Otago HSFY chat - archive

[patkirtan]

Ok I'm a bit nervous here and I was wondering about a little bit of advice.

I'm on an exchange this year instead of being in year 13 at school. I have aspirations to do HSFY. So, I have the option of going back to school and possibly being really bored because I am self studying Year 13 content over here. Although I could get into Health Sci and be completely screwed. If I go back to school I could get really good grades but that doesn't really matter once you get to uni apart from for scholarships.

So i suppose i'm asking what do you think i should do, Uni, back to school, foundation year???

Thanks

I reckon Hubs is totally new material, Half of physics is new Material and Half of chem is new material. So it shouldn't be hard to catch up in uni as long as you study hard enough.

 

[OUSchweiz]

Thanks is it completely new material in the sense that you don't really need much of foundation for it or what?

 

[gtr8]

The 250 places in med refers to both domestic and international students. In our class we have 16 international places so 234 total places available for domestics (which includes Australian students)

 

[gtr8]

Depends whether you are doing Cambridge or NCEA, from what I know Cambridge students have a better a background to HSFY material. NCEA level 2 and 3 covers a bit of chem and a lot of physics. Level 3 biology is useless except for the DNA module. Level 2 biology has a really good background to cels 191. In terms of hubs all the content is new. So in my opinion you should be fine doing first year health sci without going back to school however it might be useful brushing up on the relevant areas during the holidays. Hope this helps.

 

[OUSchweiz]

So if i go back over level 2 bio plus the DNA module of Level 3.
Level 2 and 3 chem and physics and maybe look over Cambridge material. Anyone know what is relevant there.
Any books you could recommend me getting my hand on, I'm studying from the internet at the moment.

 

[dee]

Thanks guys, that makes things soo much easier to understand
Just one more q, considering the ATAR for Health Sciences is 74 quite low, we need like an ATAR of 95 to get into Adv Science in most Uni's in Aus, does it mean that the HSFY is an easy degree? Also is the first year similar to sciences in high school?

Thanks again

 

[patkirtan]

Basically, go over most of year 13 chem, optics year 12 (physics), radiation and health (year 13- physics) and year 12 mechanics (physics), study over all of genetics/evolution stuff from year 12/13 Bio. That's all the background you need for Healthsci ...

 

[greenglacier]

The 250 places in med refers to both domestic and international students. In our class we have 16 international places so 234 total places available for domestics (which includes Australian students)

All we know is that there were 1250 HSFYers (domestic + internationals) and 180 were accepted into med (domestic + internationals). We do not actually know the number of domestic HSFYers or the number of domestic students accepted into med who were from HSFY, so the only figure that really can be quoted is 1250 ---> 180

In regards to your second post dee, I would say that the low threshold for entry into HSFY just reflects the fact that Otago accepts a huge number of people into HSFY. As with any course, the cutoff for entry is just a matter of supply and demand and in this case the supply (of places) is large, hence the cutoff is low. Otago looks likely to up the cutoff for HSFY next year, but that's just because the number of students is getting too large for the university to manage (e.g. one of the HSFY papers this year has 2019 students, and as you can imagine, it's becoming difficult to accommodate all those students in labs and lectures and mark all the exams). I doubt the cutoff will increase by much though.

In terms of the actual difficulty, I found that the papers themselves weren't too arduous in general, but the high marks required to get into med meant that the year was very demanding (even for easy papers the requirement to get a raw score of at least 90% in every test means that you will have to work hard). I think you will find the overall difficulty to be very comparable to the first year of any science degree in New Zealand. This isn't surprising considering that many of the HSFY papers aren't just taken by HSFY students - e.g. CHEM191 is a compulsory paper for anyone at Otago doing a bachelor of science majoring in chemistry or biochemistry.

I can't comment on the difficulty of HSFY relative to high school because I haven't experienced final year high school under the system you are studying. One thing I will say is that most success in HSFY comes from memorising facts rather than high level thinking, so if your system focusses on thinking rather than large amounts of information (as does the main system in NZ) then it may require a change in learning mindset on your part.

