Otago Halls of Residence

[frootloop]

Thanks for that guys! Yeah, from what it sounds, you'll only get out what you put in, regardless of where you are. Does being considered as 'rural' help me considerably?

How hard is it to get into the rest of the professional courses? Pharmacy, Dentistry etc?

Being rural will help. Probably not as much as if you're Maori/PI, but I think SASOL posted on here that 2 years ago, a rural guy was accepted with an 83% average, and lousy UMAT, which is a good 6-7% lower than general admission.
Pharmacy sounds fairly easy (compared to med, obviously) to get into, I've heard somewhere in the 70's will get you in, and they don't use UMAT.
Dentistry has a slightly lower grades cut-off than med, but that could be more due to the interview than anything... Lets just say that there's 180 second year med spots for HSFY'ers, and only 30-40 for dentistry, so it's by no means an easy course to get into... But a solid A average, ok UMAT, and blitzing the interview (I'll let you know how hard that is after I do it, if I get one *crosses fingers*).
ETA: Don't go to Aquinas unless you like walking.... It sounds like a good hall, but lets face it, it's like a 20 minute walk to your 8am lectures if you miss their bus, whereas from unicol, St.Margs, etc, it's like 40 seconds (I'm not kidding) from here to St.David's lecture theatre=winning.
ETA2: Mango, I'd personally put Hayward, but that's just me. Cumby sounds a lot like unicol tbh. Oh, and St.Mags is practically right outside St.Davids (the place you'll have most of your lectures next year).

 

[skyglow1]

You do end up scheduling a lot of your day around the van times, but I don't think I ever had to walk back because of missing a van. As you can imagine they have multiple van runs at each time because there's quite a few people going back and forth in the morning and evening.

 

[frootloop]

[OFFTOPIC]

You do end up scheduling a lot of your day around the van times, but I don't think I ever had to walk back because of missing a van. As you can imagine they have multiple van runs at each time because there's quite a few people going back and forth in the morning and evening.[/QUOTE
Yeah obviously I know nothing about Aquinas, I'm just too disorganised to manage to catch buses on time every day [/OFFTOPIC]

 

[Ramza]

Hi,

I am thinking of putting St Margs then Cumberland/Hayward down. Does anyone know which one is "better" out of the latter two? Also, which one is closest to uni?
Thanks!

I'm going to assume you are going to be hsfy so by far in comparison st margs is much closer, its pretty much opposite st david, where majority of you lectures will be held. I know with st margrets the master will only take 1st options so as mentioned before it really is only worth putting st margarets if it is your first option.

I really really enjoyed my 1st year at st margarets and made friends who moved into all disciplines, it is also a college like selwyn knox, salmond and carrington where a lot of second years stay as well, which even better i thought.
I've got two mates who may be senior R.A's there next year and theyr pretty epic people who study physiology with me. . . . lol im not bias at all, but I will say, halls are really only for making friends and thats it, you will have a lot of bright people with you at st margs but this however can be a good or a bad thing.

 

[Ramza]

Thanks for that guys! Yeah, from what it sounds, you'll only get out what you put in, regardless of where you are. Does being considered as 'rural' help me considerably?

How hard is it to get into the rest of the professional courses? Pharmacy, Dentistry etc?

It may or may not, I do know that most of the poeple I know going to auckland to do health science get medicine, I dont ask them for their grades but yeah. The rest is really answered. But being from hawkes bay means you cannot apply under rural at otago, which means all courses such as dent and what not are competitive, that is unless you are maori. I know that certain schools in hawkes bay are usually garunteed spots at certain colleges i.e st margs as was the case with me.

 

[mango101]

Thanks for the info guys! Yep I want to do HSFY with the aim of getting into med. Do you happen to know how hard it is to get into St Margs? I got a merit endorsement last year so would that be enough academic wise or do they really only accept straight excellence students?
Ramza: Since you obviously went to St Margs....what were the rooms like (eg.old style/modern etc/heated)?

 

[greenglacier]

There aren't enough excellence students out there to fill up all the spots in St. Mags, Carrington, Arana, Knox, and Selwyn, so I wouldn't worry about it. Just make sure you can show good extra-curricular activities. In particular, the halls like to see a high level of achievement/involvement in one field (as opposed to someone who dabbles in lots of fields - not that there's anything wrong with showing breadth of achievement!).

