Monash Med VS Melbourne Biomedicine

[Jemin99]

Hey all.
I was lucky enough to get into monash med, however, i sometimes think being a doctor isnt my thing and rather want to be a scientist or researcher.
If i choose monash med, then i believe it will be hard for me to become a researcher whereas if i choose biomedicine at melbourne, apparently its impossible to become a doctor. (gamsat etc)
I would like to get some advice in choosing the course ,(and am talking with my parents every night since i also got a high enough atar to get an offer from melb in round 2)
thank you

[Quantum44]

If you’re not sure whether you want to pursue medicine or another science related field, biomedicine sounds ideal as you get three years to find your passions and experiment with different fields. Besides, if you are good enough at ATAR/UMAT/Interview for Monash med, chances are you will be good enough at GPA/GAMSAT/Interview for Melbourne med after your biomed degree, particularly since a lot of the competition has been eliminated through getting into undergrad medicine.

[tashhhaaa]

Maybe you should start Monash med and transfer to Unimelb after a couple of semesters if you don't like it. I'm sure you're capable but Unimelb won't guarantee you the option to become a doctor

Have you seen this?

To broaden your options, you will have the opportunity to take intermission from your medicine studies after second year to undertake the honours year of the Bachelor of Medical Science (leading to the award of Bachelor of Medical Science (Honours)), and focus on an area of medical science research, before returning to the course. This will place you in an excellent position to continue with medical research at a later stage, perhaps through a PhD, should you so wish.

http://www.monash.edu/pubs/2018handbooks/courses/M6011.html

[brenden]

Hey all.
I was lucky enough to get into monash med, however, i sometimes think being a doctor isnt my thing and rather want to be a scientist or researcher.
If i choose monash med, then i believe it will be hard for me to become a researcher whereas if i choose biomedicine at melbourne, apparently its impossible to become a doctor. (gamsat etc)
I would like to get some advice in choosing the course ,(and am talking with my parents every night since i also got a high enough atar to get an offer from melb in round 2)
thank you

If you're good enough to get into undergraduate medicine, then there's a great chance you can cut the mustard for graduate medicine entry. If you want to keep that door open, just make sure you keep a highly competitive GPA at university.

I actually have a friend that did a Biomed degree, then gained entry into postgrad Med, before quitting that degree (I think she is currently studying to be a psychologist instead). I think she wanted to be open to research as well and in the end decided being a doctor potentially wasn't her thing, either. It's definitely not true that it's impossible to become a doctor after Biomed. It is very possible to become a doctor after Biomed. Don't make your decision thinking this is your only chance to study medicine. It's certainly your best chance (given you have a guarantee on the table), but that doesn't mean it's your only chance.

Good luck

[cookiedream]

My advice would be to pursue a degree for which you have a strong passion for. Having this kind of passion when going into intensive courses like med really makes a difference, especially since it can be really demanding and stressful. To put it a bit bluntly, it can potentially be very mentally taxing if you feel like you're simply pushing on/forcing yourself through the course - unfortunately I know quite a few cases like these who ended up dropping out or eventually pursuing avenues which aligned more with their desires.

Another thing to consider is the Biomedical Science pathway into Monash Medicine. Monash Biomed students can talk more about this, but from what I know is that it does involve some concepts taught in med and provides opportunities to participate in medical research. During this time, you might get a newfound spark of interest for the doctor profession. After doing this degree, if you have sufficient uni marks and pass the situational judgement test and MMI, you'll be guaranteed a CSP place in Monash's postgraduate medicine course (without GAMSAT)! Some of my friends who didn't get into Monash med are trying out for this pathway. It's competitive, but if you were able to get a place for undergrad med then I'm confident you have a strong chance, while you're doing something that you're more likely to be interested in ^^

Not too sure when you can change your preferences for second round, but if you can, I think it's worth considering the above pathway.

[Russ]

I think there's also a fairly difficult decision 5 years from now, should you choose to study medicine. It's quite hard to have a sunk cost of that much time and effort (not to mention debt) and then choose to walk away from a socially desirable career. There's also the 'one more year' issue post graduation, of getting general registration and then fellowship etc. and if you're not careful, your plan to transition into research is stalled substantially. Once you're 30 and have a mortgage and dependents, it's hard to go back to being a student just for a career change.

Whilst many doctors ended up as researchers (someone mentioned this above), they usually ended up there after practising medicine as their primary objective. Studying medicine doesn't make it 'hard' to pursue research, it just adds a lot of time in the manner I described above. It can open doors and give you an excellent clinical perspective but ultimately, that only comes from working as a doctor. If you don't want to commit that much time, it's not unreasonable to not accept your MBBS offer. Nobody can really tell you whether that's best for you; reflect on what you value in a career and what your goals are for life's checkpoints eg. home ownership, city/country of residence, lifestyle.

It's difficult to tell whether you're committed to a particular pathway over the other, so it's hard to offer much advice but mapping out what you want to achieve/obtain is probably a necessary step.

As an aside, this situation is a product of asking 17 year olds to commit years of their life to careers they know nothing about. Melbourne made some mistakes when they transitioned to focusing on graduate study, but I firmly believe it's a substantially better educational model.