Medicine as an option?

[Matthew_Whelan]

Hi AN,
To anyone with similar interests or are considering medicine as a career option, I've made this just in case any of you have similar queries or qualms.
So if anyone can answer any of these due to knowledge of experience within medicine that would be great.
Just some I have:
- If I dont get an exceptional ATAR (95+), what is the likelihood that medicine is still attainable?
- What are all the different pathways by which I can get into medicine?
- If I attempt for medicine but do not obtain the necessary requirements, what are other options that are available and are still similar.
- So what about the UCAT and GAMSAT? Is the UCAT only required if you want to get in directly from school or is it used in tandem with your GAMSAT scores?
- Other than Melbourne and Monash, what are some other good universities which offer Medicine? Does Deakin offer it? (According to their website they do but I have only heard about people doing med at monash/melb)
- What are good undergraduate courses to attain the necessary skills and knowledge required for medicine? (I'm thinking medical imaging or something along those lines..)

If anyone is in a similar state and would like to add their own questions then pls do.

Thanks to anyone who gives their 2 cents! 

[qwdfbn1996]

-Medicine is still very much attainable with an ATAR<95, the direct undergraduate pathway will probably be more difficult (albeit not impossible), but your chances for grad med are pretty much unaffected.
- 1. undergrad after high school, 2. grad after an undergrad degree, 3. kind of a combo of the two, basically you get an offer after high school where you're pretty much guaranteed a grad medicine place but need to complete an undergrad degree at that uni first
- Not too sure what you mean by this question?
- You take the UCAT for an undergraduate place and GAMSAT for a graduate place, they don't care about your UCAT at all when applying for a grad place.
- Heaps of other unis offer medicine in Australia. Some offer it at the undergrad level but others only offer it at the graduate level. It's probably best to look through the different unis/courses and decide which ones work for you. Can't remember the unis and what they offer off the top of my head but I'm sure there's a list floating around on the web somewhere.
- Most medicine courses start from scratch (some postgrad courses require completion of prereqs though). Any degree in the health sciences will be useful but there are people in med who have degrees in fields completely unrelated to biology too.

[caffinatedloz]

Following on from this, if you want to study medicine, do you need specialist maths? I know that it is not a prerequisite but is it still important knowledge that you're expected to have?

If you don't study spesh, can you still get into med and do well?

[Matthew_Whelan]

-Medicine is still very much attainable with an ATAR<95, the direct undergraduate pathway will probably be more difficult (albeit not impossible), but your chances for grad med are pretty much unaffected.
- 1. undergrad after high school, 2. grad after an undergrad degree, 3. kind of a combo of the two, basically you get an offer after high school where you're pretty much guaranteed a grad medicine place but need to complete an undergrad degree at that uni first
- Not too sure what you mean by this question?
- You take the UCAT for an undergraduate place and GAMSAT for a graduate place, they don't care about your UCAT at all when applying for a grad place.
- Heaps of other unis offer medicine in Australia. Some offer it at the undergrad level but others only offer it at the graduate level. It's probably best to look through the different unis/courses and decide which ones work for you. Can't remember the unis and what they offer off the top of my head but I'm sure there's a list floating around on the web somewhere.
- Most medicine courses start from scratch (some postgrad courses require completion of prereqs though). Any degree in the health sciences will be useful but there are people in med who have degrees in fields completely unrelated to biology too.

Thanks heaps!
Also, the 3rd question just meant what are similar courses that are not as difficult to get into but are similar, I was thinking radiology maybe.

[Lear]

Following on from this, if you want to study medicine, do you need specialist maths? I know that it is not a prerequisite but is it still important knowledge that you're expected to have?

If you don't study spesh, can you still get into med and do well?

No. In fact to get into undergraduate medicine at Monash you don’t need math at all.
There is no need for spesh level knowledge in medicine. I would still recommend at least some math, though, especially for the statistics part of medicine. Honestly Methods should be sufficient.

[AngelWings]

Thanks heaps!
Also, the 3rd question just meant what are similar courses that are not as difficult to get into but are similar, I was thinking radiology maybe.

Depends on what you’re interested in. Many will try for allied health areas (eg physiotherapy, podiatry), dentistry, vet med (although word on the block says it’s pretty competitive itself), genetic counselling, radiography, pharmacy/pharmaceutical science and so forth. Others might prefer to go do research instead or work in the labs at a hospital (medical laboratory science). Some of those options are postgrad only or undergrad.

I’d suggest you do your research for a back up plan just in case things don’t go quite to plan. (Not to be negative, but it’s good to be prepared.)