[update] 2013 MD2 mark breakdown released

Today the mark breakdowns for us in MD2 for our PCP2 subject (the main one this year) were released. As I had expected, it was the OSCEs which brought my mark down. However, it is good to see the individual breakdown to analyze where I did well and where I did things badly.

For the MCQ, there was not much of an issue. I scored above average; just one point less than in the final progress test actually (both were out of 80).

For the SAQ, my score as a percentage was not as high, but it was still above average and just one point from the "H1" standard.

Now the OSCEs. Overall, I did worse than average, but this was a mixed picture:

There were two stations where I had actually scored above average. Now this is actually the first time I scored any OSCE stations above the average, so I was happy about this fact. These were the respiratory exam (COPD) and iron deficiency anemia (bowel cancer) stations.

There was one station where I had scored within a point of the average. This was the surgical abdominal exam (acute cholecystitis) station. After the exam I realized that I forgot to assess for rebound tenderness. I would have remembered if it was appendicitis signs but forgot for cholecystitis! Ah well.

Then for the other two stations, I scored below the average. Perhaps that is an understatement though - I scored below the "cut scores" (aka pass marks) for both of these. These were the headache history (SAH) and weight loss (T1DM) stations. Actually this is worse than I had expected to score. However, I do think that I have a tendency of narrowing in a diagnosis and not asking enough things to rule out other diagnoses, or in the weight loss station case, not even thinking of T1DM as a possibility in that station! I also don't know if I am particularly good at getting the "rapport" or "global" types of marks in the OSCEs for history taking. It is something that I need to work on for the future.

Overall, it seems like I have improved slightly on the OSCEs this time around compared to last time, although I have not tested to see if it is statistically significant. Last time my exams were worse than my history stations on average, but this year it seems to have reversed into the other direction. It seems like I will need to work on history taking in general for next year.

Anyway, scoring worse overall this year (by about 3-4 points) was mainly because the OSCEs were worth more this year and SAQ/MCQs were worth less overall. Actually scoring some OSCE stations above average for a change this time was a promising trend, but two history stations below the "cut scores" is a bit concerning. I will have to improve this into the future. Hoping for a turn-around like the Australian cricket team this summer. So far they have been quite spectacular!

[update] 2013 MD2 - results release, year in review and looking ahead

Today the final results were released for MD2. I did not do as well as I would have liked to, but I have passed quite comfortably. We have not received our OSCE marks yet, but it is most likely the OSCEs are where I have lost marks again this year. Ah well. At least it seems like I won't have to sit any supplementaries or repeat this year!

I guess maybe a reason why I would have liked a better result was because I did a lot better in the progress test. For the final progress test, I received a score of 70/80, which is a major improvement from the first one I posted at the start of the year! That said, the progress test is only testing on MCQs, and I think it is in the OSCEs where I have not scored that well.

In terms of knowledge and MCQs, I think that practicing BMJ onExamination questions was very useful in gaining knowledge. There is a free subscription through the medical school. Being interactive, it can facilitate learning more than reading over lecture notes or books. The other thing for exams is because the university repeats many questions, well... fill in the rest of the sentence yourself.

Generally speaking, this has been an interesting year, in the clinical environment and learning about things which are directly related to clinical management which build upon our basic sciences in first year.

There were a few highlights for me this year in medicine personally. There was once a patient who we were examining in a bedside tutorial, and everyone in our tutorial group took turns to listen to his heart. When it was my turn, he jokingly asked me: "are you too young to do medicine? How old are you? 12?" I laughed a bit at this, and said to him "Yeah, I'm probably the youngest in the tutorial group. Just switch around the two digits." The ironic thing is that back in the times of undergraduate entry, my age would be average for the first clinical year. It was only "young" because this was a graduate entry course!

