So the first semester has just begun! I feel I'll probably be quite busy over the next 16 or so weeks, with a lot of fast paced learning to do, exams to prepare for, and the GAMSAT. Second year was already quite a leap from first year as far as core subjects were concerned... how about third year? I shall see soon enough! But there may not be anything interesting to update on for a few weeks (not that I've been writing very regularly anyway haha).
Oh and as an aside, I really hope they make the MD and other graduate entry courses in unimelb eligible for concession card travel on Melbourne's public transport system. After all, the function of these degrees is the same as the bachelor degrees like MBBS that they replaced, which were eligible. So it'd make sense by to put them in the same concession travel fee category even though they are not labeled as "bachelor degrees" but "masters level degrees".
I also think it'd be nice if real master and doctor degree research students and international students could have concession travel too, but that's another issue.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Standardized testing results in education: good or overemphasized?
I recently saw an article in The Age which has criticized the alleged overemphasis of the NAPLAN, the national standardized test for math and English over Australia for years 3, 5, 7 and 9 [Official quits at school's test results spike]. This prompted me to write this essay.
There is no doubt that Australia could do with an increase in literacy and numeracy standards of school pupils. One only has to look at the results of TIMSS to find that Australians do not perform close to the top nations in these areas. Standardized tests are used widely around the world to measure performance in areas. They are a benchmark, with results of people able to be easily compared with one another. As such, they can provide meaningful comparisons between different people who do the same test.
Since standardized tests enable meaningful comparisons, they should be used in education. In the case of Dallas Primary School, they saw an increase in scores for the NAPLAN. The most obvious conclusion, therefore, is that the quality of the students' math and literacy skills has increased. The use of the standardized test has given us a relatively objective measure of this.
However, detractors may argue that the test has been overemphasized. Particularly, that students are trained "just to do well in the test". But this should not be an issue, if the test is written well. If the test covers good math and literacy skills in great detail and depth, then an increase in scores indicates an increase in student ability. Therefore, virtually all the training for students "just to do well in the test" would have the effect of increasing math and literacy skills; the wanted outcome, with the remaining small amount devoted to exam strategy which will become important later on as students move into higher education.
How would you explain a spike in data though? Well, to me, there is no good reason why a real increase in math and literacy skills of the students isn't a good explanation. Two years is a long time, and the students can learn a lot in this time. Especially considering how low Australian math standards are, there is no good reason why students cannot catch up in two years. Of course, there could be other effects too though; more than 30% of people did not sit the test and they could have been low performers. However, a lot of these were excluded due to arriving in Australia for only a short time, and the departmental investigation found no artificial inflation from exclusion from the school. Then again, it's also possible that this is a freak result. We'll find out after the results come out this year. But that doesn't invalidate the test.
As for the "world's best practice" alluded to in the article? Well, just look at the TIMSS results. It seems like the "world's best practice" of numeracy and literacy standards is found in East Asian nations and countries like Singapore. And our Australian performance is not even close! It's not rocket science here, it's not as if we're at the top of the game. If you want "world's best practice", then learn from them. That's what we should be doing.
Standardized testing and aiming to improve upon benchmarks is a great way to increase our literacy and math standards. It is perhaps the only objective way to note improvement. If the test is written well, then most increases in scores would mean increases in real math and literacy skills. However, if the test is not sound, then it should be improved. But they should not be dispensed with completely.
There is no doubt that Australia could do with an increase in literacy and numeracy standards of school pupils. One only has to look at the results of TIMSS to find that Australians do not perform close to the top nations in these areas. Standardized tests are used widely around the world to measure performance in areas. They are a benchmark, with results of people able to be easily compared with one another. As such, they can provide meaningful comparisons between different people who do the same test.
Since standardized tests enable meaningful comparisons, they should be used in education. In the case of Dallas Primary School, they saw an increase in scores for the NAPLAN. The most obvious conclusion, therefore, is that the quality of the students' math and literacy skills has increased. The use of the standardized test has given us a relatively objective measure of this.
