The english diagnostic test

So, you've just arrived in Dunedin. You've probably had a few days to settle in and it's finally dawning on you - "I'm here! HSFY is about to start!"

In a strangely appropriate manner HSFY doesn't start with a welcome though. No - it starts with a test. :(

Some people do get awfully nervous about this, the english diagnostic test, and I can understand that - you're worried that it may disadvantage you in getting a place in your desired course, you're suffering from typical health sci paranoia, and for many of you english was always your weakest subject at school - a subject you were only too happy to dump in year 13.

The message I want to try and get across here is don't worry. It is a very easy test, and you don't need to have done very well at secondary school english to pass, nor do you need to have done english in year 13. It's in the middle of o week and last year there were people sitting it with a massive hangover and no year 13 english under their belt, and they passed.

It's mainly aimed at people for whom english is a second language and don't quite have it grasped. Ocassionally there is an upset and some competant person fails but there is a resit later on so it works out alright. Even if you fail that the penalty is only that you have to take a remedial english course (though to be honest that's probably a very good thing for people who manage to fail the test twice).

The sections are:

1. You listen to a recorded 10 minute lecture and answer questions as you do so. For us the lecturer was some american lady who spoke really slowly and repeated everything a good 2 or 3 times. We were allowed to answer questions while the recording was playing, so this was not hard. You don't have to remember the exact wording of what is said or anything - this component is just making sure that you can sit in a lecture and take in the educational points being made.
2. 3 sentences of increasing complexity are read out (once for each), and after each you have to write it down (i.e. dictation). The sentences read out consisted only of words that an average person should be expected to know and use. I recall that the third sentence (the longest) was slightly challenging just because it was a fair bit to remember at once, but that was about the only difficult bit in the whole test. In terms of remembering the whole sentence, as long as you are prepared for the sentence to be read out and are concentrating fully on it, this isn't really a problem.
3. You read a short article and answer questions (e.g. "what would a good title be for this article?", or extracting some basic facts from it).
4. You have to write a short essay on one of 3 given topics. I think the one I did was "how could New Zealand stop medical graduates from moving overseas?". You only get about 25 minutes so the essay doesn't have to be very long, and anything that could pass NCEA L1 formal writing could pass here. Don't worry about the quality of your points - as long as you can communicate them that's what matters.
   

So yeah, believe me when I say this test is the easiest you will do in HSFY. If you really feel the need to prepare for it I suppose you could practice with a couple of L1 formal writing essays, getting someone else to read out stuff from the newspaper for you to write down, and by reading articles in the newspaper/listening to stories on the radio news then summarising them to someone else. Honestly though, I reckon 95% of the people in HSFY would have passed the first time around without any preparation at all.

Just remember that unlike any other test you will do in HSFY, this one isn't here to rank you. It is here (and I am serious) to help you - to identify anyone who needs help with their english and then provide that help.

While you're still at school...

Health Sciences First Year is quite different from school in so many ways. The different style of teaching, the different style of assessment, some seriously cool labs. Oh, and the fact that people change - notably those slackers from school who are (generally unsuccessfully) trying to suddenly become high achieveing hard workers. The reality though is that there are some things you can do while still at school that'll definately help:

1 - First and foremost, sit UMAT in year 13! This didn't used to be the obvious thing to do, but in 2009 ACER (the guys who run UMAT) changed the rules slightly - now not only are you allowed to sit UMAT in year 13 and during HSFY, but when you do, Otago will consider your best mark of the two. So then, there are some definate advantages here - you have two shots at a high score, and if you get a decent score in year 13 there is so much pressure taken off (believe me, as someone who got a 96th percentile UMAT in year 13, when I say that I was incredibly glad that I sat UMAT in year 13). From my perspective it also means that maybe I don't have to hear as much groaning from people that "UMAT has so much luck involved" and "I'd make a very good doctor, but I only got 50th percentile in UMAT, therefore UMAT is flawed". Let me just say that I strongly support UMAT and this sort of unsubstantiated complaining pisses me off. The only downside is that it is really expensive - $200 to sit UMAT, $90 for the sample questions, and the cost of travelling to Dunedin or Auckland (those being the only two places in the country where you can sit UMAT - still it's a good chance to check out Otago, and the halls, before moving down). If it gets you into med (or whatever professional programme you're after) then it's totally worth it, but I'm just warning you now that you'll need to find a load of money.

