Description
This article is from the soc.culture.australian FAQ, by Stephen Wales
with numerous contributions by others.
5.6 Australian Medical Schools
There are 10 medical schools in Australia. All of them are accredited
by the Australian Medical Council and all are Government funded.
These are at the Universities of Adelaide, Melbourne, Newcastle,
Sydney, New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania, Western Australia, and
at Monash and Flinders Universities. The basic qualification offered
by all of them is the combined bachelor of medicine/bachelor of
surgery (usually abbreviated M.B., B.S.). With the exception of
Newcastle (which takes 5 years) all of these programs require 6 years
of full time study.
Until now the vast majority of medical students have entered Australian
medical schools direct from high school. Entry is exceedingly
competitive. International students have gained entry either through
taking an Australian curriculum through special (private) schools or
through taking the international baccalaureate. A few students are
admitted to australian medical schools as transfer students from other
courses (e.g. pharmacy, biological science). Such students are usually
placed at, or very near to, the tops of their classes.
Three universities (Flinders, Sydney, and Queensland) are now phasing in
a four year graduate entry medical school curriculum. Flinders will
admit its first class in 1996, Sydney and Brisbane in 1997.
The new program commenced at The Flinders University of South
Australia in February of 1996 and the quota of the international
students is filled mainly with students from the USA. The innovative
four year medical course is designed for students who have already
developed effective skills at learning, critical analysis and problem
solving at university. They represent a major new direction for
medical education in Australia. By 2001, the three graduate medical
schools will be producing about 40% of all new Australian medical
graduates.
Applicants for these programs will be required to take the Graduate
Australian Medical Schools Admission Test (GAMSAT) which is being
administered by ACER. The GAMSAT is being designed to test reasoning
abilities in the humanities, physical and biological sciences, and to
test ability in written expression. It consists of two multiple
choice sections and a written section.
Dr Jillian Teubner adds :
From 1997 onwards, GAMSAT will be held in April of each year, with
registration for the test closing at the end of February. It is held
in all Australian captial cities and from the 1996 administration in
several overseas centres (including Europe, USA and SE Asia). In 1996
there were 1935 registrations, 61 of which were in overseas locations.
These candidates were predominantly Australian residents;
international students may take MCAT. There are 11 international
students in addition to the 6 Australian residents and the majority of
these are from the USA.
Selection for the graduate entry medical programs is going to be based
on scores on the GAMSAT, undergraduate grades in the final three years
of the first undergraduate degree, a written application and essay and
an interview process. How much weight is attached to each of these
factors will vary from school to school.
Chris Penington adds: (for the 1996 intake)
Applications by Australian citizens/permanent residents were due at ACER
by July 31. Flinders, with 61 places for Australian students, selected
about 180 applicants for interview (from about 430 applicants). These
included the 150 applicants with the highest GAMSAT scores and about 30
applicants chosen for their exceptional undergraduate performances,
strong performance on part of the GAMSAT, or significant experiences
documented in the biographical statement required with the application.
Those who were selected for interview on the basis of their biographical
statements were required to produce supporting references at the time of
the interview. Interviews were conducted in the AVCC common vacation
week. In 1996 this will be the week of September 30-October 4. ACER
gave people *very* little time to respond to interview offers or to make
arrangements for getting to them (very expensive for those unfortunates
who had to come from overseas (not international applicants, but
Australians living overseas).
Interviews took approximately 45 minutes and were conducted by panels of
three interviewers - a medico, an academic, and a community
representative. The interviews followed a "semi-structured" format.
The interviewing panels were told the names of the interviewees but
nothing else about them (they hadn't seen the biographical statements or
test results). It appears that all interviewees were asked more-or-less
the same set of questions. To outline what I can remember of the
interview: before the interview started interviewees were given a
newspaper article to read. At the start of the interview they were
asked to summarise the main points, then present an argument based on
facts in the article. Other sorts of questions:
Explain what something is to someone with very little knowledge.
Describe an experience in working as part of a team.
Given a description of a situation describe how you would allocate
people to work on a problem.
How have you found out about medical practice?
What do you think you would like to specialise in?
What do you see as the most positive and most negative aspects of
medical practice?
Describe a goal you've set yourself and how you've gone about achieving
it. Any setbacks? How did you overcome them?
What would be your greatest difficulty in medical school?
Given a description of a situation in which someone is under a lot of
stress describe what you'd do to help them.
If one of your coworkers is spreading libellous rumours about you what
do you do?
The program at Newcastle (which is not restricted to graduates and does
not use GAMSAT) has a similar interview plus additional psychometric
testing. Newcastle apparently takes a fairly high proportion of mature
students. Their application deadline is very early (some time in June).
Evidently other Australian medical schools have also found it desirable
to give applicants coming straight from high school a similar sort of
interview (e.g. Monash apparently does this).
For more information on this program, contact Dr Jillian Teubner at
jillian.teubner@flinders.edu.au or call 1800 686 3562 (which apparently
will work from the USA)
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