However, detractors may argue that the test has been overemphasized. Particularly, that students are trained "just to do well in the test". But this should not be an issue, if the test is written well. If the test covers good math and literacy skills in great detail and depth, then an increase in scores indicates an increase in student ability. Therefore, virtually all the training for students "just to do well in the test" would have the effect of increasing math and literacy skills; the wanted outcome, with the remaining small amount devoted to exam strategy which will become important later on as students move into higher education.
How would you explain a spike in data though? Well, to me, there is no good reason why a real increase in math and literacy skills of the students isn't a good explanation. Two years is a long time, and the students can learn a lot in this time. Especially considering how low Australian math standards are, there is no good reason why students cannot catch up in two years. Of course, there could be other effects too though; more than 30% of people did not sit the test and they could have been low performers. However, a lot of these were excluded due to arriving in Australia for only a short time, and the departmental investigation found no artificial inflation from exclusion from the school. Then again, it's also possible that this is a freak result. We'll find out after the results come out this year. But that doesn't invalidate the test.
As for the "world's best practice" alluded to in the article? Well, just look at the TIMSS results. It seems like the "world's best practice" of numeracy and literacy standards is found in East Asian nations and countries like Singapore. And our Australian performance is not even close! It's not rocket science here, it's not as if we're at the top of the game. If you want "world's best practice", then learn from them. That's what we should be doing.
Standardized testing and aiming to improve upon benchmarks is a great way to increase our literacy and math standards. It is perhaps the only objective way to note improvement. If the test is written well, then most increases in scores would mean increases in real math and literacy skills. However, if the test is not sound, then it should be improved. But they should not be dispensed with completely.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
[update] Semester 1 starts in just under 2 weeks! Looking at the year ahead...
So, this year is my last year of my course, assuming that I do not fail any subjects. Semester one is starting very soon! And the GAMSAT is quite close too (26 March). Yes, I've decided to do the GAMSAT again, since UQ is not going to be my first preference. Buffer against other aspects of the application.
I've hardly done GAMSAT study yet though this year; nothing apart from helping others do a few questions (although I wrote 2 essays and tried to get better planning technique strategy since GAMSAT last year). That said, before last GAMSAT, I didn't do anything apart from the 3 ACER books out at the time (not even relearning good essay technique o.o... almost failed that section) and got a reasonably good overall score.
Anyway, I do plan to start preparing for GAMSAT soon. Probably the free practice tests from internet, and the new practice test ACER just released. Just hoping for a reasonable improvement for minimal effort this time around. Hopefully it doesn't bite me.
Then of course there's the interview this year too... Gotta prepare for it... I hope they ask me to detechnicalize a kilojoule haha.
In other news, seems like they've let us choose 6 preferences this year to apply to uni! I don't really mind that; I guess it's good. Definitely good that we probably don't have to submit transcripts this time though. However, the one thing that I hope they'd do is to resolve the "UQ issue". That is, right now UQ releases offers in August (as they have no interview), about the same time that other unis release interview offers, and 2 months before place offers. However, they don't leave many (or any) "second round" places, so people with high GAMSAT scores which aren't ranked highly for whatever reason in other schools after the interview, if they didn't put UQ first, may miss out on spots. Or maybe, just maybe, unimelb remove the interview? haha ;).
So that's the update for now.
I've hardly done GAMSAT study yet though this year; nothing apart from helping others do a few questions (although I wrote 2 essays and tried to get better planning technique strategy since GAMSAT last year). That said, before last GAMSAT, I didn't do anything apart from the 3 ACER books out at the time (not even relearning good essay technique o.o... almost failed that section) and got a reasonably good overall score.
Anyway, I do plan to start preparing for GAMSAT soon. Probably the free practice tests from internet, and the new practice test ACER just released. Just hoping for a reasonable improvement for minimal effort this time around. Hopefully it doesn't bite me.
Then of course there's the interview this year too... Gotta prepare for it... I hope they ask me to detechnicalize a kilojoule haha.
