med or not?

[werdna]

OP is a troll.

Agreed. Got what he wanted and left.

[tryingtobeoptimistic]

I think it must be a recessive trait, cause a lot of dumb parents seem to have pretty smart kids

haha! 

[shinny]

OP is a troll.

Agreed. Got what he wanted and left.

Doesn't that prove he's...not a troll rather? If he lingered and caused trouble, well, now that's trolling. His profile says that he's from Xavier. To me, I don't think he's trying to troll; he's just your typical Xavier kid.

[Mao]

OP is a troll.

Agreed. Got what he wanted and left.

Doesn't that prove he's...not a troll rather? If he lingered and caused trouble, well, now that's trolling. His profile says that he's from Xavier. To me, I don't think he's trying to troll; he's just your typical Xavier kid.

* Mao can smell a troll-bait in there..

[drdr]

I do. I think anything above 48 is really just dependent on luck, and 99.95s are a mixture of hard work but I mean, with the 99.9-99.95 range, there is a discrepancy that usually is just luck. Look at kyzoo, he deserves the .95.

Also depends heavily on subject choice. A student who does more LOTEs and is relatively strong in high-scaling subject has a better chance of scoring a highly (IMO) - purely because it is extremely hard to pull a 50 in a subject like Chemistry and Physics, as opposed to say a 35-38 in a language and have it scale 50+

To the OP - I'd to Med. I think that the fact he scored so highly and actually passed the Monash interview process shows he has great potential and possesses certain characteristics which the interviewers were looking for. Who knows, you may really enjoy Medicine, and if you find yourself disliking med you can always transfer out - it is almost impossible to transfer IN to Monash Med in your second year as I think they only look at Y12 applicants/gap yearers.

[iffets12345]

I do. I think anything above 48 is really just dependent on luck, and 99.95s are a mixture of hard work but I mean, with the 99.9-99.95 range, there is a discrepancy that usually is just luck. Look at kyzoo, he deserves the .95.

i don't think fuzzylogic was luck lol

of course, but I mean some people who should get 99.95 didn't because of bad luck.

[dimi_88]

thanks for the replies everyone! actually very helpful. for what it's worth, i'm not a troll i just started this thread the day before leaving on holiday.
when i said i'm not that smart, i meant that i'm not much of an intellectual. i didn't study much at all last year, i essentially beat the system (took some easy subjects, already fluent in a language, etc). so while i'm kinda interested in the career of a doctor, i get the feeling i'm pretty different from most people in the course. and that's where my uncertainty stems from.
and i don't think it's relevant to talk about all the people who really wanted to get into medicine but missed out. i don't think that gives me any less of a 'right' to study it. if i got an offer, i got an offer. that's how i look at it anyway.
and yeah, just for the record i ended up accepting the offer. so thanks again for input.

[werdna]

and yeah, just for the record i ended up accepting the offer. so thanks again for input.

You made the right choice! You seem far more confident now, which is good to see.

[dimi_88]

and also, intelligence is surely the innate ability to apply knowledge to new situations. how good you are at not just learning things, but understanding them. so by learning a lot of things, you don't actually increase your intelligence. you simply get practise at applying different kinds of knowledge.
very different.

[iNerd]

thanks for the replies everyone! actually very helpful. for what it's worth, i'm not a troll i just started this thread the day before leaving on holiday.
when i said i'm not that smart, i meant that i'm not much of an intellectual. i didn't study much at all last year, i essentially beat the system (took some easy subjects, already fluent in a language, etc). so while i'm kinda interested in the career of a doctor, i get the feeling i'm pretty different from most people in the course. and that's where my uncertainty stems from.
and i don't think it's relevant to talk about all the people who really wanted to get into medicine but missed out. i don't think that gives me any less of a 'right' to study it. if i got an offer, i got an offer. that's how i look at it anyway.
and yeah, just for the record i ended up accepting the offer. so thanks again for input.

Congratulations - just to clarify, of course you have the right to study it, the posters were just saying that people would kill to get into Medicine and your extremely lucky to get this course! Good luck!

