Otago HSFY chat - archive

[skyglow1]

I didn't do NCEA but I did the scholarship exams so I have a rough idea of what you guys studied at level 3.

CHEM191: Level 3 covers most of this paper, but there are large chunks that it doesn't cover. For instance level 3 doesn't go much into metal ion complexes (for example orbital splitting and the different energy levels). It also doesn't do any mechanics in organic chemistry (CIE guys have it way easy cause you they had to do tons of them for A level chem) which you may find hard to pick up suddenly. Overall you should be fine. Maybe have a brief look at mechanisms so you won't get a big shock when it comes up but don't go learning any lol.

PHSI191: No sweat. 1 or 2 things you may not have learnt but Level 3 covers way more than the paper.

HUBS191 and HUBS192: Level 3 bio has extremely poor coverage of this stuff. I really wouldn't recommend learning any stuff in the holidays though. The lectures are very specific about what details they want you to learn. You just gotta work hard during the year for these papers.

CELS191: For the cell biology and genetics part level 3 bio does a decent job I think. Not sure about the microbiology part. Overall this isn't too bad.

BIOC192: Not covered at all pretty much, and I wouldn't recommend trying to learn anything either (again lectures are pretty specific as to what level of detail they want you to learn).

HEAL192: There is a tiny tiny bit of really basic stats like basic 95% confidence intervals that level 3 obviously covers. Apart from that the paper is all just learning new information and alot of common sense.

Summer is great for reflecting on why you want to study at Otago, your goals, where you see yourself in 10 years time etc etc. All that fun stuff. So yeah enjoy the summer, get lots of sleep (hopefully this won't be an issue when you start next year lol), keep your mind active by maybe reading books and stuff i.e. don't let yourself rot. But overall just chill over the summer.

 

[Ramza]

hi students have to do that english test. . . what is it. . essays??

anything on shakespeare??. . . wats this test involve?

 

[skyglow1]

Hi don't sweat it. It is a pretty basic test testing things like comprehension and dictation. At the end you have to write a short ~250 word essay on 1 out of 3 topics that they give you (this year the topics were something like the NCEA system, something about global warming, and another about doctor's needing communication skills). It's hard to fail it unless you turn up hung over from O-week! xD

 

[Ramza]

How nessecary is physics to PHSI. . . . if you didnt do physics lvl 3 is worth taking the bridging physics??? do you know of any1 who has done this and achieved well??

 

[skyglow1]

Even level 2 physics is adequate for the PHSI paper I think. I don't know anyone who has done the bridging physics. I'll list the topics and you can compare to what is taught in level:

Mechanics - all the equations of motion, forces, circular motion, simple harmonic motion etc etc
Thermodynamics - heating/expasion, heat transfer equations, ideal gases, humidity (urgh), lays of thermodynamics
Bulk materials - not covered in NCEA at all, stuff like stress and strain
Fluid mechanics - don't think this is covered in NCEA, bernoulli's equation, equation of continuity etc etc
Electricity and DC circuits - really basic stuff
Optics - the basic reflection/refraction, then diffraction and interference, then some things like rayleigh criterion
Radiation and health - equations dealing with half life and activity and stuff

The people who tended to struggle with physics were those who had never done physics before or did it as part of a science subject or only up to 5th form. There is a huge focus on understanding concepts rather than memorising anything, and being able to solve numerical problems. We only got multichoice questions and you're allowed a cheat sheet into both the test and the final which you can write anything on it you want meaning you don't have to actually memorise anything, plus you're given all formulas and all constants, so all you have to do is to be able to understand the problem and solve it.

 

[Ramza]

Hi what hall do you stay in?? skyglow?

 

[Maiden_NewZealand]

Hi Skyglow1

I am hoping to do FYHS in 2010 and yes I know its early to be discussing all this now but could you please give me some insight as to what topics are in the rest of the papers? You have described everything in physics so beautifully and was hoping you could give a rundown of the other topics. I'm quite familiar with Level 3 Biology and I will be year 13 next year and have decided to do Chemistry, Physics, Math w/calc & stat, Bio and last but not least English. I am contemplating whether I should just ditch calc and just stick to statistics....in all honesty I'm not the biggest stat fan. I got high marks but found it was really mind boggling and lots of work. If you have the time to reply I would be greatful. Oh and when do you find out if you have made it to second year??

 

[skyglow1]

Hi what hall do you stay in?? skyglow?

I stay at Aquinas and will be there next year again. It really suits me cause alot of the people there are under 18 (I'm turning 18 next year) and there's a good mix of ethnicities and stuff (I'm asian) and everyone mixes around.