In other news, seems like they've let us choose 6 preferences this year to apply to uni! I don't really mind that; I guess it's good. Definitely good that we probably don't have to submit transcripts this time though. However, the one thing that I hope they'd do is to resolve the "UQ issue". That is, right now UQ releases offers in August (as they have no interview), about the same time that other unis release interview offers, and 2 months before place offers. However, they don't leave many (or any) "second round" places, so people with high GAMSAT scores which aren't ranked highly for whatever reason in other schools after the interview, if they didn't put UQ first, may miss out on spots. Or maybe, just maybe, unimelb remove the interview? haha ;).
So that's the update for now.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Australia needs to improve its pre-university math and science education
The current state of primary and secondary math and science education is far from ideal. Learning mathematics and science is very slow until the last two years of high school, then the pace picks up enormously in the important last two years before university, and then again in university. As such, the extremely slow pace before year 11 hardly prepares aspiring science university students well for the next 5 or more years of their study.
This can be shown in international benchmark tests such as TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study). According to the TIMSS 2007 Math Report (page 35, 38; 47, 50th in pdf), at year 8 level, Australians perform statistically significantly worse than Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Hungary, England, Russia, the US and Lithuania. Also, a 95th percentile Australian would not even reach the 75th percentile mark in Singapore, Korea or Taiwan; while an average Australian would fall within the bottom quartile in Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. In other words, our supposedly gifted students, those within the top 5%, can not even compare with the top quarter of the top math nations. This is a definite cause for concern.
It is also concerning that Australia is below the United States, despite some of their states having a very poor "fuzzy math" curriculum. Such curriculum had very little emphasis on simple basic techniques such as manipulating fractions or even multiplication or division without a calculator. Such reforms had come because the old regime was not perfect. However, this demonstrates what can happen when reforms go wrong.
It could be said that these East Asian nations have more emphasis on the students doing well in math by parents, as a matter of culture. However, even without this emphasis for some students, the top Australian students, especially those who find the current curriculum up to year 10 unchallenging, could do very well simply with a much stronger curriculum than currently.
Australia is currently in a process of implementing a national curriculum. While a reform of math standards is definitely needed, I find it doubtful that standards will reach those seen in Taiwan, Korea or Singapore. But I do hope so, it is definitely needed here.
This can be shown in international benchmark tests such as TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study). According to the TIMSS 2007 Math Report (page 35, 38; 47, 50th in pdf), at year 8 level, Australians perform statistically significantly worse than Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Hungary, England, Russia, the US and Lithuania. Also, a 95th percentile Australian would not even reach the 75th percentile mark in Singapore, Korea or Taiwan; while an average Australian would fall within the bottom quartile in Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. In other words, our supposedly gifted students, those within the top 5%, can not even compare with the top quarter of the top math nations. This is a definite cause for concern.
It is also concerning that Australia is below the United States, despite some of their states having a very poor "fuzzy math" curriculum. Such curriculum had very little emphasis on simple basic techniques such as manipulating fractions or even multiplication or division without a calculator. Such reforms had come because the old regime was not perfect. However, this demonstrates what can happen when reforms go wrong.
It could be said that these East Asian nations have more emphasis on the students doing well in math by parents, as a matter of culture. However, even without this emphasis for some students, the top Australian students, especially those who find the current curriculum up to year 10 unchallenging, could do very well simply with a much stronger curriculum than currently.
Australia is currently in a process of implementing a national curriculum. While a reform of math standards is definitely needed, I find it doubtful that standards will reach those seen in Taiwan, Korea or Singapore. But I do hope so, it is definitely needed here.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Graduate entry vs undergraduate entry
In Australia, there are two methods of entry into medicine available. Some people get in straight out of high school, into a 5 or 6 year undergraduate entry program. Others get in after completing a bachelor degree first, and then complete a 4 year graduate entry medicine program. The undergraduate program has been criticized for having less mature applicants in recent times, which has lead to many universities switching from the traditional undergraduate entry in Australia to graduate entry medicine.