[QuantumJG]

hey guys, got a couple of quick questions for anyone doing medicine this year. would really help me out if i got some advice!
i got a couple of offers to do medicine (from monash and queensland uni) but i'm not sure at all that it's the right career for me. i never realllly wanted to do it - i only took the umat because my friends were, and i thought 'just in case'. when i was doing my preferences i thought i'd put it down, again, because my friends were and it's such a prestigious course. i never thought i'd get offers.
and now somehow i've got the chance to do it this year, but i'm not sure whether i should if it's not something i'm 100% sure of. is it ok to go into medicine like that? do many people kinda try it to see how they go? i'm not even that smart, i barely studied last year. i'm not super interested in science or anything. i just want a career that will set me up with some nice cars and hot girls
what do you think?

also, this is what my offer from UQ says:

In the 13 January offer round you have been offered:

731702 Bachelor of Science/Bachelor of MBBS (Provisional Entry for School Leavers) - full-time - The University of Queensland, St Lucia Campus
Start Month: February 2011

Does this mean i have to do science as well? can't i just go straight to medicine? and is UQ better or worse than monash?

thanks so much if anyone has the time to answer my stupid questions!

I faced a similar dilemma because in year 12 I thought of putting down biomedicine because idea of becoming a doctor sounded awesome! I then spoke to my careers counsellor and the first thing he said was why I put down biomedicine and I didn't really have an answer and then he wanted to know whether I was actually passionate about being a doctor or just liked the sound of being one.

I remember when my dad coached a dentist's son in tennis and this one time he came down to the tennis club in a '92 collectors Ferrari. Anyway he took me in it for a drive (never been so scared and excited at the same time) and went on about how once you enter dentistry stuff like this is nothing.

A great movie that differentiates between a 'real' doctor and those pompous idiots our health system is inundated with is called Patch Adams. This probably one of my favorite movies and in my life I probably have only seen one doctor who comes close to Patch.

My nana who was a nurse a while ago told me how some of her coworkers would faint after seeing blood and recommended that people considering entering the medical field gained some practical experience rather than just another exam. 

[715761]

i get the feeling i'm pretty different from most people in the course. and that's where my uncertainty stems from.

Nah that's pretty much the logic I followed too.

Re: med being a narrow course, I have to say I disagree. You can go into pathology/emergency medicine/surgery/paediatrics... they all have different levels of involvement with people and different focuses. I like to think of medicine being its own arts degree =p

Re: nice cars - go rural enough and the government will give you whatever you like =p

Re: hot girls - at least in med you know if you date from your cohort you'll be dating *smart* hot girls. Plus there will be people that flock to smart guys. Trust me, I went to a girls school.

Re: people saying all that 'live your own life crap' >> don't you think this is a great opportunity to do that? Think about it  - is there any country you can't live in, as a doctor? (clearly my intention is to travel =p) Is there any course that won't take you at the drop of a hat after you finish medicine? I think not =p

Besides, if you didn't do it, you'd probably get to a point later in life where you'd regret what would essentially be wasted potential. And then you'd have an inferiority complex (just assuming you have a normal sized ego to begin with)

As well as all that, med has a real community vibe about it. It's nice c:

edit: removed arts degree jib - was uncalled for O-o

[Russ]

There's plenty of misinformation in that post, be careful with your assumptions there :S

[715761]

There's plenty of misinformation in that post, be careful with your assumptions there :S

mine?

edit:

Of course, everything I said is subjective.

To back up what may seem like misinformation: The government offers $750k scholarships for rural doctors in particular fields. I'm not saying 'graduate, go to the middle of nowhere, and they'll give you a ferrari' - there is of course work involved, but there are some great opportunities. Locum doctors also supposedly get a lot. And I have heart surgeon friends in NZ whose gross income is something like 1.5 mil per annum. Just saying.

A *lot* of girls do like smart boys. I think having gone to a girls school, I have a good understand of what girls like in a man =p
THere are of course, many exceptions.

And its true - med does have a lot of variety in it. And if you don't like it, you can leave after two years or something with a bachelor of clinical sciences (??) anyway.

There's no rules that say you can't work part-time and pursue another interest on the side.

I think you should be careful of being persuaded out of it. Usually no-one is as good of a judge of what you should do than yourself, because not many people (usually other than your parents) are as strongly focused on whats best for you.

People tried to persuade me not to do specialist or physics or even bother applying for medicine at all. God knows where that would have gotten me O-o

Anything else there was an issue with?

Just keep in mind, like I said,  that it *is* all subjective.

[jane1234]

In regards to the whole intelligence debate:

We had a study-skills speaker come the other week, and most of what he said was a whole bunch of psychological crap. He claimed that 'natural talent doesn't exist' and succeeding in VCE is all about believing in yourself. While this is true to a minute extent, I think that natural intelligence does exist. Whether this is primarily genetic or not, most people at a young age have their intelligence 'foundation' laid... that is why people who are naturally academic usually have been since primary school.

Yes, hard work can always improve scores. But some people can grasp unfamiliar concepts easily, and others can't. That's just the way it is.