Temporary postponement of intake of GAMSAT and VCE students

Effective immediately, it is unlikely that I will take on any new students for the tuition of VCE or the GAMSAT until the end of the university year 2013 for my year of the MD program (University of Melbourne MD Year 2). According to the Melbourne Medical School website, this is until 22 November 2013. I have decided to focus more on my studies. I apologize for any inconvenience caused, especially if you were seeking to undertake the GAMSAT UK.

[update] MD2 starts next week.

Tomorrow will be the last day of my Immediate level Intensive Summer Course in Chinese. As I said earlier in my blog, my Chinese is not as good as I would like it to be, so this summer I decided to enroll in a course to improve it. If it doesn't clash with the start of the year for medicine next year, I might join it again next year if they have it available.

Today we were able to purchase the subject guides for second year medicine in the bookshop for $36. Here's what the whole pack looks like:

Since I'll be starting medicine again next week, I won't be available as often for GAMSAT and VCE tutoring; definitely not available during morning and afternoon of weekdays. Since I won't be able to satisfy all prospective demand as the GAMSAT approaches, anyone new who initiates contact regarding tuition from now on will have slightly increased fees. That said, the fees are still a lot lower than other GAMSAT tutors I have seen. See the GAMSAT Science 100 + VCE tutor link on the top of the page for updated information regarding tutoring.

Happy new year!

I think it's safe now to say that we have survived 2012. I hope that 2013 will be a good year for everyone.

This year I'll be spending most of my time in the hospital. It will be a different experience to sitting in lectures and classrooms for most of the day, but there will be some lectures still. I'll have to improve my clinical skills a lot this year if I want to get good grades.

Good luck if you are sitting the GAMSAT this year and trying to get into medical school. Right now I am available to tutor for the GAMSAT or VCE math methods, specialist, chemistry or physics at the University of Melbourne or Monash. See the GAMSAT Science 100 + VCE tutor tab at the top of the blog for more information. Right now, I can tutor most times apart from around 1.30 to 3.30 pm. However, when university starts for Medicine again on 4 February, I will be more restricted to tutoring after uni hours and on weekends.

In more unrelated news, Girls' Generation released a new song recently, but I don't like it as much as most of their previous songs. Nowadays I listen to other artists more, including IU. I linked a music video of one of IU's songs in one of my posts one or two months ago (아이유 - 너랑 나), although it was all in Korean, and with some "improper" word usage.

Also, it seems like the computers in the biomedical library at UniMelb have very annoyingly had their sound disabled, even when putting in headphones! Not only does it mean that we can't watch youtube videos properly, it also means that anyone who actually wants to study and re-listen to lectures through echo360 cannot do so. Silly idea I think. I can anticipate an influx of complaints once the standard semester starts if it's not changed!

[update] Back from China

I have finally returned home now after being in China and Hong Kong for almost 3 weeks. The trip had highlights, although also lots of boring portions. When I was around 10 years old I used to really like traveling. However, now that I've been to several different places, there's less and less substantially different things to see each time. After a while, a lot of it just becomes "another rock, another lake, another building, another road"...

Anyway, this was the first time I went to China and Hong Kong. I won't go into all the details of the trip, but here's a few "take-away" points I got:

• The cities are quite developed now. That said, there's still a significant amount of squat-toilets there (in mainland China that is. I didn't notice any squat toilets in HK).
• I particularly like the count-down timers on the vehicle and pedestrian traffic lights in Chinese cities (esp Shanghai), which I also noticed in some places in Malaysia and Singapore when I was there. I haven't noticed any of them in Australia.
• The train system in Guangzhou and Shenzhen reminds me of Singapore's MRT. I'm quite sure they run better than the Melbourne trains, and in Shenzhen a single trip fare on a train or bus is only 2 RMB!
• Facebook and Blogger are blocked in China. I also notice that my blog view count has reached 0 for several days for probably the first time in the history of my blog since I made it (maybe because I told everyone I'd be away beforehand). Anyway, I'm back now. (*EDIT* Hmm now I think maybe my website was blog site was blocked because my google account got locked. They thought it was suspicious activity when I tried to log on in China and HK, but I didn't bother to unlock my account since I didn't have a mobile number there... Can anyone confirm any difficulties getting to my blog site within the past two weeks?)
• Even though the prices of electronic goods may be cheaper in store in Hong Kong (Mong Kok) than Australia, for the particular models of phone I was looking at the prices for, the shop prices in Hong Kong are still more than on the internet in the cheapest Australian websites (although that might be a bit more than on the internet in HK websites delivered to HK addresses).
• Hong Kong has an excellent Airport Express train service where you can check in luggage (in Kowloon) before boarding a train to the airport. Melbourne doesn't even have a train to the airport!

