Otago HSFY chat - archive

[kidSq]

Wow... so I go away from MSO for 3 days and look what happens. I'd like to thank cathay for clearly outlining the gist of the point I was making in my absence.

I've seen a lot of people get into med and a lot of people miss out. I've seen people with UMATs down to 30th percentile get in (including SASOL, who, by the way, would have gotten in even if he wasn't rural), and people with UMATs above 90th percentile miss out. UMAT is far more tolerant than your HSFY marks - I've never seen anyone with a HSFY average <85% get in.

If you look at the Otago wiki on this site, you'll see what the cutoff has been for the last two years, based on good evidence of members on this forum who have gotten in or missed out. The pattern is quite simple - get below 90% average in HSFY and you'll need a pretty good UMAT (>80th percentile) to get in. Get above 93% average in HSFY, and you'd need a UMAT <50th percentile to rule you out. Now, here's the thing. I've never seen anyone with an average above 93% miss out on med... ever. I've definitely seen people in the region of 90-93% average miss out if their UMAT was <50th percentile, but the thing is, such people may not have gotten in if there was no UMAT anyway. kidSq - I feel for you, I really do, but it does sound like you fall under the mediocre marks/mediocre UMAT category. Your first year average was amazing, but unfortunately, there are lots of people with amazing averages who have to miss out on med, and in the context of the competition, 92% is verging on uncompetitive, if HSFY marks are looked at alone.

I've seen quite a few people get into med because of really good UMAT marks (and they are doing fantastically well in med by the way). They wouldn't have gotten in if it wasn't for med, so some people who would have gotten in if UMAT wasn't used must have therefore missed out. However, those people are the ones who would have been borderline if HSFY was the only determinant of med entry in the first place.

If you want to debate on the facts of what is/isn't good enough for med, go ahead, but I think I've got pretty good evidence to back up what I say. Please however don't perpetuate the myth that UMAT can definitively ruin your chance of getting into med - because that is a myth, and it is destructive. UMAT can definitely make it harder/easier to get in, but in the end, your HSFY average (which you have a hell of a lot more control over than your UMAT) is FAR more important - more important than the 67% weighting would suggest.

I've seen people with 50th percentile UMATs miss out on med not because their UMAT was average, but because they THOUGHT it was a lot worse than it was (and so lost a lot of motivation for HSFY, damaging their average). It's tragic when that happens - when a person who was perfectly competitive misses out because they believe the rumours that 50th percentile UMAT = no chance of med. I don't ever want to see that happen to one of the members on this forum.

hey, there is really no point arguing with you, you actually do you're research and back you're things up nicely - no sarcasm intended..
but I don't agree with one of you're statements..

" I've never seen anyone with an average above 93% miss out on med... ever. I've definitely seen people in the region of 90-93% average miss out if their UMAT was <50th percentile, but the thing is, such people may not have gotten in if there was no UMAT anyway"

what? really? this is the stats from last year from a EMAIL from the HSFY department themselves

"The current Health Sciences First Year cohort has been a high achieving group and as you know entry to Medicine is very competitive.

For your information, the current Health Sciences First Year (HSFY) category of admission average grade point average (GPA) was 91.00 (A+) and the average weighted UMAT was 20.44. "

an AVERAGE of 91 and the fact that people with 84 have gotten in (even somone with 84 got in who posted in this forum) makes it seem pretty unlikely anyone with a A+ average wouldn't get in without umat. The stat I posted above is from the Rejection email I recieved by the way.. seriously I doubt there are more than a 100 people getting A+'s while it seems like a lot its quite subjective and I remember halls usually give the numbers at the end of sem 1 and there aren't as many people as it seems getting A+ ...

 

[frootloop]

Not that I know anywhere near as much about this as either of you two, but I'd heard that around 15% of people get an A+ in each paper, and I'd take a wild stab that around two thirds of those getting A+'s would get them in most papers (6 or 7), so around 10% of HSFY would be sitting on an A+ average. Assuming 150 med spots, and 1300ish health scis, that would mean that, without UMAT, an A+ average should see you in without too much trouble? Of course, not everyone in the HSFY papers is actually in HSFY, so that would presumably mean that a larger %age of HSFY kids were getting A+'s, but, at the same time, not everyone who gets those kind of marks is necessarily going for med either, for example, I was talking to a second year dental student the other day, who said around 15 people a year reject med offers for dent.
Again, just my thoughts, I know GG is vastly more qualified than I am on this topic Although I would have to agree, that with a good A+ average (94+), so long as you don't completely f**k up your UMAT, you'd be very unlucky to miss out.