There were quite a few times where doctors and other staff at the hospital asked us medical students what courses we did before medicine or what other life experiences we may have had prior to doing this. Although there was the occasional person who did something quite different, usually the answer from most students would be science or biomedicine/biomedical science. This was exemplified once when a dermatologist was taking one of our lectures. He asked everyone to introduce themselves with their names and what they did before medicine. Almost everyone in the lecture theater systematically said their name and indicated that they previously did biomedicine, biomedical science or science! It was quite humorous and ironic indeed!

Another thing which was the highlight in the hospital was when I was following the ward round of the Director of General Medicine. One of the patients did not feel like eating their food that morning, and the professor noticed the full bowl of food on the table. I was very surprised when I saw her spending the time and effort to spoon up the contents of the bowl and help feed the patient herself! Very remarkable!

Another highlight was that I was part of the winning team for the Inter-Clinical School Quizbowl Championship. In fact, this was a total accident! I was planning to attend the final of the competition so that I could eat some free pizza and learn some medicine from the quiz answers. I wasn't part of the team which was supposed to represent St Vincent's, but one of the team members was having a rural GP placement and unable to attend the final. One of the other team members suggested that I take their place. I was quite nervous when we were sitting there waiting during the first round since we played in the second and third rounds that night, and even more so when taking the position ready to answer the questions. But I managed to get the first question of that second round right, and quickly got settled and got a few random questions right in that round, making a contribution to the team. It's funny what happens sometimes when you least expect it!

Looking ahead to next year, I am not that keen on some of those rotations, although some others might be interesting. I start off with the mental health rotation, then aged care, then GP. Semester 2 will consist of women's and children's health. I am not looking forward to the first two so much, but the later few should be better.

It has been just over three years since I first made this blog. I am already halfway through medicine! Time has gone by very quickly!

The blog post graph still has this annoying glitch which displays some years incorrectly, so I have corrected them in the diagram above. Although my blog views are higher than I would have ever imagined when I started the blog, I have lost readers recently. This would have been unexpected for me at the start of this year since I thought that people would be more interested in clinical medicine over preclinical medicine. However, the requirement to protect the confidentiality of patients precludes us from sharing too many of the interesting events which sometimes occur on the wards. I have erred on the safer side in not posting too much where confidentiality can be impaired, and thus I have not made as many posts this year compared to last year.

Perhaps another factor is because I have made some more posts about politics this year due to the election, and the "Scrap the cap" campaign issues. I have a feeling that many of you are not so interested in politics. But politics is quite important and as the scrap the cap campaign has highlighted, policies have quite a significant impact on our future not only in medicine but also in life in general. As such, I will continue posting on these matters whenever I feel it is necessary. However, given the electoral cycle, it is unlikely that I will post as much on these matters next year.

Regardless of all these factors mentioned, I guess I have to lift my game to make my blog more engaging to everyone in the future to get back to where I was before!

Finally, to everyone who enjoys reading my blog and commenting, thank you very much for your continued reading. I hope you continue to enjoy reading my blog into the future!

[update] 2013 MD2 OSCE done! Available for GAMSAT/VCE tuition.

Today I did my last exam for the year, the OSCE. We had two examination and three history stations.

I now realize a few things which I forgot to do during the stations. Also, there was a weight loss station, where the correct diagnosis was apparently type 1 diabetes. I did not get that diagnosis right, and many people I talked to didn't either. Some people did, but others had answers ranging from hyperthyroidism to cancer.

Ah well. I hope that I did better than in last year's OSCE. For now, all the exams are done. I should be able to tutor people now. Keep in mind that it will be more convenient for me to tutor in Monash on the holidays than Melbourne. For more information, see the GAMSAT Science 100 + VCE tutor page at the top of the blog.

I will do a longer post about this year after the results come out. In the past I made some annual posts on the anniversary of my blog creation, but it is more logical to make them at the end after results come out and not have repetition.

[update] 2013 MD2 MCQ and SAQ exams finished, OSCE on Friday

On Monday and Wednesday, I completed the MD2 MCQ and SAQ exams for this year. In general, I think they were very fair exams. There were a few harder questions which were there to separate out people.