2 - Take biology, chemistry and physics in year 12 and 13, and work hard at them (this is coming from an NCEA perspective by the way). You'll then know quite a bit of the HSFY stuff before HSFY, be familiar with science exams, have a good enough understanding of chemistry and physics that you can pick up the new content in CHEM191 and PHSI191 easily, and be used to working hard. Believe me - the hard work of HSFY isn't that bad if you build up to it from school. People who slack off in school but resolve to "pick up their game for HSFY" generally only last a few weeks before slacking off again. By the way, the really relevant achievement standards are level 2 cell biology, level 3 genetics, level 2 waves, level 2+3 mechanics, level 3 radiation, level 2+3 electricity, and level 3 aqueous systems (that's just what I reckon though, and most of the NCEA science standards will feature at some point in HSFY).

3 - (If you're going for med) Work out why you want to do medicine. Not only will this help motivate you through HSFY, it'll make sure that if you do get that med offer you still want to do it. Throughout HSFY you'll be exposed to a load of people (including some from the med school) activately talking down medicine as a career. Partly it's about being realistic - medicine is a very hard path, and one you should only take if you honestly can't see yourself doing anything else. It'd suck to work your arse off during HSFY for a med offer, only to realise at the end of the year that a med offer isn't really what you want. I'm not going to go over my reasons for wanting to do med. I find that this is a personal thing - everyone seems to differ a bit as to why they're doing it. That's fine, as long as you have your reasons (and don't you let anyone tell you that their reasons for doing med are any better). If you know you want to do med, then by all means go for it. Just make sure you are sure of this.

Textbooks

So, what textbooks should you buy?

To be honest, this depends entirely on you. Some people (myself included) have an often financially unhealthy craving for textbooks, and if you are one of those people chances are you'll go and buy them all anyway. Some people are absolutely fine with just using them in the library, and in that case you'll probably have just as much success (provided you still use the textbooks when necessary).

It is worth noting though that a significant number of the HSFY papers have a policy that if a segment of the textbook is specified as "essential pre-reading" then they can examine you on it, even if the content wasn't covered in lectures. In my experience, the only paper that has actually followed through on that is HUBS191, but CELS191 didn't come far off (by that I mean that one of the lecturers told us on two occasions "right, now I haven't had time to cover _______ today, but I may still feel like putting it in the exam, so if I were you I'd go away and learn about it. I advise your textbook as being easily the best source of information").

So, it probably pays to be wary of the fact that essential textbook readings may be examined in any paper that has this as a policy, but it's generally fairly obvious where this will happen (e.g. pre-readings are specified right down to individual sentences to read and sentences to ignore, or in a lecture the lecturer explicitly tells you to learn a specific part of the textbook). A rule I followed was that if a lecturer set a huge block of text (such as a whole chapter, or 10 consecutive pages) then chances are it was just to assist anyone who needed clarification on some points - it'd be worthwhile reading, but not memorising every little detail. A little anecdote on this point - I was having a chat to the HEAL192 staff, and we started talking about retrospective cohort studies v.s. case-control studies. It emerged that the subtlety of this distinction meant that it was official HEAL192 policy that students do not have to know anything about retrospective cohort studies (and, if possible, shouldn't even be aware of their existance). Well, that may be the case, but it didn't stop retrospective cohort studies from appearing in the "essential" (and thus "examinable") reading!

My advice on individual textbooks for HSFYers in 2010 (as specified on the 2010 HSFY booklist):

• HUBS textbook - very good to get, especially for HUBS191 where they follow through on a policy of assessing stuff if it is in the pre-readings but not in the lecture. Probably should buy this one new as HUBS are going to use the 7th edition this year (and that'll be near-impossible to get 2nd hand).

• CELS textbook - alright to get, but far from necessary. You do occasionally need a copy of the latest edition, but you could always just borrow from someone on your floor. Note that this is also the textbook for one of the modules (immune system) of HUBS191, but in 2009 they gave free photocopies of the relevant chapter to any HUBS students who needed it anyway. Interestingly I actually found the HUBS textbook (Thibodeau and Patton) better for immunology.

