Melb/Monash biomed??

[ian3150]

Hey guys,
Im in a little bit of a pickle. I'm currently enrolling for biomedicine at both Melb Uni and Monash Uni and I'm not sure which one is better. On the one hand at Monash, I can take the biomedical science scholars program which comes with a scholarship, but on the other, I hear that the Melb biomed course is generally a lot better. Can anyone currently doing biomed at either of the Unis help? Much appreciated!

PS. Does Melbourne Biomed get its reputation from the students being good or the course itself being superbly designed?

[Lagerfeld]

Monash.

[ian3150]

Thanks for replying! Is there any reason why monash is better?

[Lagerfeld]

It's np! Monash has a better reputation for medicine and Melbourne is actively trying to catch up, which is great, but considering Monash has the better equipment and is much more experienced in the field of medicine, it may be a better idea to go there!

[Maya24]

I would pick Monash as it comes with the scholarship. Monash also has more of a balance in terms of the workload.

[justwalkingby]

Can probably argue either way when it comes to reputation so it's probably a poor determinant. In terms of the actual course, Melbourne is probably a bit heavier in terms of workload (personally did biomed at Melbourne so this is just from comparing with friends at Monash). Monash comes with a nice scholarship and you get the option of doing med at monash if that's your goal, but you do get to play around with some breadth subjects at Melbourne if you want to branch out a bit. Just depends on what you want out of your time at uni.

[mtDNA]

As mentioned above, there are multiple factors you need to take into account.

When I was in your position, the first thing I took into account was where I wanted to be after I finished biomed. For me, and probably most other students in biomed, I wanted to do med, so choosing a course which gave me the highest chance of getting in was my priority. When you look at Monash, they have some reserved places for their biomedicine cohort (I think 50 places), though the total enrolment for the course is probably around 600 or more. The benefit here is that if you are in that top 50, you won’t have to do GAMSAT (yay), though clearly it’d be a challenge to get into this top 50. Because of you ATAR, you have access to a ‘guaranteed’ FFP in Melbourne’s MD program on the condition you pass the interview and maintain a 75 WAM (this isn’t difficult if you put the work in), though I mark guaranteed since this spot will come with a hefty price - given it’s not a CSP, you’d have to pay around 270k in total.

Another important factor is location. For biomed, you generally get some really shit lecture times (so many 8ams it’s scary), so thinking about travel is important. For me, unimelb was about a 15min tram, whereas the commute to Monash would’ve been over an hour (yikes).

Another thing I want to mention is that you will get the Melbourne National Merit Scholarship which is 5k, though I do remembrr the Monash scholarship being 15k in total, so picking Monash will land you an extra 10k (at this point in time it may seem a bit pointless, but in effect this pays for more or less half of the undergrad degree).

In terms of course structure and quality, I assume they are very similar, though note that the Melbourne Model requires you to take breadth subjects. You might brush this off now as something which isn’t important, though breadth can really make or break your WAM/GPA (maybe I’m being a bit dramatic here, but you get the point hahaha). I personally like having breadths because they allow me to explore things I’ve never done before (for instance I chose food for a healthy planet 2, and now I’m seriously considering the human nutrition major in biomed), though I know a lot of people who have gotten poor marks because of their breadths.

In terms of reputation and whatnot, it really doesn’t matter whatsoever, so don’t base your choice on this. Finally, it might sound silly, but some students base their choice on the atmosphere of the campus. I recently met a unimelb arts student who had transferred from Monash arts/law literally because she said she preferred the atmosphere and aesthetic at Melbourne over Monash.

Hopefully this helps

[ian3150]

Wow, thanks for all the replies!! I had no idea about the top 50 in Monash biomed not having to sit GAMSAT, though I’ve heard of the ‘guarenteed’ Melbourne MD entrance program. This definitely cleared some stuff up for me. Before I change my preferences, do you mind me asking, @mtDNA, why did you choose to do melbourne biomed? Is it purely due to location? Thanks again for the reply

[crawlingvines]

Another thing I want to mention is that you will get the Melbourne National Merit Scholarship which is 5k, though I do remembrr the Monash scholarship being 15k in total, so picking Monash will land you an extra 10k (at this point in time it may seem a bit pointless, but in effect this pays for more or less half of the undergrad degree

Not sure about the Monash scholarship but I just read about Melb Uni's National Merit one and it states that you're only eligible if you graduated high school in a state OTHER than Victoria.