I generally like MCQs better than SAQs, although I find SAQs a lot better than essay questions/extended response. It is hard sometimes to know what the examiners want you to write for extended response. And SAQ is better, but sometimes it is also hard to know exactly what they want. With MCQs, it is a lot less ambiguous, unless the question is worded badly. An example of this would be: what exactly is the "best" approach?

I got a bit put off by today's SAQ paper with the number of lines given for some responses though. In some of them, I feel like I can answer the question fully in three lines if answering exactly what is asked (eg giving a list). But because there was more space, I was wondering if they wanted more of an explanation, so I gave some anyway. At least in this year's SAQ, unlike last year's MD1 SAQ, we were not required to write completely non-stop from start to finish as a test of our writing speed.

There was one question where they asked eight different causes of seizures though. Eight causes! Not precipitants. I was struggling with this, but then realized that hemochromatosis and Wilson's Disease were probably causes (wasn't 100% sure though) so I wrote them down and it seems like they were right. What was frustrating though was that I wrote MEOS instead of MELAS as a cause of seizures! Argh! So close... I had 60% of the letters there!

I also recall giving quite a few pretty "out there but possible" answers after my standard answers when I couldn't think of anything else to write in the space, just to see if I could score a few extra points. One of them was regarding the possibility of the patient having a hemolytic anemia before the first HbA1c reading for their diabetes, explaining why the HbA1c rose this time compared to 6 months ago. I hope the examiners have a laugh at that.

Finally there is something else which I was somewhat amused by, although it may sound strange. Following on from my table tennis "ACE inhibitor" comments from my med jokes, I have been joking that "if a multiple choice option is ACE inhibitor, and you don't know the answer, choose the ACE inhibitor". Actually, ACE inhibitors are first line for hypertension, heart failure with reduced ejection fraction and chronic kidney disease. They are very useful for reducing cardiovascular events.

Although it was a joke which stemmed from table tennis playing, from personal experience of practice tests, the advice is actually mostly true. As an example, the best treatment for reducing progression of diabetic nephropathy is not actually good blood glucose level control. This sounds very counter-intuitive indeed! But the best treatment is actually using an ACE inhibitor. One of the nephrologists told me: "The three most important things for chronic kidney disease are: 1: good blood pressure control. 2: good blood pressure control. 3: good blood pressure control".

However, even though there have been 1-2 questions when using an ACE inhibitor was the correct answer in MCQs in some practice tests I have done, there was not one question with ACE inhibitor as a possible answer in the MCQs this year! Such an oversight of one of the most important drugs in medicine...

Oh and final point on the MCQs and SAQs, unless I missed something completely, there were absolutely no questions at all regarding EP! I am very grateful that the University of Melbourne has not overemphasized this portion of the course (which may be known in other unis as PPD) to the detriment of the more "traditional" aspects such as basic sciences, history taking, clinical examinations and hard knowledge of conditions, aetiology and presentations; which I hear is the case sadly in some other medical schools in this country. At least so far in the Melbourne medical course, we had none of this rubbish of reflective essays with rigid marking criteria. Well, we did have reflective essays, which were a bit annoying, but at least they were pass/fail and we could properly reflect on experiences. At no stage was I required to bend the truth and give a false reflection in order to pass an illogical marking scheme like what some people from unis in NSW were required to do.

Anyway, OSCEs are on Friday. I did not perform as well as I would have liked in the OSCEs last year, although I feel that I have improved my clinical skills this year significantly. I hope it shows up in the results.

General thoughts on MD1

MD1 has not been "easy", but I don't think many bioscience subjects in biomed were easy to learn either. Like those subjects, there is quite a lot that you just have to "know".