Now that I'm back, I'll be available to tutor for the GAMSAT and VCE again

[update] OSCE complete! MD1 complete! (hopefully). Available for GAMSAT + VCE tuition now.

Today I completed my OSCE! I thought they went OK, although for one of the stations I had to stop to think a bit for some of the questions.

This time I remembered to wash my hands for both my clinical exams though, so that's good. And I didn't run out of time for the history stations either, unlike last time, and I think I answered the questions at the end of the history station better.

It's good having the previous experience behind me too, so I'm more used to the OSCE format now. Hopefully it can be as comfortable as written exams (which I'm quite used to now) in the future.

So all exams for MD1 are completed for me now. I don't think I'll need to sit any supplementary exams. So if that is the case (hopefully so I don't have to travel back from overseas), then I will be on a break from the MD until February next year.

Oh and just a reminder since my exams are all over now: I will be available to tutor for the GAMSAT or VCE for most days in the holidays now. Except for between 5-22 December when I'll be away from Melbourne.

[update] High School visit

Today I visited my old high school. Before this, I visited a few times during first and second year Biomedicine. I don't think I've been there since then, and I don't know many students there anymore.

There were some teachers which have left since they taught me, but some were still there, and I talked to them today. Some of them had quite a few things to say, especially since our school merged with two other schools, and there was a lot of change happening after I left.

Most of the teachers I talked to asked what I was doing now. I'm not someone who hides that I'm doing medicine, and I told them that I finished Biomedicine last year and I'm doing Medicine now. I met some of my past science, math teachers and coordinators, including the physics teachers who helped teach me some of the physics I would later need for the GAMSAT.

A few teachers commented that they still talked about me, even though I haven't been studying at the school for almost four years now. It's somewhat nice to be recognized in some sense, but on the other hand, it is somewhat sad that for some subjects I did, there haven't been students getting 40+ study scores (out of 50; 40 is top 9%) for some of the past years, which caused me to stand out further in the minds of some teachers.

That contrasts with some other schools which have been able to almost consistently get quite a few almost each year. However, my high school was one with students from a lower SES on average, so it wouldn't be expected to do that well. That said, this is a problem with the education system in Australia. In some other countries, the achievement gap isn't as great between low and high socioeconomic status students. The government seems to be doing something about it though, and I can only hope that what they're doing works properly.

One of the teachers also mentioned that more people were leaving the school to go to selective schools. This isn't really a surprise, given that new selective schools have gone up in our side of Melbourne (Sir John Monash Science School and Nossal). However, I can't help to think that some of the reason that people leave is because the Accelerated Program people do not get to finish a year early anymore like I did, which I've discussed earlier this year in this blog.

I certainly would have considered leaving the school for a selective school more seriously given the current situation if I was in the accelerated program now, being unable to finish a year early. Talking to teachers, there also doesn't appear to be any indication of those accelerated people staying another year translating into much better students at Year 12 level, so I still don't agree with what they've done to the program there. Even if those accelerated students were measurably better (which doesn't seem to be the case), it doesn't seem right to me to keep them back another year if they could enter university anyway without staying another year in high school.

[update] GAMSAT and VCE tutoring

I've decided that I should offer my services in tutoring people for the GAMSAT and VCE Chemistry, Physics, Math Methods, and Specialist Mathematics. I've been tutoring on and off for various subjects at VCE, high school, and primary school level since 2009, and I currently do some voluntary tutoring every week.

As you would know from reading my blog, I received a GAMSAT overall score of 83 (100th percentile), including a Section III score of 100 (maximum):

GAMSAT 2011 Percentile Curve:  http://gamsatau.acer.edu.au/results/normInfo.php?yr=2011

See the GAMSAT Science 100 + VCE tutor tab at the top of the page for more information. I have exams coming up next month so I may not be able to tutor much (especially closer to the exam date) until they finish (27 November). After that, I will be away from Melbourne from December 5-22, 2012. Apart from that, I should be available on the summer holidays.

Selective Entry Accelerated Learning Programs

When I was in grade six, along with about 100 people, I sat a test to get into the accelerated learning program at a high school. I got in, and a quarter of the test takers would later form an accelerated class at our school.

At my high school, the structure was such that we did year 8 maths (and some covered year 7 and a bit of year 8 of other core subjects like English and science) in year 7, year 9 maths in year 8 (covering the rest of year 8 science and year 9 science, and up to year 9 English), skipping year 9 and doing almost the same things as all the other year 10 classes in year 10 if we decided to stay on at the school and not go to Melbourne High School (MHS) or Mac.Robertson Girls' High School (MacRob) for example.

From then, we had the opportunity to do "two year VCE" if we wanted to, to finish high school a year earlier, or "three year VCE" if we wanted to use up a year "saved" to try to get a better mark in VCE. I took up the "two year VCE" option, like a lot of my peers, and subsequently successfully completed VCE, completed Biomedicine in the usual time, and I'm now in medicine.