As a rough guide to the content I have put the official descriptors of each HSFY paper (from the Otago website) below:

CHEM191: The chemical basis of biology and human health - An introduction to the concepts of chemistry underlying important processes in biology and human health, including energetics, kinetics, equilibria and solubility, properties of water and solutions, acids, bases, complexation and electron transfer, hydrolysis, amino acids and proteins.
PHSI191: Biological physics - Foundations of physics for the health sciences including mechanics, properties of fluids and solids, thermodynamics, optics, electrostatics and DC circuits, and radiation and health.
CELS191: Cell and molecular biology - An introduction to the biology of cells; fundamentals of molecular biology; organismal and molecular genetics; human genetic variation; diversity and biology of microorganisms; microbial virulence and disease processes.
HUBS191: Human body systems 1 - An introduction to the structure and function of the musculoskeletal, nervous, endocrine and immune systems in the human body.
BIOC192: Foundations of biochemistry - An introduction to the structure and function of proteins as essential elements of life processes; principles of enzymology; introductory bioenergetics; conservation of the energy of food for body processes; digestion and catabolism of fats, proteins and carbohydrates; terminal pathways of oxidation, anaerobic and aerobic metabolism, mitochondrial metabolism; energy storage and utilisation; the molecular basis of disease; illustrative topics in metabolism
HEAL192: Foundations of epidemiology - Introduces the science of epidemiology, the study of the distribution and determinants of health and disease in human populations. Examines major health problems in New Zealand and globally.
HUBS192: Human body systems 2 - An introduction to the structure and function of the human cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal, renal/urinary and reproductive systems including organ development.

 

[dee]

Thanks for your help. The description of the each HSFY paper sounds interesting...does it mean you only have to do 7 papers in HSFY and how would you rate the difficulty of HSFY? If you don't get into Med after your first year what are the procedures for grad entry, do you have to do GAMSAT? and does Otago offer honors for Health Sciences?

 

[greenglacier]

Thanks for your help. The description of the each HSFY paper sounds interesting...does it mean you only have to do 7 papers in HSFY and how would you rate the difficulty of HSFY? If you don't get into Med after your first year what are the procedures for grad entry, do you have to do GAMSAT? and does Otago offer honors for Health Sciences?

You can do 7 or 8 papers in HSFY. If your 8th paper is chosen from an approved list of humanities papers then it will count towards admission (your best 7 papers will be looked at).

I would say that the material in HSFY isn't that difficult - most of it isn't hard to understand. There is however a large amount of it, so the workload is substantial.

Graduate entry for Otago does not require GAMSAT - only UMAT. To qualify for graduate entry you have to complete your degree at a New Zealand university in the minimum possible time. As a result, most people who miss out on med from HSFY will do a bachelor of science or bachelor of biomedical science, as HSFY can count as the first year for many possible majors within these two degrees. Both of these degrees offer the option of an honours year, allowing you to graduate from them with honours. Other people also work towards graduate entry into med through a different professional degree - e.g. pharmacy, or medical laboratory science. As you may have picked up, studying HSFY (health science first year) does not entail study towards a specific degree - it is just a prescribed first year. In second year you have to study towards a specific degree. Note though that the bachelor of biomedical science is essentially just 3 years of HSFY in that is has a very similar structure and material, so it is still possible to continue health sciences study in this respect.

In terms of admission to med through graduate entry, the admissions office first sets a (very low) UMAT hurdle. All applicants with a UMAT over this threshold are ranked on the basis of GPA across their degree (there are a few weightings and adjustments applied here, but don't worry about them at this stage), and the highest ranked applicants are offered a spot. Note that most people applying for Otago graduate entry would apply for Auckland graduate entry as well, which has a different process (but also requiring UMAT instead of GAMSAT).

 

[patkirtan]

Aww man ><" Sooo scared of results .... hmmph only a few more days :S

 

[luysion]

yeah, same here man.
does physics usually come out first? considering its all MCQ?
i havent even been able to enjoy my holidays with UMAT around the corner and exam results

 

[greenglacier]

yeah, same here man.
does physics usually come out first? considering its all MCQ?
i havent even been able to enjoy my holidays with UMAT around the corner and exam results

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.

 

[luysion]

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.

oh cool.
was there any scaling last year in any of the papers?

 

[skyglow1]

In 2008 CELS was scaled up by 5%. The others were unscaled I'm pretty sure.

 

[greenglacier]

If you got at least around 70% in all your first semester papers last year then none of the marks would have been scaled. There was some scaling in CHEM and PHSI, but only to push a few extra people above 50% (and as a result, the people serously going for med were unaffected).

 

[squigglypencil]

Hey guys!

Some results are "out" (still unconfirmed). Chem and cells - check 'em out on PIMS. Hope you all did well!

Enjoy the rest of the holidays ^_^

 

[luysion]

howd u go squiggly

 

[ChickenPie]

A+ in CELS and CHEM, booyah.

 

[luysion]

A+ in CELS and CHEM, booyah.

nice, A for me..
do you know how others did chickenpie?