Compared to undergrad, I don't think it would be much more workload per week than say four "human bioscience" type subjects after first year level. Maybe undergrad was easier, but not by that much. I had a Biomedicine background, and majored in pharmacology, so I learned a significant proportion of content from the first few blocks (foundation, cardiovascular, respiratory) already in undergrad. However, the ways in which MD1 might be harder are:

• In undergrad I didn't have a full load of biosciences. Most of my other subjects were a walk in the park compared to those second and third year bioscience subjects.
• In the MD there was only a week after the end of class to revise 36 weeks of material before our first exam, but in undergrad there was always at least 9 days, and we only learned a semester (12 weeks for undergrad) at a time. It therefore is almost impossible to cram in the MD if you did so in undergrad.
• If you didn't do many human bioscience subjects in undergrad, there would be more new content to learn. That said, I only filled in one elective or free subject (out of 2 electives and 2 free subjects for biomed) with a bioscience subject, so I certainly did not seek to maximize the bioscience content of my biomed degree unlike what some others may have done.
• In the MD you also have to do clinical skills, which are different to written exams. You will need practice partners if you want to practice them. In first year, there is not much time to practice within class.
• The short answer exam is a bit stupid. Maybe I should have spent more time practicing my writing speed instead of practicing USMLE style questions to remember concepts correctly. Also, my handwriting is not that good at the best of times, so it's especially a struggle to write fast. Typing is different though. That said, writing may be easier for "mechanisms" still if you don't need them to be neat.
• The CSLs require "self-directed learning" involving searching up the learning issues before the next class. I personally don't feel it's very efficient compared to someone actually teaching us, although I do see the merit in presenting symptoms and diseases in the context of clinical cases to facilitate memory. I didn't revise any of the CSLs before the exam though. You don't miss out on much if you revise the lecture notes and skip CSL revision (maybe one question here and there), but you will miss out on a lot of the exam if you revise CSLs and skip lecture revision.

Apart from that, as far as first year exams are concerned, if you want to buy just one textbook, get a pathology one (Robbins and Contran Pathologic Basis of Disease). If you want to do the USMLE though, then there's stuff which isn't covered for many areas in first year MD (many med schools have two preclinical years instead of one). They would integrate some of it into the clinical years. How much? I will find out in the coming years. I'm not planning to sit the USMLE at the moment, but I do have the Step 1 revision book from Kaplan.

As far as grades are concerned, my average for first year is about 77.5. I hope to be able to get the "degree with distinction" which requires a weighted average of 80 (weighting first year 30%, 2nd year 30%, 3rd year 30%, scholarly selective 10%). The deficit isn't that great so I should be able to make it up, but I'll have to improve my clinical skills.

Finally, if you really want to choose a major with the most overlap with medicine (although it's not something I'd advise), it seems like anatomy had the highest proportion of all single disciplines in the midsemester tests. Needless to say, maximizing the amount of bioscience subjects would generally increase the overlap compared to other types of subjects. As far as my major subjects are concerned, the "drug discovery" and "drugs in biomedical experiments" subjects didn't help much with first year, although the biomedical experiments subject may become helpful if I do my scholarly selective in basic science. "Drug treatment of disease" was quite helpful; a lot more so than "drugs affecting the nervous system" I thought.

[update] 2 years on. FBS exams done. OSCE next week. GAMSAT Tutoring available after Tuesday.

I've noticed it's now been two years since I made my first blog post on this blog. I have learned a lot in the past year. I'll make a longer reflective post after my OSCE on Tuesday.

Last week we had our FBS exams. The first one had no MCQ and was all short/long response. I had to write non-stop for the whole exam and had no time to recheck. That seemed to be a common and recurring theme among others I've talked to. I didn't really like it.

The second exam was all MCQ/EMQ (extended matching questions), and the questions were quite "clinical" in their nature. I liked this one a lot better, but I know I got a few wrong there too.

Anyway, my OSCE is on Tuesday. There will be two history stations and two examination stations, assessing anything they taught us in PCP1 this year. After that, I will be able to tutor for the GAMSAT on most days in the summer holiday, but I will be away from Melbourne on 5-22 December.

[update] MD1 MST#4 results out. Written exams next week

I just got my MST#4 results, including the prac test for the semester.

Overall I got 39/47 for the theory portion (83%; class mean and median were 32.04 and 32). They took out some stats questions which weren't taught this semester but were taught last semester, which I wish they didn't have. Ah well.