• CHEM textbook - only get this if you want LOTS of practice questions (and you get a fair few of these from the chem department/old exams anyway). There isn't really that much to be gained from the actual (non-question) content in this book.

• PHSI textbook - definately get this one, and new. It's only $40, and written especially for the course. It also happens to explain most things pretty decently. This years one (2010) will be a lot better than last years (e.g. minor errors and typos removed, practice questions included).

• HEAL textbook - most reckon this is indispensable but I'm not so sure. The way I used it was I read it in the mid-year break (it's really short as far as textbooks go). This was good as I had some sense of where the course was going throughout semester 2 (when you experience the disorganisation of the course you'll appreciate the advantage of this), and I honestly think it helped for UMAT (seriously, one of the questions in UMAT section 1 was almost identical to an example in the HEAL textbook). Throughout the semester though I barely used it at all, though it was occasionally useful for presenting the content from a really badly delivered lecture in a more organised manner. Despite official policy, I'd actually be surprised if there were any exam questions for which the reading of this book was necessary (that's not to say that this book wouldn't help though).

• BIOC textbook - you don't need this. I was enticed into buying it because the lecturer we had for the enzymes module kept talking about how the relevant chapters would be really good to read to further understanding. I read them and they were pretty cool. That was the only use for this textbook. BIOC192 does not have a policy of making the textbook examinable.

Remember that if you are put off by the cost, you can get away with second hand copies of the CELS, CHEM, BIOC and HEAL textbooks. Also remember that they are all available on "close reserve" (means you can't take them out of the library, and can only use them for two hours at a time - it sort of limits your flexibility, but it also means you have a reasonable chance of accessing any of the textbooks at the library if you need to look through them).

If in any doubt, there's nothing stopping you from waiting a good 3-4 weeks into the course before making the final decision as to whether or not you'll buy the relevant textbook (and in many cases this would be a wise move).

Some thoughts on CELS191

This (more so than HUBS) is a paper where you really do need to know everything the lecturer covers in a lecture. Thankfully this is an easily manageable amount of material. CELS tests both breadth and depth – you have to know the difference between cristae and cisternae, but you also have to be able to explain in general terms the method and uses of DNA profiling.

The first thing I would like to cover is the matter of the GLMs. These are not like the HUBS GLMs – these are hard. You will probably get the 1st GLM before the mid-semester exam. I suspect you will do better in the mid-semester exam if you have at least had a good look through it and the associated material, as it does reinforce the lecture material quite well. The second GLM sucks. The actual booklet has been done quite well but the 2009 assessment (a blackboard test) was nasty. I know of only one person in my year at Carrington who got an A+ for that test (and it wasn’t me). One of the questions was “which 3 of these 6 diseases would an unvaccinated first year university student be most likely to get?”. At first this seems somewhat attractive, but no one at my hall could work out the answer. I would later ask my Mum (a GP) what she thought the answer was. She disagreed with my Dad (also a doctor) and one of my friend's parents (another GP). So, what did I learn from this? Do not expect to get the full 5% for both GLMs. This is fair enough – you already get a free 10% from the BETs, so another free 10% would be excessive. Do not even expect to get at least 4.5% for each GLM, and accept this early on. Still work very hard at the booklets and consider the test questions carefully – quite a few of us still got the full 5% for the first GLM, though we had to be very careful when selecting our answers to do this – but don’t blow things out of proportion. For us the assessment for the 2nd GLM was in the 2nd to last week of lectures when we really should have been studying for the exams. Instead a few of us ended up spending hours trying to work out the correct answers to the test and analysing previous attempts by other people to find the pattern. In the end all this work gained us maybe 0.2-0.3% towards our final grade – we’d have been far better off fully completing the booklet well before the test became available, having a good careful attempt at the test, accepting that that was as good as we were going to do, and then spending the rest of the week studying towards the final exam. I think a key lesson here is that to get an A+ for a paper you don’t need to get an A+ in every individual component. Sure I would have lost 0.2-0.3% if I hadn’t done all that work in the week of the GLM assessment but I think that had I spent that week instead studying for the final exam I may have gained an extra 1% towards my final grade there.