However, after my year level went straight to year 10 and skipped year 9, the school decided to change the arrangements of the accelerated program for future year levels. Instead of skipping year 9, you did mainly year 10 core subjects in year 9. In "year 10", students were required to take up year 11 English, History and Mathematical Methods (mid-level VCE maths). Due to the inflexibility of the subjects possible for electives, it effectively forced people to undergo "three year VCE", with the first year being year 10.

To be honest, I was quite baffled with their change in policy at the school. I personally did not feel that there was much wrong with the old "two year VCE" after acceleration system. What was so wrong about people leaving school one year early, when they were entirely capable of doing so and able to study at university? Surely going to university would be more effective use of their time than staying back at school for another year.

The stated reason from the school seemed to be due to concerns about the maturity about the students leaving. There was concern that the people undergoing two year VCE after being in the accelerated learning program would not be mature enough to go to university because they were one year younger. While this is a point which may be true for some people, I don't think it is a good reason to keep everyone back. Myself and many others who have done "two year VCE" after being part of the accelerated program have managed to successfully complete a bachelor degree within the normal time frame. (In hindsight, maybe I could have skipped two years too, seeing that my GAMSAT score in 2010 was still clearly enough for UQ medicine for a CSP place for 2011 entry, or 2012 entry for that matter, without an interview.) Furthermore, for those who may not be ready for university that early, they still did have the option of "three year VCE" to use up their "saved" year.

Furthermore, being unable to skip a year anymore at my high school (which has a lower SES on average) removes one of the advantages of staying on at the school. Before, the advantage of staying on meant that you got to skip straight from "year 8" to year 10 and finish a year earlier, which you couldn't do if you went to MHS or MacRob for example. Now though, that option does not exist, so there is less of a reason to stay on at the school and not move to MHS or MacRob.

Sometimes I wonder if the school had another motive for changing the system. Was it to try to lift up the proportion of 40+ (top 9%) study scores in their statistics? I'm not sure if it was a reason, but if it was, then it was not really to the benefit of the students who could have started their bachelor degree a year earlier.

UQ admission irregularity

Recently it has been in the news that a relative of Vice Chancellor Paul Greenfield was accepted into a program without satisfying the same requirements of other applicants. On the 9th of December, UQ released a memorandum detailing the offers of undergraduate-entry MBBS applicants (which I read from Paging Dr), and it included talk of the irregularity. http://www.uq.edu.au/about/planning-docs/2011-mbbs-program-admissions/

Regarding the irregularity itself, it seems like the Vice Chancellor and his deputy have both paid the price and stood down. Then there is debate on whether the relative who was given the irregular offer should keep their place or not. Personally, I don't have a very strong view on this.

In that memorandum, there was also noticeably a mention of people with Vice Chancellor scholarships (by achieving an ATAR of 99.95; the highest possible rank) who did not do well on the UMAT but still got irregular offers. This has never been the official policy of UQ to give such offers in such circumstances, but it should be noted that this is very similar to what is done in Melbourne (needing 99.90 and above) and USyd (needing 99.95). The main difference between Melb and USyd compared to UQ is just that UQ didn't interview for this, but UQ doesn't interview anyone except ATSI applicants anyway. It does raise eyebrows when UQ does things not in their official policy though, and it seems like they won't be doing such a thing next year. I think they could be justified if they made giving medicine places to people with Vice Chancellor scholarships regardless of UMAT official policy though.

This raises another issue. Is using UMAT a good system to select applicants? I personally do not think so, and so far the evidence seems to suggest that UMAT doesn't predict medical school performance well at all, although others have criticized the study because it possibly has "ceiling effects" there. I don't think that UMAT is any better than still using academic achievement (ATAR) even at the high levels, although I have some issues with English being compulsory primary 4 in ATAR calculations in Victoria and NSW (but not some other states; in some it is not even compulsory in year 12), without Math being compulsory at all in some states (including VIC and NSW), let alone primary 4.

Similar criticisms are sometimes applied to the GAMSAT, and I don't think the GAMSAT is as optimal as it can be either, however it does test science unlike UMAT, and that section has some modest predictive value. The MCAT in North America seems to have more solid evidence behind it though, so perhaps if we modify the GAMSAT to be more of that style then it can probably predict medical school performance better. However, it will probably also disadvantage non-science background students, so if unis here think that that type of diversity is important, then such a change in the test probably can't happen. I think a standardized test like the MCAT or GAMSAT with some science is justified in selecting med school applicants for graduate entry, especially because for GPA there hardly any scaling for differentiating between subjects which are easier or harder to score highly in, between different unis and within them.

