Australian Medical Schools

[dc302]

The 99.65 was actually my good friend, who ended up at griffith. She did NOT deserve to go through what she did (i.e, rejections at nearly every uni..) She's naturally gifted and I know she'll become a great doc/paed. She nailed all her exams this year and thats basically because she loves what shes doing, and she was born to do so!

I know UMAT is important to differentiate people, but after what she went through, ive changed my mind! especially since someone from my school got a slightly lower atar, but also a lower umat and still got into monash. all they happened to do was have a better interview... :@

Wait, so your friend DID get an interview?

[paulsterio]

Alright, I knew I was gonna get flamed, but I'm not intending to offend anyone

But yeah, I agree with you, I think it should be UMAT + ATAR to determine who gets an interview, that seems the fairest to me

I don't think ATAR only is fair, because there's a lot of people (such as myself) who would never get into undergraduate medicine if it weren't for the UMAT

dc302, i didn't mean that Academic Merit isn't required in a doctor, I meant to say that it's not the only factor which defines a good doctor, sorry I worded it badly before

[shinny]

Academic merit is overrated for Medicine IMO and most uni's know it, hence the emphasis on UMAT/interview instead. The Medicine course is centered mainly around clinical practice so it doesn't deal with a whole lot of difficult concepts and such. On the other hand, I'm pretty damn sure some many other courses such as engineering and science deal with far harder content. I mean there's definitely some challenging parts, but in comparison to many other courses, there's far less of it. Medicine is mostly common sense, mixed in with a lot of rote learning. This dependence on common sense is why the UMAT is important, given that it's something that can't really be taught or even learnt to that much of a degree. And let's be honest, being good at rote learning and having actual academic merit are two different things. But yeh, I've got friends in the course with sub-90 ATARs who are coping just fine.

[paulsterio]

I personally think the issue of whether the UMAT is any good will never be resolved because for everyone who did well on the UMAT, it helped them get into medicine, so they'll love the UMAT
For those who didn't happen to get an interview and happen to get a very good ATAR, they will feel negatively towards the UMAT because that blocked them from getting in

I think that's the general mentality? What do you guys think?

[dc302]

There will always be problems with admissions and selection processes. There are many people who do LOTS of practice for UMAT and barely get in, and a lot of people who hardly do any practice at all, and barely miss out. If UMAT was purely a measure of 'common sense' then clearly, the latter group would be more deserving. Of course, there's no way to stop this. Similarly, ATAR is not good measure of academic merit either, as you guys have said, at least at a very high level. Anyone who gets above 95 or so is prooobably got enough brains to handle med, but that doesn't mean someone who didn't get above 95 doesn't--again another flaw. And yes, everyone has their own strengths, so if you get high scores in areas like maths and physics, but you're really bad at rote learning, you may not be suited for medicine even if you get in. Such things can't really be solved with out current system (if ever), so I think many people's frustrations are justifiable to an extent.

Personally, I think equal weighting given to atar, umat and interview is about as fair as we can have it (for reasons I outlined above, that every criteria is flawed in its ability to measure certain things about the candidate). Some may argue that interview (communication skills etc) are important and may be given more weighting, but communication skills can be learnt and improved, and not only that, it takes by far the least amount of time to complete. Because of this, I think based on effort alone, it would be unfair to give interviews a larger weighting as well.

[thushan]

The 99.65 was actually my good friend, who ended up at griffith. She did NOT deserve to go through what she did (i.e, rejections at nearly every uni..) She's naturally gifted and I know she'll become a great doc/paed. She nailed all her exams this year and thats basically because she loves what shes doing, and she was born to do so!

I know UMAT is important to differentiate people, but after what she went through, ive changed my mind! especially since someone from my school got a slightly lower atar, but also a lower umat and still got into monash. all they happened to do was have a better interview... :@

Wait, so your friend DID get an interview?

Griffith doesn't take into account UMAT, nor does it have an interview. It is ATAR alone.

[dc302]

The 99.65 was actually my good friend, who ended up at griffith. She did NOT deserve to go through what she did (i.e, rejections at nearly every uni..) She's naturally gifted and I know she'll become a great doc/paed. She nailed all her exams this year and thats basically because she loves what shes doing, and she was born to do so!

I know UMAT is important to differentiate people, but after what she went through, ive changed my mind! especially since someone from my school got a slightly lower atar, but also a lower umat and still got into monash. all they happened to do was have a better interview... :@

Wait, so your friend DID get an interview?

Griffith doesn't take into account UMAT, nor does it have an interview. It is ATAR alone.

Hmm, are we talking about the last paragraph in his post? I think he means both the friend and the other person could have gotten a place at monash (not griffith).

[thushan]

Not much of a fan of the UMAT - section 1 does have some bearing, section 3 I'm unsure about but section 2 i'm not that happy with, given the MC format and inappropriate absolute nature of test (it must be this answer and only this answer). Qualities tested by Section 2 can be easily done in a Multiple Mini Interview I say. So an ATAR/Interview model would be better I reckon.

@dc: whoops I didn't read the thing properly :/

[REBORN]

I thought it was accepted that UMAT is merely a tool for filtering thousands and thousands of students...which has some sort of relevance to Health Sciences :p

[thushan]

I thought it was accepted that UMAT is merely a tool for filtering thousands and thousands of students...which has some sort of relevance to Health Sciences :p

Pretty much. Reckon Monash's ATAR-only stream should have a <99.95 cut though (UMAT > 150 anyway).

[shinny]

Not much of a fan of the UMAT - section 1 does have some bearing, section 3 I'm unsure about but section 2 i'm not that happy with, given the MC format and inappropriate absolute nature of test (it must be this answer and only this answer). Qualities tested by Section 2 can be easily done in a Multiple Mini Interview I say. So an ATAR/Interview model would be better I reckon.

@dc: whoops I didn't read the thing properly :/

Section 2's a joke, I agree with that. Section 3 is important due to the pattern recognition required in Medicine. When there's so many possible diagnoses, and things rarely present the way they're meant to, it's important to be able to spot patterns and solve problems despite having incomplete information.

[thushan]

Point taken

[funkyducky]

Generally, I reckon more emphasis needs to be placed on the interview and less on ATAR/UMAT. Whilst a high ATAR or UMAT score is an indicator that someone will probably do well in the MBBS, it doesn't speak much for their potential to be a good doctor. At the end of the day, people want doctors who are trustworthy, warm, empathetic, skilled, ethical, motivated and make them feel safe. They don't want the quiet, nerdy, slightly socially awkward kid who has amazing logical reasoning and maths skills who got a 99.95 ATAR and 100%ile UMAT w/ 90+ scores Section 1 and 3 but a subpar Section 2 score. (Hyperbole, yes, but it gets the point across)

[paulsterio]

But not all doctors work with patients, what about academics, public health policy experts, research...etc.

Overall I reckon the UMAT does carry some merit, in that with Section 1, it does test logical reasoning and problem solving. Section 2 is iffy, I agree, but it sort of does have a little meaning in it, that it's about understanding people and that's important in a doctor too and Section 3 is important for the reasons Shinny was talking about.

Section 2 is just slightly unfair in that they have words which they expect us to know

[shinny]

I'm not saying that section 2 is unimportant. I'm saying that it's an invalid test for what it's trying to measure.