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Otago HSFY chat - archive

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Hi, I sat umat this year in year 13. I did rubbish! 50th percentile. anyway I'm just going to assume next year I wont do better than that so I was wondering what kind of academic results would I need? I read this blog recently that crushed me it said the lowest combination of marks and umat to get straight into med in 07 was 88% hsfy and umat of 81. Is this true? coz that made me like almost cry. thanks!
 
From this page:

https://www.medstudentsonline.com.au/showthread.php?t=4804

"30th percentile UMAT and 94% HSFY average
50th percentile UMAT and 92% HSFY average
80th percentile UMAT and 89% HSFY average
90th percentile UMAT and 87% HSFY average
95th percentile UMAT and 86% HSFY average"

This was for getting straight into med (i.e. NOT via waiting list) in 2009. It could well change by 2011. I think it'd be a bit melodramatic to assume automatically that you wouldn't do better than 50th percentile.
 
From this page:

https://www.medstudentsonline.com.au/showthread.php?t=4804

"30th percentile UMAT and 94% HSFY average
50th percentile UMAT and 92% HSFY average
80th percentile UMAT and 89% HSFY average
90th percentile UMAT and 87% HSFY average
95th percentile UMAT and 86% HSFY average"

This was for getting straight into med (i.e. NOT via waiting list) in 2009. It could well change by 2011. I think it'd be a bit melodramatic to assume automatically that you wouldn't do better than 50th percentile.

OMG Thanks heaps! anyway i'd rather work next year like i'm only sitting on a umat of 50th precentile rather than count on the fact that ther might be a chance i'll get higher. like i'm going to try and improve my umat but as of now this is wat i'm working with.
 
Im just wondering, how hard is it to get an A+ (above 90%), in uni papers?
compared to NCEA getting Es.

Hard to say... there was a study done a while back that found NCEA correlated very well with university grades, with a correlation coefficient of r=0.66, and while very good, that still leaves a lot of room to move around.

The main issue is that NCEA and university tend to have different focuses for assessment... generally speaking NCEA exams are about assessing your depth of knowledge of a relatively small amount of content, while university exams are about assessing how much content you know, at a rather shallow level.

Personally I would say that it is a LOT harder to get straight E's in a subject than it is to get an A+ in a paper. I think it would be fair to say that a lot of the people in med right now (who got around A/A+) would have gotten a good mixture of M and E at school.

You'll find though that (generally) the biggest determinant of whether you get an A+ is how hard you work - much more so than in NCEA.
 
Im just wondering, how hard is it to get an A+ (above 90%), in uni papers?
compared to NCEA getting Es.

Different for different people. Lots of these questions that prospective healthsci students ask depend a lot on individual variation, and I don't feel they're helpful but I guess people will continue to ask them no matter what :/
 
Well, like to add that my brother is not a HOPELESS NCEA student, but he did pass NCEA and has been getting A- to B+.
So if you get Es in NCEA, I guess its generally okay assume you are close and probably will get As. However it's really the amount of work you put into it.
 
If getting A+ is that easy, doesnt everyone in health science get A+?

Getting excellence isn't that easy... if you look at the statistics, generally only 5-10% of candidates get E for each external, and only 1.5% of students in year 9 will end up getting L3 with excellence. In comparison, for most of the HSFY papers 10-15% get A+.

Of course, the base population is different in each case, and no one is saying that the 10-15% who get A+ includes the 5-10% who got excellence!
 
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?
 
There is no doubt somewhat of a correlation between NCEA results and university grades, but it is probably very weak.

For those of you who didn't do well at school - Don't worry, you can do much better at uni if YOU put in the effort.
take me for example, I got 3 excellence credits in year 13. At uni my gpa is 7.9 after 4 years of study, including an honours year (for which I received first class)....
 
Lets just put this all in context of the best available evidence.

In 2005, Auckland university compared the grades of its first year students with their NCEA level 3 marks. The results found that 40% of the variation in grades in health science papers could be accounted for by NCEA results, and that 60% of the variation in grades in science papers could be accounted for by NCEA results (this is a LOT better than traditional school examination systems by the way).

Looking at the facts then (rather than anecdotes/feelings), it seems that in Otago HSFY there is most likely a 50/50 split - half of your success will be predicted by how well you did under NCEA, while the other half will be predicted by other factors. Hence NCEA remains a pretty decent indicator of success in HSFY, but there are many other factors, such as your study techniques during HSFY, that have just as much of an impact - hence the stories of people doing poorly in NCEA but well at university (and vice versa). This is of course why we have HSFY at Otago - if school marks were a perfect predictor of university success then we could just have entry into med directly from school.
 
Hey Guys! Otago Dentistry interview offers have just been release! Just got mine by email :D

Hello,

i have completed my B.D.S from india this year and now i want to apply for the bridging course offered by the university of otago,new zealand.
i am very confused that should i go for that course or not.
can you suggest me anything?
look forward to hear from you soon.
:unsure:
thank you
 
Does anyone know what the cutoff is to get in to med off the waiting list? Or what the lowest score anyone has got that has gotten in?
Thanks :)
 
I think Pete found got in via the waiting list only a couple of days before the start of med. If you can find his scores somewhere within this massive thread then that could give you a rough idea.
 
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