[mtDNA]

Wow, thanks for all the replies!! I had no idea about the top 50 in Monash biomed not having to sit GAMSAT, though I’ve heard of the ‘guarenteed’ Melbourne MD entrance program. This definitely cleared some stuff up for me. Before I change my preferences, do you mind me asking, @mtDNA, why did you choose to do melbourne biomed? Is it purely due to location? Thanks again for the reply

I’m glad you found my advice helpful!

In essence, the main reasons were for the guarantee and location. Obviously the FFP is extremely off-putting (and I’d honestly go for an interstate CSP if offered one instead of taking a Melbourne FFP), though at the end of the day it’s a safety net. What I’ve realised this year is that GAMSAT is really important for graduate entry, since unlike undergrad medicine where you have JCU that don’t look at UMAT (now UCAT) and Flinders which weight it 10%, pretty much all med graduate schools have GAMSAT as a selection criteria (in fact some only have uni marks as a hurdle requirement and instead give out interview places purely on the basis of one’s GAMSAT score). So, being someone who absolutely hates high-stakes aptitude testing, the guarantee is sort of appealing since it means that I only need to maintain a 75 and pass the interview stage - both of which seem to be very achievable. In contrast, for the 50 or so spots for Monash (it might be 75 spots, perhaps look this up because I might get some details wrong given it’s a year since I’ve looked at this), you get an interview but you still need to take a situational judgement test. This SJT seems a lot more achievable than the GAMSAT, though I didn’t like the idea that a place in medicine would rely on my performance on this one test (again, like GAMSAT). Finally and probably most importantly, when talking to Monash and Melbourne during this change of preference time, I found out that at unimelb you can take the interview every application cycle (so say you muck up the interview and want to apply again in the next year, you poor interview score is not retained), though your interview score is retained at Monash for future application cycles (i.e. you can only do one interview, and if you stuff it up, then bad luck). So from this, I decided that unimelb’s pathway was more guaranteed than a place at Monash.

[Sine]

Hmmm, a few people speaking on the workload - I would have to disagree and say that they are quite similar (would be interested to see what your thought processes are).

 I don't think any course is significantly better than the other and really depend on which uni is a better fit for you.

[mtDNA]

Not sure about the Monash scholarship but I just read about Melb Uni's National Merit one and it states that you're only eligible if you graduated high school in a state OTHER than Victoria.

Thanks for the pick up! Unfortunately they changed the conditions of the scholarship (so only for interstate applicants and now it’s 8k instead of 5k)

[mobius.strip]

Was looking for a thread just like this!
I got an atar of 99.60 so I'm in a pretty similar situation. Didn't take the umat this year, but after some deliberation, post-grad medicine is definitely a path that I would like to take. Just a few questions for those who are a bit further down the road, how difficult is it to snatch a coveted 'top 50 place' in monash biomed (what sort of average grade would be roughly needed) and does it make the overall atmosphere really competitive? And for the guaranteed pathway at Melbourne, I realise that you have to pass the interview at the end of third year? Is it the same one as those who take the gamsat pathway and do you only get one shot on it to pass (can you do the interview a following year again?, though the FFP is so incredibly expensive that I'm not sure if I can really use it as a fallback)? Another question is if I plan to major in biological science, is doing a science degree at melbourne still an option I should consider (I have read that it's easier to maintain higher marks than in biomed but is this really true since I also read that subjects are similar)? Thanks guys.

