Get into Otago Medical School

I’m not going to judge whether or not you are Med material – but if you cared enough to find this esoteric blog, you at least deserve some advice about getting into it.

This is for the Otago Medical School entering via health science first year.

OMG did you hear? Only 100 students out of 2500 HSFY are accepted into Med!!??!! – Bullshit
265 medical students were accepted the year of 2008. Expect this to increase annually by about 10~20 students per year.
33% were postgraduate students (that is they came to Medicine after completing a Bachelors in another course, commonly a Bachelors of Biomedical Science), leaving…
67% to be accepted from Health Science.
During the HSFY, someone thought it was a good idea to up the tension of health science to start a rumour that 2500 students were enrolled and studying health science first year. I had always doubted this, as there were 3 sets of lectures per day each seating a maximum 550. That’s 1650 students maximum that can go to the lectures. Further confirmation came from public exam results, and with a bit of magic by copy pasting student numbers into excel, quickly deduce that only 1481 students were in Health Science.

Your obstacles
Health Science – during this year, you grow grey hair, lots and lots of it. Don’t think your ‘fun zone’ is protected.
The academic score of this year will count for 66% of your final mark.
UMAT – Undergraduate Medicine and Health Sciences Admission Test of your Whiteness. Those Asian kids getting dux, Excellences left and right, 100% averages in Cambridge – watch the fuck out for this test.
This one 3 hour test determines 33% of your final mark, each section of the UMAT are further weighted Section 1 (Problem solving and logical reasoning) – 45%, Section 2 (Interpersonal skills) – 45%, Section 3 (Non-verbal reasoning: Patterns and shit, unofficially found to be an Asian’s strong point)- 10%.
This isn’t a personal attack at UMAT. I have no problem with this test, I’ve been in NZ long enough that I’ve got S1 and S2 in the palm of my hand with my S3 being a near fail. I express the unexplainably vented frustration of the mainstream Asian students of Otago that achieve straight A+ throughout the Health Science to have their dreams delayed a minimum 2 years because of this test.

Helpful hints about UMAT
Read faster. The absolute BEST thing you can do for this is reading this blog. I’m half serious, reading anything can help you get better at reading, and there’s valuable information about health science amongst the muses of Dr Month and Dr Chill and Everyday Matters. For those that are hard to the core, try speed reading.
Section 1 – Can’t think of any hints other than to use common sense.
Section 2 – Don’t EVER pick the option of anything remotely “wait and observe” related. The guys at UMAT want action and they want it fast and right now.
It’s great to know the emotions that a person feels from the most-rapid to the lingering feelings, often a UMAT question will give you a long-worded question like “Whilst walking down the street *insert 300 words of useless crap here* you just got kneed in your loins” (Ok, not quite like this one but the principle is what’s important here) Do you feel: A) Anger B) Hatred C) Revengeful D) Shocked E) Aroused. Your going to feel all of ABCDE, ok ok hopefully not E, but the initial feeling will be shocked – making that the right answer.
Section 3 – I barely passed this one, advice from me will be like getting advice of getting Excellence from a straight-Achieved NCEA student.

WTF Should I DO?
Before Uni
Up to 5th form – don’t bother with spending time worrying about the future. It’s far enough away that you can push it aside without considering it procrastination.

5th form – The subjects that’ll help you most Chemistry, Biology, Physics. All that “this is soooooooooo irrelevant knowledge” your complaining about like mitochondria, v=d/t, organic chemistry: it’s all back to rear its grotesque head in Health Science. Its still irrelevant, but it’ll get you into Med.
6th form – The same. If your planning to go to Uni next year, take the UMAT test. Register here.
7th form – The same + Physical Education. Take the UMAT test.

Preparing for UMAT – the test is held once a year sometime in July, with registration for it opening in April. Make sure you register first, and get the 2 practice booklets offered from ACER, I’m going to suggest other practice material but none of it is going to be as good as these 2 booklets.
Online – Medentry was the most prevalent preparation course amongst people who did well in UMAT. Get a group of 5 friends, share the cost amongst you, there is some content that you can only access once, but not enough you shouldn’t cut the ridiculously high price amongst your friends. I would go with the Distance package from Medentry, the workshops aren’t worth it.
Offline – There are plenty of books available for UMAT. Make sure you get one that is more recent than the 2006 preparatory material, Section 3 has been completely revamped – I found out the hard way… during the test. Don’t know what to recommend, I used some shady books a friend photocopied for me- the title escapes me.

During Uni
Congratulations you got into Health Science First Year. Open entry into Health Science is 99% the battle.

Textbooks – over $500 for poorly lighting paper for the fireplace. All the textbooks they mark as recommended, you will look at once, and that’s just flicking through it at the bookshop. The textbooks they mark as essential, you will look at twice, once at the bookshop and once at home in frustration wondering why Otago Uni conned you out of your money. The exception is Anatomy & Physiology by Thibodeau. I’ve heard that HEAL192 has changed this year and that the textbook has become somewhat a necessity- but look for someone in my year (HSFY during the year 2007) and ask for their HEAL notes – we got awesome booklets. If you can’t, walk around Uni campus shouting “veinasian.com!” and I (Dr Month) will find you and give you mine.
The library stocks all HSFY textbooks on reserve (meaning you can borrow it for 2 hours at a time) and this will be more than sufficient to satisfy your seldom desire to read them.

Papers
HUBS191/ HUBS192:
CELS191:
CHEM191:
PHYS191:
HEAL192:
BIOC192:

(To be continued…)

Have I…. done enough?
The necessary marks to get you into Medicine is as follows… (this was for 2007)
The lowest mark cutoff to get on the waiting list I heard was 87% (that’s an A) average for Academics, 70% UMAT. He took dentistry, so unsure whether this would’ve been enough to get off the waiting list and into Med.
The lowest mark to get straight into Med is 88% (still an A) average for Academics, 81% UMAT.