Hi Skyglow1

I am hoping to do FYHS in 2010 and yes I know its early to be discussing all this now but could you please give me some insight as to what topics are in the rest of the papers? You have described everything in physics so beautifully and was hoping you could give a rundown of the other topics. I'm quite familiar with Level 3 Biology and I will be year 13 next year and have decided to do Chemistry, Physics, Math w/calc & stat, Bio and last but not least English. I am contemplating whether I should just ditch calc and just stick to statistics....in all honesty I'm not the biggest stat fan. I got high marks but found it was really mind boggling and lots of work. If you have the time to reply I would be greatful. Oh and when do you find out if you have made it to second year??

This is gonna be pretty big so I'll put it in a spoiler so you can expand it:

[offtopic]
CHEM191 (copied from the paper sypnopsis and shortened)
Thermodynamics/energetics - gibbs energy (not covered in L3), enthalpy, entropy
Equilibria - equilibrium constant, solubility equilibria, energetics of dissolution (don't think covered in L3), pH, buffers
Reaction rates and chemical equilibria (not covered in L3 at all and many people struggle) - factors affecting rates of reaction, rate laws, reaction orders, catalysis, enzyme reactions
Metals in human biology (alot not covered in L3) - redox reactions, transition metals, donor atoms, classes of ligands, oxidation states, geometries, metalloprotein/metalloenzyme, binding, metal effect on ligands, ligand effect on metals
Organic Chemistry - E and Z, and R and S, enantiomers, diastereomers, functional groups, reaction types, reaction mechanisms including nucleophilic substitution, elimination, addition, polymerisation, condensation, acetal formation, nucleophilic acyl substitution, group transfer (mechanisms are not covered in L3 and many people find this impossibly hard)
Biological molecules - functional groups in biological molecules, relationship between structure and function, amino acids, peptides, saccharides (not covered in L3 or CIE and many people find this hard), nucleotides, enzymes, nucleic acids

CELS191
I wish I hadn't thrown away my objectives at this point. I have some of them but the rest I'll have to throw together from memory. Cell biology and genetics bit and some of microbiology are decent covered by L3
Cell biology - cell structure and stuff like organelles etc etc, theories on origin of life, plant vs animal cells, plastids, plasma membrane, cytoskeleton, nucleus structure
Genetics - mitosis, meiosis, polyploids, aneuploids, X-inactivation, human chromosal abnormalities, mendelian genetics, inheritance, Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, biochem of genetics, lots on genetic techniques
Microbiology - classification, bacteria structure, ecosystems (chemoautotrophs and all that), genetics of bacteria (transformation, transduction, conjugation), Winogradsky column, applications of microbes, cheese (there was a whole page on this lecture in the mid-semester test lol), resistance, viruses, viral reproduction, infectious disease

HUBS191 (there's bound to be mistakes about if L3 covers this or that so bear with me lol)
Homeostatic principles - should be familiar with this? repeated over and over and over again
Musculoskeletal system - not covered in L3?
Nervous system - the "hardest" module, which is true for many people
Endocrine system - not covered in L3?
Immune system - not covered in L3

HUBS192
Cardiovascular system - not sure
Respiratory system - not covered in L3
Gastrointestinal system - not covered in L3
Renal and urinary system - not covered in L3
Blood system - not covered in L3
Acid base - not covered in L3
Reproductive system - not sure

BIOC192 (pretty much all of this isn't covered in L3 except for the really really basic stuff)
Protein structure - primary/secondary/tertiary/quaternary structure, domains, motifs, prions, immunoglobulins, haemoglobin, myoglobin, haemoglobin variants, collagen and elastin
Enzyme kinetics - michaelis menten kinetics, inhibition, mechanisms (fun fun lol), applications of enzymes in health
"Drugs" (I can't remember the name of this topic) - muscle proteins, muscle dystrophies, membranes, targets for drugs, stress response, drug discovery and therapeutics
Food and digestion - energy calculations, digestion and absorption of carbohydrates/fats/proteins, fat transport, heart disease, vitamins, minerals
Oxidation (hardest part for alot of people because it's so new if you did NCEA) - energy calculations, glycolysis, citric acid cycle, oxdiative phosphorylation, electron transport chain, beta oxidation, metabolism of amino acids, reactive oxygen species
Integration - alcohol, storage/mobilisation of fuels, starvation, exercise, diabetes, obesity