 

[Cathay]

an AVERAGE of 91 and the fact that people with 84 have gotten in (even somone with 84 got in who posted in this forum) makes it seem pretty unlikely anyone with a A+ average wouldn't get in without umat.

I wager that the 84% person must have a really good UMAT... (For reference, GG's formula calculates a required HSFY average at 84.07% from the weighted score of a 98th percentile result)

If everyone that got in had the same ranking score, then yes, if one's HSFY average was better than half the people who got in, then one would have been beaten by that half of the people in UMAT (hence 'get in without umat'), but that's not the case, so my guess is that even the people with middle-of-the-line HSFY averages would've had to have a fairly good UMAT, so it is not as unlikely that people with A+ average would be defeated by UMAT.

kidSq, I, too, do feel for you - and I am not trying to downplay the fact that Murphy's Law has, along with UMAT, utterly screwed you over, and will continue to do so to many more people. But my key message (which I believe is also GG's key message), which has been lost in all this debate, is that it is all down to numbers, and despite what you may feel first hand as a victim of UMAT, the fact stands that our admission is determined more by HSFY average than by weighted UMAT.

The distribution of UMAT score dictates that there is quite a small gap between 50th percentile and 70-80th percentile (and realistically we'd need to use the weighted mark to compare), so for those with middle-of-the-line HSFY averages, the cutoff due to UMAT may be a fine line, this is further complicated by the weighted score not being directly correlated to percentile, so that there would even be people who were rejected, who had the same HSFY average and an even higher percentile ranking (due to S3 rather than S1 or S2) than someone else who got in.

It certainly would feel extremely unfair being screwed over by UMAT, but in the end it's all to do with numbers, and our purpose in saying this is so that health sci's who find an unideal UMAT in September would use that as a reason to strive for higher HSFY marks, because doing so CAN get them into med - UMAT is simply a measure of how high your HSFY average needs to be (rather than some amazingly high threshold that you MUST reach or be rejected). I understand how frustrating it must have been for you, but PLEASE don't give off the (incorrect) impression that an unideal UMAT score would instantaneously rule someone out of med, when they can still work harder for higher HSFY marks to balance out the negative effect of UMAT and get them into med.

I personally feel that the risk of having someone going into a "omg-I'll-never-get-into-med-with-60th-percentile" self-destructive cycle (and damaging their HSFY average resulting in them not getting into med) is more important here than a full, uncensored portrayal of how cruel UMAT can be, and so I feel obliged to make it clear that UMAT does not spell instant doom - please understand that I am not rejecting your perspective, but am simply trying to reassure my fellow health scis (and as far as I'm aware, I'm not using false hope) that UMAT is NOT as cruel as they think, or may have heard.

 

[kidSq]

haha Murphy's Law too true!! lol
yeah I can't really argue you're point, you are right and I agree don't give up if you're UMAT doesn't look so great but I'd like to add another reason why not to give up anyway - if you really want to do med/dent then understand you're first year average is counted into you're overall GPA (however it is quite a small add, its still something) so make sure to do you're best anyway !


oh and just remember this is the actual stat's I remember last year people kept saying the average or cutoff gpa was 98 and other bizzare stories at the start of the year..

"
"The current Health Sciences First Year cohort has been a high achieving group and as you know entry to Medicine is very competitive.

For your information, the current Health Sciences First Year (HSFY) category of admission average grade point average (GPA) was 91.00 (A+) and the average weighted UMAT was 20.44. ""

 

[Deleted member 4350]

Although I was a victim of rejection due to a poor UMAT score (although to a far lesser extent than kidSq's predicament), I do agree with greenglacier and cath that in fact, it is possible to redeem yourself after the results in September. And yes, despite SASOL's rural candidacy, he would have been accepted regardless due to his phenomenal second semester results.