I wish we could know the right answers, but ah well.

Anatomy 8/8

yay...

MIIM 8/10

I guess I probably got that developing country vaccine question wrong. Maybe also the returned traveller one too? Hmm... not sure

Pathology/histology 5/7

I don't remember the questions for this section that I thought I might have gotten wrong anymore.

Pharmacology: 3/5

Oops! I shouldn't have chosen Calcium supplementation as the primary treatment of osteoporosis. I'm not sure about the other one though...

Physiology 8/8

It seems like I got all the physiology right this semester (but not last semester).

Other 7/9

I don't remember which ones I got wrong here. I wish they still had the stats questions. Ah well.


I got 37/50 for the prac portion (74%; class mean and median not displayed at the moment).

Anatomy 8/9

I don't remember what I got wrong here...

Biochemistry 5/5

I was unsure about one of the answers (to do with someone's diet), but it seems like I got it right. Some of the other questions were almost giveaways. So it seems like I got all the biochem questions right in all midsems this year.

MIIM 10/12

I don't remember what happened here.

Neuroscience 3/7

Oops... I know I got the MRI T2 question wrong. I don't recall the others.

Pathology 6/11

Not that good either, although I guess I did technically "pass" all pathology subsections in all midsems. It seems to be many people's weakest subject...

Other prac 5/6

What does "other" mean? Ah whatever... I don't know.


Anyway, the exam is next week, so I will resume studying.

[update] MD1 last midsem complete

Today I completed the last midsemester test for first year MD. This test consisted of half "lecture" questions and half "practical based" MCQ questions.

Like the other tests, I felt reasonably comfortable with the majority of the questions, but there were still quite a number which I was unsure of.

Anyway, the next big assessment will be the exams. The first end of year exam is in a bit less than two weeks time, assessing 36 weeks worth of content. The hectic preparation effort will probably begin tomorrow...

Good luck everyone who has exams still!

2013 entry: First GEMSAS simulation. Last week for Unimelb Undergrad semester 2, 2012.

According to a tweet from the Twitter account of Mavis Duncanson (@MavisDuncanson), Head of Population and Public Health and Head of Student Matters at School of Medicine, Sydney (University of Notre Dame Australia), the simulations of the GEMSAS have just begun.

I wonder how many simulations they'll go through this time for 2013 entry. For 2012 entry, there were 19 simulations. Hopefully with experience they'll take less time this time around.

Good luck if you're waiting for an offer!

This week is also the last week of class for UniMelb undergraduate students. Good luck everyone for the upcoming exams!

[update] Back after midsem break (semester 2 MD1)

Today I'm back to uni after the one week midsemester break for semester 2. This will be the last block of studying for first year before the exams at the end of the year.

Like I said before, there won't be much time to study for the end of year exams, because there is less than a week from the last day of class to the first end of year exam. Right now I'm thinking that I should start to go through all the lecture notes from the start straight after our last MST, but even then there would not be much time to go through 36 teaching weeks of information...

Meanwhile, undergraduates at Melbourne have also returned from their midsem break and GEMSAS medicine offers are expected to be released at the end of this month...

[update] End of year exam timetable released. No swotvac week!

Today our end of exam timetables were released. The last MST will be held in 9 November, which was not unexpected. However, it seems like we will have our end of year exams for FBS on 22 and 23 November. They did not give us a swotvac/cram week to prepare for them! It's going to be tough to study for all the lectures for the whole year with less than a week between our last class and our end of year exam...

Unimelb: Last day of undergraduate classes for semester 1, 2012

Today is the last day of class for the semester at the University of Melbourne for most undergraduate courses. Medicine runs on a different timetable though, so it isn't the last day for me for the semester. (I already mentioned too that for first year medicine at Melbourne, the main subjects are year long, and the midyear exams are not worth much)

I'd just like to say good luck to all those with exams coming up in the next few weeks. Prepare well and remember to go through questions in a strategic manner to maximize marks.