HEAL192 (I've said it a few times but alot of it just learning new things and alot of it is common sense)
Every lecture is like different and it's not really split into topics, but there's two big sections to the paper (split by the mid-semester test)
First section - internal and external validity (bias/confounding/chance), causation, external validity, measures of occurence/assocaition, study designs
Second section - (an application of the stuff in the first section) - ethics, disease prevention, alcohol, infectious disease, HIV, animal/human interactions, physical activity, suicide and self harm, obesity, oral health, climate change, patterns of disease, Maori health, poverty and health, social epidemiology, ageing[/offtopic]

Stats and calc are both pretty useless for HSFY but I enjoy maths so I've always taken it throughout high school and wanted to take it as an 8th paper (it's not on approved list so it wouldn't count towards my HSFY marks) as interest but there wasn't enough time If you're doing all 3 sciences you're pretty much set for HSFY. Whether or not you do other subjects are if you're aiming for scholarship in those or if you just generally like them (+ timetabling issues etc etc).

Emails telling you if you've been accepted into a professional course are sent out 22nd/23rd of december so yeah that's either a great Christmas or the worst one yet lol. We got our second semester marks back. I'm pretty happy with my results for the year and I'd say I have pretty good chance of getting into med, but I really don't like to assume anything so I'm trying not to think about it too much.

 

[Maiden_NewZealand]

Hey Skyglow1, if you don't mind me asking but what were your second semester results like??? You sound like you breezed through HSFY...I know when I start I'll be sh!t scared, maybe I can use that to my advantage.

 

[Maiden_NewZealand]

And I forgot (How tragic of me) Thanks heaps for the info...it felt like xmas reading all that. And I wish you the best (not like you need it) but feel free to send some good luck my way

 

[skyglow1]

Thanks for the best wishes One good thing about about the health sci papers is that luck is a very small factor. If you study hard and study smart, there's no reason why you wouldn't get a good mark. HSFY certainly wasn't a breeze. There's no real way to breeze through it unless you have like an amazing memory or something. Otherwise, if you are like the rest of us mere mortals, then you're in for alot of hard work.

For those who are starting health sci next year: getting alot of rest now, mentally preparing yourself for the workload at O-week, writing down and working out what your goals are to keep you motivated when you start health sci will already give you a significant advantage over others. There's really nothing to be scared of in health sci (unless you don't do the work and you're unprepared of course ) I looked through my friend's courseguide for auckland biomed papers, and in my opinion some of their papers like biochem are to be truly feared haha.

I got 98 for BIOC192 and HUBS192 and 94 for HEAL192, so I round off the year with a 97.5 average, but my UMAT of 80 percentile overall is slightly worrying considering there are many people who got at least 90 percentile UMAT scores (I'm not exaggerating) and my 30 percentile in section 2 (bummer) is also slightly worrying lol.

 

[Maiden_NewZealand]

I hope to study hard and study smart but at the moment I'm not quite sure what works for me. How did you find out what works for you? Did you just try different methods till you found the one that works?

Wow, your results are amazing!! Here I was thinking I would stand a chance if I got a 90+ grade point average and a UMAT percentile over 75. I guess I'm just gonna have to give it my all and see what happens. Even the thought of retaining a 90+ average seems near impossible for someone like me.
I get mainly excellences in the flawed ncea system but can't really compare to what university study will bring. I'm just hoping that because I study through the correspondence school it might give me some sort of advantage in that most of my study is self directed anyway.

I heard through the grapevine someone who got a UMAT under 70 and made it in last year and had a grade point average less than yours... bout low 90s so I think you pretty much owned HSFY.

 

[skyglow1]

One of the major things that helped me was the fact that I did the CIE pathway. If I wrote up that list for all the papers again but showed what things were covered by CIE and what weren't, then easily more than half of it would be covered for most papers.

In 7th form I made myself a system of using tons of pages of refill and organising it into folders as my method of taking notes (luckily my teachers allowed us to use any method of note taking we want....it gets annoying having to do everything in books). I found repetition was the best way for me memorise things, and this was a big focus for me seeing as CIE is also alot of memorisation and so study methods for CIE usually work really well for HSFY. So the system I came up with was basically all focussed around rewriting notes over and over again until I got better at recalling everything, each time would be a new "version" and I'd improve the notes as I rewrote them too by adding things or correcting them. It worked well for my CIE exams, and I had a feeling HSFY was going to be fairly similar in style, so I knew I had a good chance that I had a system that would really suit me and HSFY.