The next thing is that you will get study questions, complete with model answers. Treat these like gold in your exam prep. These questions are in the style of the short answer component of the mid-semester/final exam and in many cases are just old exam questions. Use them to test yourself, and the model answers to see what sort of mark you would have gotten (and mark yourself harshly – do you trust the CELS staff to mark kindly?). Traditionally people lose quite a few marks in the CELS191 mid-semester test. I think this is due to two main things – firstly they don’t realise that the lecturers will ask questions on minor details, so they don’t learn those details. Next thing they know they are confronted with a question (often MCQ) on something they hadn’t learnt. Secondly they don’t approach the short answer questions properly. For all its faults (and there definitely are some), CELS191 produces very well-written exams, and this can lull you into a false sense of security. People lose marks in the SAQs because a) they don’t read the question and b) they don’t realise that CELS exams are marked quite differently from school exams. This is why I would advise making good use of the study questions – they will help stop you from making these mistakes in the actual exam. In terms of learning all the minor details, well, there’s no real secret there, but I have warned you now that you need to know everything covered in a lecture, so you just have to learn it.

On this note of what to learn and what not to learn in CELS, I wouldn’t worry too much about the textbook readings. They say they are examinable but I reckon this is just to get you to do them (and they are pretty interesting sometimes). Sometimes a lecturer will explicitly tell you to learn something in the textbook – in which case it is examinable. Sometimes a lecturer will just give you a whole chunk of the textbook (sometimes a whole chapter) – I would say it is highly unlikely that they will test you on a minor detail from here, and in this case I reckon the reading is just specified if you want something to support the lecture content. I personally don’t recall any exam questions in 2009 where the textbook would have helped beyond clarifying something covered in the relevant lecture.

Oh, and also, the past exam papers are really good resources for CELS191. Before 2007 the paper was called BIOL111, so there are heaps of past papers available. Not only do these provide good practice questions, the fact that CELS has been known to repeat questions (MCQ and SAQ) means that you may find yourself unexpectedly advantaged when you are sitting in the exam and see a question you’ve already done. The final exams from 2007 and earlier also contain the equivalent of past mid-semester exams (because the course wasn’t divided up between the two exams then), so this doesn’t just apply to preparing for final exams. Furthermore, the CELS staff will tell you they don’t release model answers to past exams. This is true, but in 2009 I did the 2008 exam for practice and then took it into the CELS office to look over with a teaching fellow. From that I discovered that there are model answers/mark schemes out there and if you go into the CELS office having already done the relevant questions you may just be able to see them.

The importance of UMAT for entry to med

Perhaps the most dreaded part of HSFY is sitting the UMAT. The word "UMAT" alone is enough to send shivers down the spine of many a health sci. Popular opinion holds that UMAT is the decider – the one test in which a bad performance is completely fatal to your chance of getting into med, regardless of your HSFY marks. This tends to lead to hysteria, with people blowing UMAT way out of proportion. I will say now – it isn’t uncommon for people to get into med with a 50th percentile UMAT, so when you hear someone say “I was going for med but then I got a 70th percentile UMAT and now I am completely out of contention” (I have actually heard someone say something to that effect), IGNORE IT.

UMAT may be worth 33% of the ranking score used to determine entry into medicine, but most UMAT scores fall within a relatively narrow range. For 2009, a 30th percentile UMAT was a score of 46, and a 95th percentile UMAT was a score of 62. Hence 65% of the people sitting UMAT (and probably 80-90% of Otago students sitting UMAT) score within a range of 16. This equates to a range in the HSFY paper average of 8%! Significant, but not earth-shattering.
The lowest ranking score I know of for someone getting straight into 2010 med from HSFY was 77.5. Some people got in through the waiting list with lower scores, but this is really something you want to avoid. Now, if we assume no effect on the UMAT score from Otago weighting (though in reality UMAT scores tend to drop by an average of around 1-2), the following table holds (sorry that it's a bit messy):

UMAT percentile | Minimum HSFY paper average to get straight into
..................................2nd year med 2010
30th percentile | 94%
50th percentile | 92%
80th percentile | 89%
90th percentile | 87%
95th percentile | 86%

You should remember that the above table is very susceptible to UMAT weighting (which could change the corresponding HSFY average required by up to 5% - though I’m sure most people trying for med could calculate their weighted UMAT score – S1 mark*0.45 + S2 mark*0.45 + S3 mark*0.1 and compare this to the cut-off of 77.5), and to the fact that the cut-off is likely to change every year. I reckon you would probably be safe with an average 3% higher than that above.