Exam day (poem)

I get off at Parliament today,
Not MC* like for uni,
Today's more important than usual;
The test of our ability.

All the hard work is remembered as
I walk up the longer escalator**,
Lactic acid building up in my legs,
But I press on; I will rest later.

I finally reach the end and walk,
I hear the Myki*** reader beep,
Then go outside, and see more stairs,
Two steps at a time, I leap.

The street ahead is different today,
The RACS on the left I pass,
"Will I join them in the future?"
Is something I always ask.

The sun is very bright today
As I head to the REB****,
Then I see my classmates there
Revising under a tree.

I later put away my bag
in some storage facility.
Invigilator calls us in;
The crowd goes in quickly.

Inside there, I'm on my own
I try to work efficiently,
After two hours, the deed is done,
And I leave the facility.

A few weeks pass then I will know,
Whether to cry or jump in glee.
N, P, or H2B
H2A, H1, or H3*****?



Yes, it's the first poem I have written on this blog. Not very high quality though, but there it is.

*Melbourne Central railway station; closest railway station to UniMelb
**Parliament station escalators are longer than ones in Melbourne Central.
***Electronic ticketing system (smart card) used in Melbourne public transport.
****Royal Exhibition Building, where a lot of UniMelb exams are held; closest to Parliament railway station.
*****Melbourne Grading System  (alternate link; original link may be broken. Bands for each grade also shown in GEMSAS guide for GPA calculation)

[update] Final biomed semester results

Today, all my results for semester two were unofficially released through the Study Plan. (Note: in Melbourne, results are released when finalized, rather than on one specific day, and they are often out through the Study Plan a day earlier than the "results service" page. This year, all results should be released by 9 December. Also, for Melbourne students, a tip to note if you don't want to keep clicking on the Study Plan to check if a result is up and let it take its time to load, the results being put up on the study plan coincides with the subject coming off the list on the portal home page or admin tab, so you only need to check when a subject disappears off the enrolled subject list).

Anyway, I got two H1 and one H2A. I expected more than that H2A to be honest (it was a bare H2A too; 75), but ah well. Essays are subjective I guess. It probably doesn't help that I write in pencil for all of them either, where they don't specify what to use, and my handwriting being not that neat. I think I'll try using pen next year. It probably also didn't help that I was a bit lazy revising throughout the semester, an excuse being the interviews, but then again I only had three subjects this semester. So I have finished my biomed with a weighted GPA of 6.79, and an unweighted GPA of 6.75, on the GEMSA scale.

It seems like I have passed well, and barring administrative errors, I should be eligible to graduate. I just ordered the rental for the academic gown today. I think my performance in this semester should be enough to satisfy the "maintain current academic standard" criteria for turning the conditional MD offer into a firm offer, so I'll be waiting for that in a week or two probably.

[update] Biomed exams over!

Today I finished my final exam for biomed. As noted before, this was a 100% essay exam. Well not completely, because I did draw quite a few diagrams, but it was an extended response exam. I felt I did reasonably well, but spent quite significant time drawing up some of my diagrams (and sometimes perhaps going into more detail than necessary when explaining drug mechanisms), and had to rush at the end. No paracetamol question there though, if you were wondering.

So for Melbourne, results should come out by 9 December this year; about two weeks. Meanwhile, it's break time, and complete some immunizations and do paperwork for medicine.

[update] One more exam for biomed

In the past week, I completed two of my three exams this semester. The coming Thursday, I have my final exam for biomed.

The past two exams I think went reasonably well, despite being 100% essay type questions (the biomed compulsory subject this semester had about 50% of the questions being knowledge of pharmacology, so that was good for grades for me due to my major, but not really good for learning new things). The next exam will be 100% essay questions too. I wonder why the pharmacology department likes essay type questions for third year subjects, while the second year pharmacology subject had 50% essays, 50% multiple choice.

Anyway, I'm about half way going through the lecture notes now for this last subject, and when I'm finished with that, I'll start doing some past exams. This subject, along with the other subjects this semester, thankfully has full past exams released.