One of the "problems" with coming into HSFY from the NCEA course, apart from it's poor overlap with paper content, is that you don't have to memorise anything close to the amount of material you need to memorise for CIE or HSFY. Alot of students coming from the NCEA course who I know are very bright and pick things up quickly struggle with the memorisation side of HSFY. I think it's pretty important you experiment now and find out what works for you in terms of making notes and how to memorise stuff because it will help greatly when it comes to certain papers like the HUBS191 and 192 papers - the concepts are very easy and everyone understands them, but some people simply know more lecture content than others and they are the ones that generally do better in the tests.

I also heard alot about people last year getting in with so-and-so marks and so-and-so UMAT. The numbers seem to be highly exaggerated after it has gone through a chain of a couple of people, because one person will say so-and-so and another person will say something that completely contradicts it lol. My advice is to ignore all of that as much as possible when you're going through HSFY and simply focus on your goals and your work. Speculating about requirements doesn't really get you anywhere in terms of improving your marks (this type of gossip is hard really hard to resist...I got sucked into it alot lol), and at the end of the day it's your marks and UMAT that will decide if you get into the course you want.

Noone really knows anything about the marks required. The only indication of where you stand comes from tests where they release everyone's marks, and you go through the marks and see what rank you place out of everyone. There are 150+ spots for people coming in through HSFY into med, so you had a way of comparing that to what rank you were placing from your tests. From memory getting 90% in every test would easily land you in the top 150 bracket. But then there's the problem of UMAT and how that factors in (we know its 34% and 45 45 10 weighting for the sections but not sure about other aspects) and there are a huge range of marks you can get in UMAT. So in the end if you're doing HSFY you should simply aim for the very best in every test i.e. 100% That's not to say you should murder yourself if you fall short of that mark, or study so hard for it that you burn yourself out, but I don't see the point in aiming for anything lower. Getting 100% is not as impossible as it sounds considering they scale marks up sometimes and also things like plussage in the PHSI paper, and it is a real possbility if you think carefully about how to prepare for the tests.

 

[Maiden_NewZealand]

I really wish there was a way I could do CIE I feel so disadvantaged right now and I did hear a year back that their course/papers are more in-depth than NCEA...and with what you have said it pretty much confirms this.

About your method of studying, I might actually try it. I remember a close friend of mine who would buy 200 leaf refills in bulk and write out her notes at least 3 times and simplifying her notes each time. Sounds a lot like what your doing...she is doing quite well and started young like yourself. At the time I thought what a waste of time and paper cos I would read a page 2-3 times and be able to retain the information but as the years progressed I realise that method is no longer useful...actually I realised that this year with Level 3 gene expression lol.

Yeah I spose its all just hearsay about UMAT etc...a bit like chinese whispers so to speak. But atm I'm taking everything you say to be gospel...I've copy and pasted some of your posts that I found quite useful (Right I'm starting to sound like a stalker). And I am as of today adopting the method of rewriting for memorising...I just wont buy the refill till Feb cos atm I cant afford 5-7 dollars per refill.

December tomorrow, you must be counting the days lol. I know I do with my results for NZQA...Jan seems so far away

 

[Maiden_NewZealand]

Opps...Sorry guys for hijacking the thread and going off on a tangent about mememe. I think this whole forum thing is pretty cool and I got a wee bit carried away. I apologise if I have bored the living daylights out of you all.

Strictly HSFY stuff from now on

 

[skyglow1]

Yeah I don't believe it's a level playing field when students enter HSFY. Everyone I know who did CIE including those from my school did very well. Two of them got at least 95 average and 90+ percentile UMATs.

Each time I wrote my notes out I didn't simplify them because my aim was to remember every little detail in the lectures and not miss anything out. In fact my notes got bigger and longer each time because I was adding more stuff that I had missed before like things that the lecturer had said. You would simplify your notes if you wanted to get the "bigger picture" but from my experiences in the tests that is not as important as lecturers/students make it out to be.

Then again other students have tried rewriting notes as their method of memorising things. Unfortunately they had to experiment with study techniques "on-the-fly" considering they'd never really had to do it for NCEA before. For some students writing out notes again and again had 0 productivity. I'm lucky enough to be able to concentrate for a long enough time so that it is productive, but others are not so lucky. Look on up on the internet for things like memorisation techniques and try them out on trivial things or maybe some "sciency" things to see how effective they are. Personally I didn't use any of those techniques except for a couple of acronyms to help remember lists of things in HEAL but apart from that it was just shoving as much as I could into my brain lol.