So, given that most people seriously aiming for med should be aiming to get A+s across their HSFY papers, anything 80th percentile or above in UMAT is definitely good enough. While things definitely get harder with UMAT marks less than 80th percentile, this is not by a devastating amount. If you get a UMAT of 50th percentile this just means that you should be aiming to get about 3% higher in each test than the 80th percentile people.

Why am I saying this? Because I personally believe you will do better in UMAT if you are able to relax a bit before the test. UMAT tests your thinking not your knowledge (hence why it is very hard to improve your mark through preparation – I’ll get to this in a later post), and therefore you will do better if you can think clearly at the time of the test and not be clouded by nervous emotions. Hopefully if you realise that UMAT is not the make-or-break event, you can overcome some nerves. Yes, an absolutely terrible performance will completely rule out med, but the same can be said for any of your final exams. Otherwise UMAT is not that big – if you don’t get into med chances are it’ll be a combination of a mediocre UMAT and a mediocre HSFY average. A mediocre UMAT on its own is not enough to rule you out.

The second reason I think you should keep this in mind is to avoid the “post-UMAT carnage”. For many people the effect of UMAT on your approach to HSFY can be far more damaging than UMAT itself. It is known for people to find themselves unable to study or sleep due to the nerves in the wait for UMAT results. It is also known for people to see a mediocre UMAT such as 60th percentile, mistakenly think that this means they are not getting into med, and therefore give up on their HSFY papers. Both of these result in significant drops in the HSFY paper average. Don’t let this happen to you! After sitting UMAT try to keep two things in mind – firstly, that unless your HSFY paper marks have been borderline it is unlikely to on its own stop you getting into med and secondly, that it is done and there is nothing you can do about UMAT now. What you can do is work hard in your semester 2 papers because if you let those drop then that is going to be far more devastating than a mediocre UMAT.

Some thoughts on HUBS (191 and 192)

When you start HUBS (probably at your first lecture) you are likely to get a talk about “you are at university now, and at university we prize thinking and deep learning above all else. In our opinion you will take more out of this course if you take a deep learning approach rather than taking a surface learning approach and simply learning the facts presented in lectures”. I’m going to be blunt. This is bullshit. Even the HUBS staff know this. A couple of years ago the university did a study on HUBS and BIOL115 (its predecessor), and part of this investigated the role of deep learning in HUBS. They gave students a fairly reputable survey that aimed to find, for each of them, whether they took a “deep” or “surface” approach to learning. They then looked at the performance of those students in the HUBS192 2007 final exam. The result – students who took a “deep” approach performed worse in all three sections of the exam than those who took a “surface” approach. I kid you not – here's the link (http://www.springerlink.com/content/g14140836891971j/) if you don’t believe me. HUBS is right in that university should be about deep learning but if you want to do well in HUBS it’s a case of surface learning ftw.

This makes sense when you think about it too. Occasionally a HUBS test can throw in a nasty question that really does require some deeper sort of understanding (Angela McLean is particularly good at this – she may be nice and friendly in lectures but I have a feeling that she, along with Frank Griffin and Ruth Napper, is responsible for the most marks lost in MCQs. You have been warned), but for the most part introductory anatomy and physiology is about memorization more than it is about understanding. You either know that the three layers of the bladder wall are the adventitia, detrussor muscle (muscularis in two layers), and mucosa (containing transitional epithelium), or you don’t. You either know what the ductus arteriosus is or you don’t. You either know that the neuron membrane is most permeable to K+ at rest and that this is why the resting membrane potential is -70mV, or you don’t. There is nothing else to it – no “conceptual understanding”, nothing. While some of the underlying concepts in physiology may require a bit of though to understand, such understand is very rarely required in assessments. While some of the anatomy may require good spatial reasoning to fully grasp, this, once again, is very rarely required in assessments. The only exception is that there are sometimes patterns to the naming of anatomical structures, but these are far from predictable and I wouldn’t rely on them.

