Entrance in Medical School in Australia and NSW

Being a rather excited Year 12, I had researched most of the pathways to enter medical school in Australia. However, most of my research was limited when I realised that jetting all around Australia to attend interviews was a rather costly enterprise to undertake, so I focused on my home state, New South Wales.
As an aside, New Zealand medical schools are also considered Australian in terms of Australians being treated as locals, and vice versa.

So there are two types of medical degrees, undergraduate (does not require a previous degree) and graduate (does require a previous completed degree). I'll abbreviate undergraduate as UG, and graduate as GD from now on.

UG Medical degrees are starting to die out in Australia, which could be influenced by the American style of medical school entry, which is similar to GD Medical degrees - doing a degree first (in America you can enter Pre-Med which provides the scientific basis of Medicine in a degree). UG degrees are either 5 or 6 years in length, and most in Australia now incorporate clinical or hospital exposure from very early on (first few weeks).
GD Medical degrees are generally 4 years in length, and the degree you must do prior to entry into GD Medicine can be completely unrelated to Medicine.

There are 3 main obstacles you have to overcome for entry into a medical degree:

~ University Entrance score (UAI/ENTER/TER/etc.) from final year secondary school exams for UG Medicine, or GPA/WAM/University degree score from your previous degree, for GD Medicine. Take note that many UG Medical Schools will consider your GPA/WAM if you have done a year of tertiary study, generally in combination with your final secondary school score.

~ UMAT (Undergraduate Medicine Admissions Test) is a prerequisite into entry in all UG Medical degrees in Australia, with the exception of James Cook University in Queensland, and University of Sydney's Provisional Entry into their GD program. The UMAT can be likened to an IQ and EQ (Emotional Quotient) test; which test, in 3 separate sections, your ability in reasoning, empathy, and spatial pattern/shape recognising. The graduate version of this is the GAMSAT, which is, anecdotally, more difficult than the UMAT.

~ The interview process vastly differs across all universities. The one university that does not use interviews in their selection process is the University of Queensland for their Combined medicine degree. The interview is generally conducted in one of two formats; MMI (Multiple Mini Interviews), in which you take multiple separate interviews with a different interviewer each time, or a standard interview with either a panel or a person.

In New South Wales, the current universities (as of 2009) that have a Medical School are:
UG: University of NSW, University of Western Sydney, University of Newcastle/New England (Joint Medical Program), University of Sydney (Provisional Entry into their GD program)
GD: University of Sydney, University of Woollongong, Australian National University (actually in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT))
Edit: University of Notre Dame has a GD program at it's Sydney campus (the university was originally based in WA)

So how do I begin...

My previous blogs have all fallen in a state of disrepair, forgotten and alone in the little corners of the vast cyberspace. So here I go, restarting afresh, anew, and hoping this will not end up disused.

A little introduction is necessary: My name's Luke, and I'm a medical student at the University of Western Sydney (UWS). I, if not undertaking the Bachelor of Medical Research or repeating a year, will graduate in 2013, as the MBBS degree at UWS is 5 years in length. I decided to start this blog on a spur-of-the-moment, hopefully sharing my experience as a medical student here in Australia. To understand where my opinion henceforth is based upon, heres a little of my background:

~ I'm of Chinese descent, though my parents were born in Malaysia and I was born very locally (Westmead Hospital in Sydney, NSW, Australia) and raised my whole life in Australia. As such, I consider myself pretty Australian, though I am pretty hopeless at sports, contrary to the stereotype. I come from a low-middle class background, and I'm the first of my immediate family to go to university.

~ I entered medical school in Australia by a rather typified method: through OC Class, Selective School, HSC marks, UMAT, and an interview. I entered med school straight out of high school, and though there are reasons not to do so, I don't regret it at all.

~ Culturally, the pressure to achieve academically, for me, was fairly high, which is probably not unlike most medical students in Australia. However I procrastinated a lot, also not unlike most medical students in Australia; so it's kind of ironic to enter a career where maintaining academic effort is of extremely vital importance.

~ I consider myself EXTREMELY blessed to have entered medical school in my first attempt, straight from high school. My procrastination was the bane of my parents and as a result I did not score a 99, or even 98+ UAI (seen by many as a given for medicine in Australia), I was a Greater Western Sydney student and thus had local advantages given by UWS to encourage local students, I was only offered my spot in the Late Round of UAC Offers (University entrance offers), and it was a Bonded spot (requires a contractual obligation to spend 5 years after specialisation, working in a District of Workplace Shortage - i.e. where there are not enough doctors of your speciality). So I guess this can give some of you hope in regards to medical school entry.

~ I was and still am really keen on Medicine. Along with the altruistic nature of the profession, Medicine ticked my boxes because it was a secure job with a decent pay, was extremely broad and yet you could find a speciality that could occupy your entire life, was one of the few occupations where there is continuous learning and expansion of your knowledge, made my parents quite happy, was a field where I had an interest in (my other interest is Computer Science), and allowed the undertaking of responsibility of lives but also the privilege of being able to treat patients and play a significant role in their lives. In exchange, I considered the rather long hours, lengthy time to finish training and specialising in comparison to other courses, high stress and emotional situations, and a huge amount of (expected) study for the rest of my life, but they didn't deter my decision. It is important to see whether another career/degree suits you better, although in my case I'm overwhelmingly happy with my decision. This will hopefully not change as I progress through the registrar years, and I hope not to become a disillusioned junior doc in the future.

~ I keep an open mind towards anything and everything, including country practice, all types of specialities, conference attendance, anything. So I will hopefully cover a large spectrum of the medical student experience in Australia and in particular my university.

That's probably enough introductory information to show where I''m coming from, so I'll leave it at that. I hope this blog will have two purposes: firstly, to share what I have gathered through personal research and communication, and secondly as something to look back on when I am old and grey. So thank you for dropping by!