Doing medicine

Allright I hate the business degree I'm going at the moment in melbourne heaps and am considering transferring to biomedical science because it would be way more up my alley. I've just got two quick questions though:

1) Does anyone know the difficulty of transferring into medicine in Australia, eg: the GAMSAT and all that business. Is it within reality to a normal person?

2) Is the actual medical degree as hard as it's made out to be? I've heard universities have trimmed down on the work load a bit.

Cheers

I've got a few contacts in the faculty of medicine at Sydney University (where I intend to study when I finish my bachelors) so I guess I can offer you some input.

You don't transfer per se - if you've got a degree, it's a graduate entry program for you (like Sydney). They base entry on your GAMSAT score, GPA and an interview.

In terms of marks, it is definitely within reach of a normal person. The GPA required is 5.5 (credit average - 65%). You need about 60% overall in the GAMSAT to get an interview. That's harder than the GPA, but still reasonable.

The interview is where people get weeded out. The interviewers tend to be sharp, realistic and perceptive people. You can't bullshit your way past them.

I've asked several professors how hard they think it is, and all say it is completely overstated. To anyone with a scientific background, there's no real cognitive challenge involved. The workload is considerable, but the drop out rate is almost nil, so it can't be that bad. According to one professor, almost everyone who doesn't finish did so because they wanted to do something else, or other things in their life made studying an impossiblity.

If you've got more questions send me a PM, I've researched it all pretty thoroughly.

^^

Spot on there

In Australia there are 2 different ways that you can do medicine. At the top universities it is almost always as a graduate entry program, like Sydney, Melbourne etc. However there are still places that offer medicine as an undergrad course, like Newcastle, UNSW or Curtin Uni in Perth. Personally I wouldn't want to try doing a medicine degree fresh out of high school, you just don't have the maturity to cope with it - that said, many do and succeed well, however with the extra experience from a science or med science degree done beforehand, it really prepares you more for the rigours of a medical degree.

So basically, you could transfer into a biomedical science degree, or you could finish the business degree that you are doing now. You can successfully complete the GAMSAT even without having done highschool science if you are willing to put in the time and effort to get on top of the material required. Yes a science background through university will definitely help you in the GAMSAT and in your first years of your med degree, but it definitely isn't essential.

How far are you into your business degree? Would you be prepared to stick it out to get the qualification in order to get into a graduate medical program at one of the top uni's more quickly, or would you like to take a little more time by transferring into a med science degree?

You have options here

CB

^^^
Curtin does not offer undergraduate medicine or graduate medicine.

UWA is the only university that offers undergraduate medicine and the entrance score is extremely high... 96.1 I believe. Plus all the usual prequisites and interviews, etc. Notredame is soon to have a graduate medicine program (same as UWA).

(above info is for Perth)

^^

Ah hah... I wasn't 100% sure on which WA uni was offering it, but decided to go with Curtin and not check my facts bah... that's laziness for you...

1 of my friends is over in WA, well she's from Esperance anyway, and she is doing the undergrad medicine course there after finishing a Science Degree in Chemistry with Honours... I can't remember the exact reason that she is doing the undergrad course, but for her it doesn't really matter that much as she has the uni experience already, so she can definitely handle it

CB

Thanks so much for the replys here, they've been a really great help. Currently I'm only into my first year of commerce and hating it with a passion. I think the best thing I can do is to do biomedical science at monash university and then possibly transfer internally which I've heard is a bit easier than going through the postgraduate path. I might have to use VTAC to transfer to the biomed (hopefully). I'll let you all know how it goes.

Cheers :D