So yeah, if you want to do well in HUBS, you’re probably better off just learning all the facts – those stated on the lecture slides, in the handouts, by the lecturer, and in the textbook. By all means seek further knowledge and better understanding of important and interesting concepts (I myself did this on occasion and found it quite rewarding), but do not neglect the surface learning required of you. Do not neglect the basic facts that (annoying as it may be) you just have to memorise if you want to well in HUBS.

Another thing I can say is to take the GLMs seriously. The final assessment tests are piss easy. I reckon most people aiming for med would get a final mark of 100% on them even if you only got 1 attempt, yet you get 3! As a result it is tempting to ignore the questions in the booklet and just do the test, using wikipedia if you get stuck. I would advise against this. Not only is it a valuable revision exercise to do the whole book properly, but the final exam will have around 1-3 marks that test stuff covered in the GLM and nowhere else. Don’t be the person who missed out on that A+ by 1 mark because you didn’t do the GLM. When you’re trying to get into med every mark is valuable.

A final thing I’ll say - when it comes to pre-readings for HUBS I would strongly advise doing them. For starters you will take more out of the lecture if you are prepared. Perhaps most importantly for you, the reader though is that they are examinable. I don’t mean this in the way that CELS give you a whole fucking chapter to read for a particular lecture while warning you that it is examinable (yet it really is just to reinforce the lecture material – the truly examinable stuff – refer to my thoughts on CELS191). When you have John Reynolds covering neuroanatomy you will notice that he gives you a whole page detailing the pre-reading (sometimes referring to particular sentences). Why is he so pedantic? Because he carefully identifies what he wants you to know, finds the relevant stuff in the textbook, and tells you to read it. I speak from experience when I say that he does put stuff in the tests that is in the essential readings but is not explicitly presented in lectures.

Note Taking

On numerous occasions you will be offered notes from previous students, provided you pay a sometimes significant amount of money. Said students will entice you with statements like “these got me into med with an A+ average”, “I’m just here to provide you with advice and help that I would have loved to have gotten in HSFY”, and “we’re providing these so that you don’t have to make your own notes – in effect we’re saving you valuable time”. Sometimes these products will just be a stack of paper typed up in word, sometimes they will look a lot flashier (I’m thinking of one very popular book in particular that here will remain nameless – just remember that a nice cover does not make for a good resource)

My advice – don’t buy any of these products. Let me make this clear – owning a set of notes for a paper compiled by an A+ student will not get you an A+, and it is unlikely to help you in any way.

Why is this? Quite simply it is because you will already be provided with all the information you need to get an A+ and into med by the official Otago teaching staff. Everything you need to know can be found in lecture slides, on lecture handouts, in textbooks. These are reliable sources, and where mistakes are present these are pointed out and corrected by the teaching staff. If you need clarification on a point there are plenty of reliable books in the libraries and plenty of reputable websites. This high reliability and accuracy is not something that can be found in student-made resources. Depending on such resources for information will potentially lead to you learning incorrect material. It may also lead to you learning non-examinable material and missing out on examinable material (particularly if the course has changed since such resources were produced) – this point is particularly relevant to people who buy such products ‘to get an idea of what to take out of each lecture’. To such people I give you the unfortunate truth – unless the lecturer explicitly said that something is non-examinable then it is examinable and if you want to get into med you’d do well to learn it.

The most important point when it comes to note taking however is that the final product does not matter. No one cares if you have neat, comprehensive notes. Why? Because you are not allowed to take these into tests and exams! It is all very well to have a nice resource made by an A+ student, but if you don’t know the material in it then owning it is pointless.

The main benefit of note taking and note making is that the process of doing so helps you to learn and memorise basic material. The A+ student offering their notes for sale got an A+ because in compiling those notes they were able to draw together all the relevant material while learning and revising it at the same time – hence all this was in their head during the final exam.

It is quite possible for anyone seriously aiming for med to themselves produce a set of notes of similar quality. If however they produce the notes themselves then they will do much better in the final exam. The sad thing is that a lot of the students offering their notes for sale know this. The fact that they want money in return should make you a little suspicious – their main priority (regardless of what they might say) is to get money from you, not to help you get into med.