On the other hand, for ATAR, at least in most states, there is scaling to take into account differences in difficulty between subjects, and in most cases standardized exams for most of the marks going towards a subject. So there is less need for a standardized test including a science section; it would seem to just duplicate whatever assessment is done at school, especially if chemistry is a prerequisite (as it is in some unis for medicine including Monash but not all. Funnily, biology is not a required prerequisite anywhere in Australia for undergraduate entry, and I didn't do year 12 level bio in high school, but that's a discussion for another day).

It has been argued that ATAR discriminates against people of lower socioeconomic status. This may be true, but it is also true that UMAT preparation courses are expensive, and it is hard for people of low socioeconomic status to afford those too. I think if we want to get people of low socioeconomic status into medicine and other uni courses, then we should have some sort of affirmative action instead of using some dubious selection tools which may add more noise into the selection process and being not very useful predictors.

[update] Semester two in three days

Semester two starts in three days. I only have three subjects this semester since I did a subject in summer semester. This was a deliberate plan on my part, because I wanted extra time for interview preparation just before a hypothetical Melbourne or other consortium uni interview. There would be extra time for practice with fewer subjects to worry about.

I also hope to actually get time to read my textbook. In the past for subjects in uni, I did read the textbook a bit for some of the biological type subjects, but often for less than half the covered material in class. The notes in uni usually cover most of the things to learn, and unlike VCE, the uni textbooks have a lot of unexaminable content there since they are not specifically designed for the subject (I hear of a major subject in some other people doing my course where the material taught in lectures is just all of a textbook, but that is unfortunately the exception rather than the rule). I also couldn't be bothered finding up the page reference numbers for what to read, unlike in VCE where I simply read the physics and chem books from start to finish; all of the chem book and the physics book for the distinct chapters which covered the core content and the detailed study we were taught to do.

That said, I think reading the textbook is good at third year level. It seems that often the same textbooks were prescribed for second and third year level, and only a bit of it was used in second year and a lot more was used in third year. So I'll try to do that this semester. Hopefully that will integrate knowledge better.

Apart from that... interviews... one month to find out the result from USyd and see if I get a Melbourne interview. It would have been more comforting if I knew for sure that the UQ issue is resolved, but I don't know that. That said, the plan A has always been to get into the Melbourne Medicine course.

Anyway, so semester two. It's the final semester of biomed if all things go to plan. It is likely to be the semester where I go to an interview for UniMelb medicine. It is also during then that I'll know whether or not I have received medical school offers for USyd and UniMelb medicine, setting the path for the next four years ahead. And it will begin in three days. I hope for a good outcome.

Let the games begin!

Learning the mother tongue

As a Chinese person in Australia, like many other descendants of immigrants here, there is not that much use for our mother tongue in everyday life. And although it is always good to learn the mother tongue, even now I have not attained a good ability in it.

It had started from when I was young, when my parents sent me to Chinese school. Due to not understanding the importance of learning this at the time, I did not try very hard to learn the language outside of class and memorize the characters and words. As a result, my ability was not very good in these years.

When I finally realized the importance of learning this, it was around the start of high school. But thinking ahead, I knew that my strengths lay in math and the sciences, and had already planned out my VCE subjects: English, Math Methods, Specialist Math, Chemistry, Physics, Biology (I had subsequently made a bad decision to not do year 12 biology in year 11 due to bad advice from some school teachers, so I didn't end up doing year 12 bio, but that's another matter). That brought out the maximum of 6 subjects contributing to my ENTER already (but cut down to 5 due to not doing year 12 bio :( ). And so I focused on the subjects which were going to be in my VCE thereon, because I wanted to get into medicine and it was hard to get into. So Chinese was a lower priority, even though I still attended Chinese school until the end of year 11, when to focus on the other subjects I quit learning Chinese in language school. As such, when I left high school, my Chinese still wasn't good.

Then came university, and I hadn't gotten into medicine yet. During the biomed course, I again had the opportunity to choose Chinese as a subject outside of core to do. However, after a while pondering, I decided that it was not the time. Since the University of Melbourne uses GPA as part of the ranking process to get into medicine, I did not want to jeopardize this. So apart from a social work subject in first year (because first year was weighted least in GPA calculations) which was supposed to help if I got an interview (I sort of regret that now though since it pulled my GPA down quite a bit), I chose things which were more to my strength, like economics and math subjects. As such, even then the best strategy was to yet again delay learning my mother tongue.

So as of now, my Chinese is still not very good. I do plan to improve it significantly in the future, but when I realized the importance of learning it, other more important goals in the short term, for getting into medicine in Melbourne, required different subject selections for me to maximize my chances. As such, for now I'll just have to stick with learning informally and hopefully pick it up more in the future. It would be nice to one day be able to visit the mainland (which I haven't yet) and not have to resort to using English to communicate due to lack of Chinese ability.