - and we were told to do around 2-3 hours of study. For biomed at uni (a course with higher than avg contact hours I think), contact hours from a quick google is around 23 hours, so about 4.6 a day. So if we extrapolate that we should do 3.04 to 4.56 hours a day if its VCE-level intensity?
 
I feel you are overthinking things. The environment in university is entirely different to high school and the time commitment for each individual will vary widely depending on how well they adjust to uni, the contact hours of their specific degree, what the commitments of that specific week are, whether there are upcoming assessments etc. It would be very difficult to slap a number of hours you’re required to study in light of this.
 
jdog said:
Ah ok I see, so I've been told by teachers that this year is good practice for uni due to Victoria having online classes for like 5 months, would you guys agree? I mean that in the sense that you tune in for a lecture and are set work - but instead of normally doing this in class and constantly having a teacher there to push you or help you do it - you have to rely on your own motivation, and have to figure out concepts independently without constant handholding (or wait an hour before they respond to emails :p)

Another parallel is with more free time as we didn't have to commute to and from school, or have lunch breaks where you don't have a class - I guess that would be similar to uni since with less contact hours or class time, you will naturally need to study more in your own free time to perform well?

Also - I know that utlizing hours to measure study is absolutely terrible - but I was wondering if this estimation is generally right. So in VCE - a full day (without frees where you may come home early) - is around 7 hours - and we were told to do around 2-3 hours of study. For biomed at uni (a course with higher than avg contact hours I think), contact hours from a quick google is around 23 hours, so about 4.6 a day. So if we extrapolate that we should do 3.04 to 4.56 hours a day if its VCE-level intensity?
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I don't think I would compare online schooling to university. There is no work "set" there are assignments for marks, which usually have a task sheet and nothing else. You watch lectures and go to tutorials. The course doesn't say - finish this by next week etc. They don't really care how you progress as long as you pass the course for their success statistics. It is much more cynical in nature. But that's not to say there isn't help available if you seek it out. It takes time to adjust to for everyone, just depends on the person how long that is. You may find that uni is a breeze, or that it is just impossible to adjust to. So makeing predispositions about it isn't gonna get you anywhere. Just try and pick the degree you are most interested in, and then be confident that your interest will assist in your drive to succeed.
 
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