[Sine]

Was looking for a thread just like this!
I got an atar of 99.60 so I'm in a pretty similar situation. Didn't take the umat this year, but after some deliberation, post-grad medicine is definitely a path that I would like to take. Just a few questions for those who are a bit further down the road, how difficult is it to snatch a coveted 'top 50 place' in monash biomed (what sort of average grade would be roughly needed) and does it make the overall atmosphere really competitive? And for the guaranteed pathway at Melbourne, I realise that you have to pass the interview at the end of third year? Is it the same one as those who take the gamsat pathway and do you only get one shot on it to pass (can you do the interview a following year again?, though the FFP is so incredibly expensive that I'm not sure if I can really use it as a fallback)? Another question is if I plan to major in biological science, is doing a science degree at melbourne still an option I should consider (I have read that it's easier to maintain higher marks than in biomed but is this really true since I also read that subjects are similar)? Thanks guys.

not too sure what you need to be in the top 50.

Competitive is a word that is thrown around a lot in terms of uni courses - especially biomed. Most people will probably be trying their best to score well for various reasons, job, graduate programs, PhD etc. However, no one is really actively trying to sabotage anyone else or happy someone else isn't doing well. A lot of people in this course works together and share resources, notes, tips (from students who have done the unit before).

[mtDNA]

Was looking for a thread just like this!
I got an atar of 99.60 so I'm in a pretty similar situation. Didn't take the umat this year, but after some deliberation, post-grad medicine is definitely a path that I would like to take. Just a few questions for those who are a bit further down the road, how difficult is it to snatch a coveted 'top 50 place' in monash biomed (what sort of average grade would be roughly needed) and does it make the overall atmosphere really competitive? And for the guaranteed pathway at Melbourne, I realise that you have to pass the interview at the end of third year? Is it the same one as those who take the gamsat pathway and do you only get one shot on it to pass (can you do the interview a following year again?, though the FFP is so incredibly expensive that I'm not sure if I can really use it as a fallback)? Another question is if I plan to major in biological science, is doing a science degree at melbourne still an option I should consider (I have read that it's easier to maintain higher marks than in biomed but is this really true since I also read that subjects are similar)? Thanks guys.

Hey there, I’ll try answer your questions about unimelb. So as I’ve mentioned above, you have multiple shots at the interview at unimelb, so it’s not the biggest deal if you stuff up (though if you didn’t pass it that means you need to wait an entire year until you have another crack at it). This interview is that same interview taken by the CSP applicants, though you’re not competing with them - think of it as being two separate cohorts of students, one which are competing to get the highest interview scores for a CSP, the other which are just trying to get a pass mark as a hurdle requirement. For the whole science vs biomedicine debate, I personally don’t buy into the fable that science is significantly easier. From experience with friends over first year, what happens is that biomeds need to do 2 biology subjects, 1 chemistry subject, 1 physics subject, and 2 maths subjects (then plus 2 breadth). In comparison to this, the science students do very similar biology subjects, though their 2 bio subjects have less focus on human health and include plants (whereas we pretty much learned nothing about plants). For chem, the science students can literally take the exact same subject (which for them is ‘advanced chemistry’), or do very similar content to this subject but over two semesters in ‘chemistry 1’ and ‘chemistry 2’. Then obviously they get the choice to do physics and maths - I think this is the main difference, since if you hate physics/maths, then biomed will let you down for first year. For second year, there are 4 subjects worth of content which is slightly different, though again it’s apparently nothing significant. Then for 3rd year there are some compulsory biomed subjects which I have no idea if there are similar options in science, but the major you choose in biomed is exactly the same as the major for science students (though science students obviously have a wider option of majors to choose from).

Note that the maths and physics subjects mentioned are a bit different to the science alternatives; for maths, one is called ‘maths for biomedicine’ which I think has no equivalent in the science degree since it has a huge emphasis on population genetics/enzyme kinetics/disease related maths, and the other is a statistics based subject which is similar to one found it science, though all the questions are focused in the context of medicine (so calculating a biomed question could be about calculating the median number of disease X patients, whereas the science question could be calculating the median number of strawberries contaminated with needles). This is again similar for physics, whereby the physics concepts are put into a medical context in biomed (e.g. explaining torque with anatomy), though similar content is introduced in the science equivalent.

I chose biomed since I knew I wanted to focus on human health, so I’d only choose science if you are unsure if you want to do med / if you want to explore some more options