Those 200 page refills can be really expensive especially like from the Uni store when I ran out. It's a good idea to find some place where you can get them cheap and stock up on them like your friend did. I had them as a stack on my desk to raise my laptop screen to eye level haha.

I'm trying not to think about the date. I'm actually really surprised I'm not freaking out or anything. The 2 months between sitting the UMAT and UMAT results were absolutely hell: couldn't sleep or eat or study which was pretty bad considering tests were still going on. It didn't help when I got my less than spectacular section 2 result and started worrying so much about that. I feel pretty resigned now and I didn't even realise it was less than a month to the date lol. By the second half of the second semester pretty much everyone was resigned to their test marks. You get the usual flurry and excitement with many "what did you get?" questions being thrown around at the start of the year, which is understable cause everyone is anxious to know because it is their first ever HSFY marks, but after a while I think it's better to not worry about them and instead concentrate on the next test or exam coming up. That said, you can learn alot from your test marks as they give an indication of the effectiveness of your study techniques. After the first few tests you still have time to tweak or change those techniques to improve them.

Also, I'd like to think that everything I post is accurate but in reality it isn't. I try to think carefully about what I say and what I say to others as well when doing HSFY, but I make mistakes just like anyone else. My advice with regards to that is basically don't take anything straight from another person. It's better to be doubtful about what they say than to accept it. You'll be hit with a torrent of rumours about this and that and how this test is gonna be and what the selection process is and so etc etc. Always take it with skepticism and even better try and just ignore it. I was completely wrong about what my expectations of certain tests were and that wasn't really fun, so yeah just try and avoid all that extra baggage that comes with HSFY.

 

[Maiden_NewZealand]

I guess I thought everything you were saying was pretty decent and seeing as you won't be competing against me your less likely to be dishing out porkies. You sound genuine enough and I guess FYHS is something I will have to experience myself.

Oh and when they say Level 3 Chemistry is a requirement, do they mean 14 credits @ L3 Chem or the whole 24 credits???

I think the writing for memorising process will be productive for me because I find you absorb more while your writing the information down than just merely skimming through chapters hoping you'll retain something sooner or later. I guess I will just have to find out, and try other methods if all else fails. I find buying refill in feb when most stores have stationery on sale is the best time to buy. I'm pretty sure I picked up 200 leaf refills for $1.20 last year.

 

[skyglow1]

Not sure about the L3 thing, but when I was watching the process it seems like they aren't very strict on the L3 Chem requriement. Basically if you don't have that under your belt, then you'll have to go to an additional person to get signed off, and as long as you have decent L2 chem marks or your other marks are good then you'll get signed off without a problem. It's meant to identify those people who may have only done L1 or never done chem, which would be a real problem.

And about porkies, ya some students (not very many but still) will blatantly lie about things like their marks in order to put you off. I found out the hard way when someone who I thought was my friend was lying about her marks. All the more reason to avoid the gossip

 

[Maiden_NewZealand]

I definitely have good L2 Chem marks (all E's) for internal assessments and I hope the same for my exams. I would still do Level 3 Chem, I just didn't want to do 24 credits and thought 16-18 would be enough. I love Chem so I won't mind if I have to do the whole 24 credits. Physics is my hardest subject and I hope the PHSI191 paper wont let me down...I might enrol for an eigth paper to be safe (I'm not even starting til 2010 how tragic lol).

Sad to hear your friend lied about their marks...did he/she do it to scare you on purpose? And here I was thinking I might make a good friend or two. I figured I would have to look out for myself once in Dunedin...I won't be stupid and listen to every Tom, **** and Harry...but I hope to meet some nice people, I guess that's what you get for entering the playing field.

I remember watching some documentary or something on otago student life and they had a couple of students doing FYHS in the hopes of getting into med. Just a question, are the lecture halls always CHOCKA!!! There were people sitting on the floors in the FYHS lectures .

 

[skyglow1]

Yeah they said their marks were much higher than they actually were, maybe to psyche us out or something. You can make many friends as the majority of people are really nice, but I still believe that your true friends come from high school. The competition between people really ruins alot.

At the start of the 1st semester the lecture halls are pretty full because theres about 1500 to 1600 students and 3 classes a day of 550 each. As the weeks progress more people decide to go the classes they want instead of the ones they are meant to, which usually means people going to the earlier classes, so those early morning classes are always full up. Lecturers aren't actually allowed to start the lecture if there are people sitting on the floors because it's a fire hazard, so often those morning lectures have problems starting late and so on from being so full. Start of 2nd semester means 500 people have dropped out of the course, so classes are rarely full except for certain favourites that everyone wants to attend.