In my opinion the best way to study for most of the HSFY papers (the exceptions being CHEM191 and PHSI191) is to pay full attention in lectures while taking pretty good notes. I found that if the lecturer said something then I was more likely to remember that than if I read it in a book – hence simply listening attentively in lectures (which is more than a significant number of people do) takes you a long way towards that A+. After that lecture (preferably in the same day) I’d review the content covered, the stuff in the pre-readings (which where possible should be read before the lecture), and combine it into around 1 page of notes summarising what that lecture covered. At the same time I would identify key terms and words to learn. The result was that by the end of each paper I’d have a very good resource that for me was far better than anything I could have bought. When people say “these notes got me into med with an A+ average” they may well be right – for them, the process of making such notes would have been a valuable learning exercise, and in this way such notes may well have gotten them that A+. The same notes will not get you the A+. If you want an A+ make and use your own notes.

So, what do you need to do to get into med?

The one thing everyone seems to want to know at first is "what marks do I need to get into med?", so I figured I should tackle this question first.

The first thing you should realise is that the competition isn't as epic as some people would make out (though there is still a lot of it). In 2009 there were around 1250 HSFYers at the start of semester 1, dropping to around 1100 shortly into semester 2. There are at least 150 spaces in med for HSFYers (and quite a few spaces in the other professional programmes also). So yeah, maybe 1 in 8 of the HSFYers at the start of the year will get into med (though of course a reasonable number may not want med). Tough, but not nearly as bad as some of the insane figures (such as 1 in 20) that I've heard some people believe to be true.

The approach I would take to getting into med though is not one of sitting in lectures and thinking "I have to outcompete nearly everyone in this room". That'll just stress you out unecessarily, not the least because (believe it or not) not everyone at HSFY lectures is studying HSFY. Around a third of the students in HUBS191 are not HSFY! Rather I reckon you should set a personal goal that'll get you into med, and aim for it, ignoring what everyone else seems to be getting.

So what should that goal be?

Well, firstly you should make sure you know how admission for med works. Basically, for everyone with no mark below 70% in any of the core 7 HSFY papers (otherwise you ain't doing med) a ranking score is calculated by the following formula:

(Mark in your best paper + Mark in your 2nd best paper + ... + Mark in your 7th best paper) x 2/3 + (UMAT Section 1 mark x 0.45 + UMAT Section 2 mark x 0.45 + UMAT Section 3 mark x 0.1)/3

Yeah I know it may look a bit complex at first, but it isn't too bad. Contact me if you need help.

Everyone is then ranked on this score, and those who rank highly enough (with a ranking score above some cutoff) get into med.

So, what is the cutoff?

From what I've heard anecdotally (and thus unreliably) the cutoff tends to be somewhere around 78. I think (though I really don't want to be quoted on this) that someone with a ranking score of at least 80 stands a very good chance of getting into med. Very roughly (note that Otago weights the 3 UMAT sections in an unusual way) a ranking score of 80 is any of the following:

30th percentile UMAT and 97% HSFY paper average
50th percentile UMAT and 95% HSFY paper average
80th percentile UMAT and 92% HSFY paper average
90th percentile UMAT and 90.5% HSFY paper average
95th percentile UMAT and 89% HSFY paper average

Now, this is just to give you an idea of what I think would be "safe". In reality, if you fall below the above you could still get into med (and I know plenty of people who have scored significantly below the above and gotten into med). Also note that the cutoffs are lower for rural and Maori/PI students, along with students getting in off the waitlist (though I'm sure you really don't want to put yourself through the trauma of the waitlist). I'm just giving the above for anyone who likes to set quantifiable and realistic goals for themselves. Once again note that Otago weights the UMAT sections 45/45/10. I reckon this is most likely to decrease your effective UMAT mark, increasing your required average. Once you get a UMAT mark, use the formula yourself to workout what HSFY average you need.

In reality what you should all be doing is trying to do your absolute best in everything throughout HSFY (note that your absolute best does not imply study at every available moment, including saturday nights - for gods sake, give yourself breaks! It'll stop you burning out, and help what study you do become far more effective). It's the annoying answer, but it's also the truth. Aiming for 100% and falling short at something like 93% is far better than aiming for 90%, getting 90%, only to get a low UMAT that means that 90% is no longer high enough.