 

[frootloop]

"The current Health Sciences First Year cohort has been a high achieving group and as you know entry to Medicine is very competitive.
For your information, the current Health Sciences First Year (HSFY) category of admission average grade point average (GPA) was 91.00 (A+) and the average weighted UMAT was 20.44.

I'm probably going to sound like an idiot, but I really don't understand how UMAT is scored, I've read like a thousand posts about it on this site, and there seem to be about a thousand different ways of scoring it :blink: would be much appreciated if someone could explain to a poor idiot how it works cheers.

 

[Cathay]

As GG outlined in the formula somewhere down the page here, it's section one by 45%, section two by 45%, section 3 by 10%, and the whole thing by 34%.https://www.medstudentsonline.com.au/showthread.php?4804-Otago-Medical-School

 

[frootloop]

I get the formula, but people talk about getting raw scores around 70 in some sections, which is where I get lost, I thought there were only 60 questions max. in each section? Again, I probably sound like an idiot here

 

[Cathay]

I get the formula, but people talk about getting raw scores around 70 in some sections, which is where I get lost, I thought there were only 60 questions max.

The raw scores aren't, uh, x out of y where y is the number of questions. I'm not actually sure how it's done, but apparently it's an indication of performance, and is difficulty-adjusted (hence an indication of ability?), and "most are between 0 and 100"...

Since ACER said not to worry, I've just accepted ignorance and accepted that the numbers are indicators of my performance... Perhaps I'm the actual idiot for not trying to understand, but they're not exactly telling us much...

 

[frootloop]

Oh right, I thought there was some way of working it out, but if ACER want their secrecy... Makes it a little difficult to work out where(ish) you stand going into it, but I suppose thats the point. It is kind of weird to think of an exam where you can't (realistically) be aiming to get 100% of the questions right. I mean, it isn't exactly easy to do that in an HSFY paper, but it is doable, whereas I gather in UMAT 100% is not realistically possible... Oh well, I'm going to forget about how they score it, do some occasional practice, and accept that my HSFY marks are vastly more important anyway
Thanks btw, I'd been worrying there was some big important thing I didn't know

 

[frootloop]

To add to what Cathay said, there are papers from before 2007 which bear some resemblance to the HSFY papers (eg; CHEM112, PHSI110, off the top of my head), so their exams may be useful to you if you are able to dissect out the stuff which is no longer relevant. I myself find the older physics ones quite useful, and apparently some of the older 100-level ANAT papers are ok too, but I haven't actually had a look at them tbh.

 

[frootloop]

[OFFTOPIC]I love it how the Australian kids think Otago med is 'easier' to get into, while the HSFY kids seem to relatively often use their HSFY marks to get into Australian med schools due to the 'soft' GPA conversion. The grass is always greener... [/OFFTOPIC]

 

[greenglacier]

I wager that the 84% person must have a really good UMAT... (For reference, GG's formula calculates a required HSFY average at 84.07% from the weighted score of a 98th percentile result)

If everyone that got in had the same ranking score, then yes, if one's HSFY average was better than half the people who got in, then one would have been beaten by that half of the people in UMAT (hence 'get in without umat'), but that's not the case, so my guess is that even the people with middle-of-the-line HSFY averages would've had to have a fairly good UMAT, so it is not as unlikely that people with A+ average would be defeated by UMAT.

kidSq, I, too, do feel for you - and I am not trying to downplay the fact that Murphy's Law has, along with UMAT, utterly screwed you over, and will continue to do so to many more people. But my key message (which I believe is also GG's key message), which has been lost in all this debate, is that it is all down to numbers, and despite what you may feel first hand as a victim of UMAT, the fact stands that our admission is determined more by HSFY average than by weighted UMAT.

The distribution of UMAT score dictates that there is quite a small gap between 50th percentile and 70-80th percentile (and realistically we'd need to use the weighted mark to compare), so for those with middle-of-the-line HSFY averages, the cutoff due to UMAT may be a fine line, this is further complicated by the weighted score not being directly correlated to percentile, so that there would even be people who were rejected, who had the same HSFY average and an even higher percentile ranking (due to S3 rather than S1 or S2) than someone else who got in.

