ATAR Notes: Forum
National Education => General National Education Discussion => Topic started by: totheforest on November 19, 2018, 11:16:25 am
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Honestly, there's no way in hell I could've gotten above 90 this year so I'm really not sure what to do.
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Yes. The graduate pathway takes into account your GPA, Interview performance and GAMSAT performance. Your ATAR doesn’t matter.
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Definitely. Like has been mentioned above, you don't have to get in straight away - there are (arguably more) graduate options to get into medicine. Have a Google search for these - look around the different medical school websites, browse through different discussions forums and you'll find that your ATAR (regardless of what it may be) does not limit your options nor chances at becoming a doctor :)
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Yes, as long as you are willing to persevere, be flexible and take a longer pathway it's entirely possible. Almost all universities in Australia has a science or biomedical science degree (the ATAR requirements range from 70 to 97 depending on the uni, Unimelb typically requires 85-90) which can lead to a graduate pathway in Medicine as long as uni pick the right subjects (you can do pretty much any degree for many graduate medicine courses as long as you do the required Biology and Chemistry subjects, but a Science degree is more convenient). After completing as undergrad and sitting the GAMSAT (entry exam for graduate medicine) apply for all the graduate medicine courses in Australia, if you desperately want to pursue Medicine, you have to be flexible location wise (although this is difficult if you have co-dependents). Also consider actively pursuing community work in areas you are interested in at Uni of Notre Dame, Wollongong and a couple of other regional universities places high priority on this things and can offset slightly lower grades.
People have taken all kinds of paths to get to Medicine. For instance, completing degrees in completely different areas like Law, Arts or Commerce, doing second undergrads as a result of not doing well enough in their first one as well as some who didn't do too well in school (60-70 ATAR) and took a long pathway. Medicine is certainly not out of your reach as long as you are willing to persevere.
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Agree with all of the above. The undergraduate pathway is basically unobtainable for anyone not from one of the elite schools in Melbourne (definitely an overstatement, but getting into undergraduate is insanely and unreasonably difficult). Postgraduate medicine, as mentioned, takes into account your GPA and most cases a combination of GAMSAT and interview scores too, although there are some unis in Australia that don't take GAMSAT and others that don't take interview. In any case, university provides an entirely new opportunity to create a set of scores that are a lot more obtainable. The reality is that some people just find uni a lot more straightforward than high school and do a lot better. To that end, whilst the vast majority studying medicine in a postgraduate setting got high 90s, there are plenty who got below 90 altogether.
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Definitely - uni is soooooo different to high school. I got a very high score in HS and elected to not do undergrad med because of the cost of moving to Clayton, so I'm aiming for Unimelb MD in 2020. However.... I find scoring highly in uni REALLY hard. I made a few wrong subject choices and ended up with a non ideal GPA (for a med aspirant, otherwise it's fine haha), whereas some of my friends who didn't do as well in high school are flying! My biggest piece of advice for you if you don't get into/decide against doing the undergrad med pathway, is to be strategic going into uni, just as you probably were in high school. If you can, find someone who is already at the uni doing the degree you're interested in to give you tips on subject choices, study methods and places to go for extra help!