But my hand gets sore around exam time when I have to write all these essays. Typing, or coloring in MC bubbles, is a lot easier.

[update] 17 GEMSAS simulations later...

... and it seems like most schools are happy with the offer list, but one school is still not 100% satisfied with the list of people they were suggested to offer to by GEMSAS. Ah well, now we should hope for a release of offers soon after the weekend.

Technically, they are still not "late", since they specified that offers will be released 9-16 November. However, this is quite late compared to last year's offers for a few unis including Melbourne. That said, this year is the first year with the new computer matching system of GEMSAS, so they are starting almost from scratch. I hoped they would get offers out earlier though.

Anyway. It seems like tomorrow will be that K-Pop festival in Sydney, which I said I wouldn't attend because of my exams (and to answer a question in the comments, it seems like SNSD will arrive in Sydney before the GEMSAS offers comes out). Interestingly, it seems like tickets are still available for VIP standing, silver seating and bronze seating options, while allocation is exhausted for VIP seating and gold seating. It's interesting because in Korea, the seat allocation of SNSD's first concert in the first Asia tour sold in 3 minutes. More recently, for SNSD's second Asia tour, in Singapore the tickets for their scheduled concert sold out within four hours so they decided to hold a second concert the next day. As it happens, I was in Singapore last year (during the Australian summer holidays), exactly one year before the schedule date of this concert there this year.

Maybe it's because there isn't as much Asian population percent here compared to Singapore. The other reason might be that the distances here are quite far, compared to Singapore or Korea. Australia is a big country and Melbourne and Sydney, the two biggest cities, are quite far apart (about 900 km), so it's not very convenient to travel from one city to another, especially without a high speed rail network. It's even further from Brisbane (the next biggest) to Sydney. It's also an inconvenient time for people going to school or university, since it is right during the exam period for a lot of unis and VCE exams, or during the school term of earlier years. So perhaps that contributes to lower demand too.

In any case, with respect to exam preparation, I did a past exam paper today for one of my subjects, then I cleared up a few gaps in my knowledge that were found. I'll probably do one or two tomorrow. Despite the GEMSAS uncertainty, life goes on...

November: The month of GEMSAS offers! (and exams)

It's November now. This is the month of the GEMSAS offers for the main round. So in 8-15 days (9-16 November), applicants to GEMSAS will know if they got a first round offer or not.

It also happens to be Melbourne Cup Day today; a public holiday in Melbourne. However, I don't really take too much interest in the Melbourne Cup.

Anyway, after the offers, my first exam is on the 17th. I've been reading some of my Pharmacology textbook, and might start revising lecture notes soon. My last exam is on the 24th.

Well, all in all, it seems like it will be an interesting month ahead.

[update] Last day of undergraduate classes for biomed!

Today was the last day for undergraduate classes at biomed for me, if all things go to plan. It has been a great experience at the University of Melbourne studying biomed here and meeting new friends.

After today, there is a "cram period" to follow; ie swotvac. For me, my exams are quite late, so I have more than two weeks before my first exam.

Although I would like to be able to finish my degree off for biomed, I want to continue on studying, and continue at Melbourne if possible. I hope I can get a medicine place here for next year. So since the release of offers should be 9-16 November, I should know whether or not I have a place in 12-19 days.

But until then, it's time to study for exams. I'll know whether or not I have an offer (major round) before my first exam. I hope I can get an offer from Melbourne in the middle of my exam study period!

[update] About 5 weeks to GEMSAS place offers

There's about five more weeks until GEMSAS med school offers now. It's getting closer and closer, but if it was last year before the GEMSAS system then it would only need one or two more weeks of waiting. I suspect they really want to do a lot of double checking with the new GEMSAS system being in place just to make sure everything is right. Hopefully those applying next year don't have to wait so long.

Anyway, I also got my exam timetable. This time, all my exams are in the second half of the exam period for my university; late second week and third week.