It certainly would feel extremely unfair being screwed over by UMAT, but in the end it's all to do with numbers, and our purpose in saying this is so that health sci's who find an unideal UMAT in September would use that as a reason to strive for higher HSFY marks, because doing so CAN get them into med - UMAT is simply a measure of how high your HSFY average needs to be (rather than some amazingly high threshold that you MUST reach or be rejected). I understand how frustrating it must have been for you, but PLEASE don't give off the (incorrect) impression that an unideal UMAT score would instantaneously rule someone out of med, when they can still work harder for higher HSFY marks to balance out the negative effect of UMAT and get them into med.

I personally feel that the risk of having someone going into a "omg-I'll-never-get-into-med-with-60th-percentile" self-destructive cycle (and damaging their HSFY average resulting in them not getting into med) is more important here than a full, uncensored portrayal of how cruel UMAT can be, and so I feel obliged to make it clear that UMAT does not spell instant doom - please understand that I am not rejecting your perspective, but am simply trying to reassure my fellow health scis (and as far as I'm aware, I'm not using false hope) that UMAT is NOT as cruel as they think, or may have heard.

Well said!





I've heard that 91.00/20.44 figure before, and quite frankly I don't think it says much beyond illustrating just how competitive med admissions are. Remember that this figure tells you nothing about the correlation between UMAT and HSFY, so you can't even work out what the average ranking score was, let alone the cutoff. In terms of how UMAT is scored, I've got my theories (and evidence to back them), but lets not get into that... ACER will give you a number, and most people just get confused the more they try to work out where it came from.

I think this discussion has run its course, but I'd just like to state my attitude in a different way to finish:

In the context of med admissions, a HSFY average of around 88-92 places you in the "UMAT susceptibility zone", where UMAT becomes fairly important. If you're in this "zone" then yes, a 50th percentile UMAT can spell the end of your chances of getting into med, but ultimately it's your HSFY average that put you in this pretty narrow zone to start off with, and ultimately it's your HSFY average that's going to determine if your UMAT is good enough. I've seen so many people with 50th percentile UMAT get into med that the statement "I was rejected because my UMAT was only 50th percentile" simply isn't true and doesn't tell the full story. I've also never seen a person who I thought, based on their semester one marks, was very likely to get in, miss out (regardless of their UMAT).

 

[greenglacier]

Yup, by the time you do HSFY there'll be 5 years worth of past exams, so no shortage! You will probably find however at uni that there's a lot less time to revise the material, and you're unlikely to use the past papers as much as you would for school exams (though plenty of people still put them to good use).

 

[SeeKay]

Thanks guys! Just another question, are the answers provided as well? I think I heard somewhere mark schemes aren't released in case they repeat a question in a test :s

 

[frootloop]

Physics, yes, chem, yes. Hubs, no, cels, no. Can't comment on 2nd semester papers (haven't done them yet lol), but I'd imagine hubs192 wouldn't release them either.

 

[Cathay]

Thanks guys! Just another question, are the answers provided as well? I think I heard somewhere mark schemes aren't released in case they repeat a question in a test :s

Well I don't believe there are actually marking schemes... The exam website (part of the library facilities) doesn't provide answers, physics and chem provide past answers on their blackboard pages. CELS and HUBS do not - HUBS apparently repeats questions, so it's not really unexpected... HEAL apparently repeats questions too, so in second semester the only one that could potentially release answers would be BIOC.

 

[SeeKay]

Ohh I see. I'm surprised that HEAL and HUBS would still provide the papers tho considering that questions may be repeated I guess only way to get the answers for them is to go over your own note/textbook.

 

[Cathay]

Ohh I see. I'm surprised that HEAL and HUBS would still provide the papers tho considering that questions may be repeated I guess only way to get the answers for them is to go over your own note/textbook.

Actually, now that you've reminded me, HEAL embargoes their papers since 2009 (so there are only 07 and 08 papers on there), and HUBS doesn't release their MCQs which are the only ones they repeat.

 

[SeeKay]

D:

Oh well I guess it's still better than nothing lol my sole purpose of wanting to use past exams was to see the style of questions and answers.

Cathay, have you been using past exams as well? And if you have would u recommend using it or would it be more beneficial if u allocated more time learning your notes