 

[chococroissant]

I applied for
1)Carrington 2) St Marg. 3) Aquinas

 

[Kyle B]

Is there no point putting Arana second?

I have at the moment got Carrington-1 and Arana-2.

 

[chococroissant]

Well, a hall has to come second. Just depends on which hall you want more I suppose

 

[Ramza]

There aren't enough excellence students out there to fill up all the spots in St. Mags, Carrington, Arana, Knox, and Selwyn, so I wouldn't worry about it. Just make sure you can show good extra-curricular activities. In particular, the halls like to see a high level of achievement/involvement in one field (as opposed to someone who dabbles in lots of fields - not that there's anything wrong with showing breadth of achievement!).

I know that many of the people there are chosen on the basis of what they can bring to the st margs community, e.g writing down your grade6-7 piano, playing instruments, you debate, your in the choir, you play lots of sports, prefect/house captain/mediator and you pass all ncea then you have a better chance in comparison to someone who is amazing at one thing. This is because st margarets compete with other halls in debating comps, choir comps, sports events etc etc. Thats really how I think i got in saying how i was an all rounder.

In terms of the rooms. I guess theres 3 types.
- Old original manor style bedrooms, with ceilings as high as a house. thats the main wing (ross wing).
- Clyde wing is the 70's style rooms, similar to that of the rooms in aquinas, unicol,salmond, cumby, arana, real kind of average. that is the exception of the higest floor of clyde block which is probably the newest rooms built only back in 2008. probably compare to a hotel room, the furniture in there is stunning.
- Wilson wing - really new and is just like the annexe part of unicol or the rawiri wing at arana (really big and modern).

All the bathrooms in the hall are private and really new.
The entire hall is centrally heated and every room has there own oil heater. you can leave on as long as you want, best heating ever lol, better than any heat achieved while flatting T.T

 

[frootloop]

Well, a hall has to come second. Just depends on which hall you want more I suppose

Yes, but certain halls (Arana, Carrington, St.Mags... I might have missed some, but basically the more competitive ones) will only take first-choicers, so there's little point putting one of those halls at a preference other than 1.

 

[Ramza]

Yeah Selwyn, St margs, Knox, Carrington, Arana and Salmond (the privately owned affiliates of the university) all choose on the basis of first choice. The others like Unicol, Cumberland, Hayward, Toroa and studholme are University owned and take whats left really. . bad way to put it though. :/

 

[frootloop]

Yeah Selwyn, St margs, Knox, Carrington, Arana and Salmond (the privately owned affiliates of the university) all choose on the basis of first choice. The others like Unicol, Cumberland, Hayward, Toroa and studholme are University owned and take whats left really. . bad way to put it though. :/

lol I'd say it's a fairly accurate way to put it (I'm at Unicol, so I'm allowed to say that )
Toroa sounds a bit weird, I've heard they don't even feed you, so if that's true then I wouldn't got there, but tbh I know people at most at the halls, and nobody really has anything bad to say about their hall....

 

[chococroissant]

Whoops. My bad. Thanx for clearing that up for me and others

 

[frootloop]

Random note, if you high-schoolers have any questions other than about the halls of residence, there's the High school students discussion page (https://www.medstudentsonline.com.au/showthread.php?20354-School-students-discussion-enquiries), and even the HSFY 2011 thread

 

[Ramza]

lol I'd say it's a fairly accurate way to put it (I'm at Unicol, so I'm allowed to say that )
Toroa sounds a bit weird, I've heard they don't even feed you, so if that's true then I wouldn't got there, but tbh I know people at most at the halls, and nobody really has anything bad to say about their hall....

I applied as R.A there next year, really keen for the epic discount. You may know my mate, hes an R.A there atm, Kiran?

 

[frootloop]

[OFFTOPIC]

I applied as R.A there next year, really keen for the epic discount. You may know my mate, hes an R.A there atm, Kiran?

The name is familiar, don't think I've actually ever met him though. Yeah the RA's here get insane discounts, it's like $60 a week, for a place to stay+food. Talk about a sweet deal, might try for that in 3rd year.[/OFFTOPIC]

 

[Ramza]

City college is also privately owned but residency there is split between polytech and uni. Wonderful hall though. I guess entirely this place has the best rooms out of all the halls, really diverse place. This is like 5 min walk from st davids lecture theatre.

 

[frootloop]

Yeah people rip on CityCol for some reason, but I've got a good mate there, and it seems awesome imo, really modern college, warm, awesome rooms...