High ATAR-Five or six subjects?

[geek123456]

How important is a sixth subject for Medicine?Can you get a high ATAR with five subjects?

[www]

All depends on how strong you are in the subjects. You may do 6 subjects, but then find it's too much and start falling behind in all your subjects; or you may not at all. No one can really say on your behalf! You can definitely get a high ATAR with only five subjects. Mainly ensure you meet prerequisites for the courses you may be interested in as you don't want to miss out on a course you really want to do because you haven't done a specific subject.

[Quantum44]

How important is a sixth subject for Medicine?Can you get a high ATAR with five subjects?

Depends how you define high ATAR. If you want to get into med, you'll need at least 98, probably 99 (unless you are a genius at the UMAT). To do that well will be quite difficult with 5 subjects. I'd recommend doing 6 but not trying very hard in the 6th subject and even if you get a 30, the extra 3 aggregate will help a lot.

[patriciarose]

How important is a sixth subject for Medicine?Can you get a high ATAR with five subjects?

depends. if you're going for 99+ i think you might almost always need six for that little extra boost (purely anecdotal, because i honestly haven't ever met anyone who's done it with five?) to your aggregate. you could do one in year eleven and then five in year twelve like most people who do six have done? (i'm doing six in year twelve this year and managing okay but i'd be wary of it purely because you have to really enjoy your subjects.) 100% possible to get a very high atar with five subjects though, so don't stress it if you end up with five (:

[Sine]

Depends how you define high ATAR. If you want to get into med, you'll need at least 98, probably 99 (unless you are a genius at the UMAT). To do that well will be quite difficult with 5 subjects. I'd recommend doing 6 but not trying very hard in the 6th subject and even if you get a 30, the extra 3 aggregate will help a lot.

Theoretically you can take spesh - do no work - guess MCQ questions - get raw 16 scaled to a 23 for 2.3.  

[Joseph41]

I'd probably agree with the posts above. You can play around on ATAR Calc to see what sort of effect the sixth subject might have (but don't spend too long on it lol).

The effect of the sixth subject is pretty intangible, though. Like, will it increase stress levels, thereby reducing performance? Will it take up time you'd otherwise be spending on your other subjects? It's a tough call.

Ultimately, in your situation I'd probably do the sixth - just because every last bit can count when it comes to Med (as noted earlier). It's really difficult to say, though, because it's such a subjective thing haha.

What are you thinking at the moment? Keep us updated!

[heids]

Two of my older brothers did six subjects, and I did five; I got the same ATAR as one of them and 0.05 below the other, which I like to say proves that there's no real difference

You win some, lose some on both sides and in terms of final ATAR it doesn't really matter imo: it's​ up to you whether you care more about learning more broadly or lowering your stress levels.