Undergraduate medicine gives those who are relatively sure that medicine is the right career path for them the chance to get straight into the degree, having the least amount of time required studying at university before graduating with a medicine degree. It is perhaps the most cost-effective of the options too, both for the student and the university, as the student can practice sooner and the university does not need to use as many years of resources to teach the student. So for people who are sure that medicine is right for them, this path is very good for them.
However, there are quite a number of people who claim that graduate entry medicine is much better than undergraduate entry. The reasons given are often because of higher levels of maturity due to the applicants being older and having a bachelor degree already, and perhaps more life experience too. Also, the graduate entry program has less dropouts and more diversity of applicants.
It may be the case that graduate entry applicants are more mature at the start of the medicine degree. Perhaps a lot of undergraduate entry medicine students may not be perceived mature enough to be interns at the start of the medicine degree, while graduate entry students may be. However, 5 or 6 years is a long time to mature, and it is after those years when undergraduate medicine students will be interns; not at the start of the degree. Furthermore, a range of studies have indicated that age is inversely correlated to grades at medical school. Also, it is more economical to train younger students who can practice for many years compared to older applicants who cannot do so.
Graduate entry applicants may have prior knowledge in areas such as biomedicine that can lead to a deeper understanding of the key concepts compared to undergraduate entry applicants. However, in most universities, there is no such requirement. Unless there is a requirement to have prerequisites, the prior knowledge of some applicants may not help that much, and the course will not use the full potential of the students given their prior knowledge.
It may be the case that graduate entry applicants are more mature and diverse, but at the cost of having less years of practice. The undergraduate entry is perhaps more cost effective for those who want to do medicine out of high school, but has higher dropouts. However, unless there is a need for more knowledgeable graduates, where graduate entry with prerequisites makes sense, there does not seem to be a compelling reason not to have undergraduate entry medicine.
[note: I did try to get into undergraduate entry medicine but my UMAT score was not high enough for an interview. I don't think the UMAT does its job well. However, unless graduate entry programs require prerequisites and train to a higher standard than undergraduate medicine, I don't see a compelling reason for undergraduate medicine not to exist.]
Undergraduate medicine gives those who are relatively sure that medicine is the right career path for them the chance to get straight into the degree, having the least amount of time required studying at university before graduating with a medicine degree. It is perhaps the most cost-effective of the options too, both for the student and the university, as the student can practice sooner and the university does not need to use as many years of resources to teach the student. So for people who are sure that medicine is right for them, this path is very good for them.
However, there are quite a number of people who claim that graduate entry medicine is much better than undergraduate entry. The reasons given are often because of higher levels of maturity due to the applicants being older and having a bachelor degree already, and perhaps more life experience too. Also, the graduate entry program has less dropouts and more diversity of applicants.
It may be the case that graduate entry applicants are more mature at the start of the medicine degree. Perhaps a lot of undergraduate entry medicine students may not be perceived mature enough to be interns at the start of the medicine degree, while graduate entry students may be. However, 5 or 6 years is a long time to mature, and it is after those years when undergraduate medicine students will be interns; not at the start of the degree. Furthermore, a range of studies have indicated that age is inversely correlated to grades at medical school. Also, it is more economical to train younger students who can practice for many years compared to older applicants who cannot do so.
Graduate entry applicants may have prior knowledge in areas such as biomedicine that can lead to a deeper understanding of the key concepts compared to undergraduate entry applicants. However, in most universities, there is no such requirement. Unless there is a requirement to have prerequisites, the prior knowledge of some applicants may not help that much, and the course will not use the full potential of the students given their prior knowledge.
It may be the case that graduate entry applicants are more mature and diverse, but at the cost of having less years of practice. The undergraduate entry is perhaps more cost effective for those who want to do medicine out of high school, but has higher dropouts. However, unless there is a need for more knowledgeable graduates, where graduate entry with prerequisites makes sense, there does not seem to be a compelling reason not to have undergraduate entry medicine.
[note: I did try to get into undergraduate entry medicine but my UMAT score was not high enough for an interview. I don't think the UMAT does its job well. However, unless graduate entry programs require prerequisites and train to a higher standard than undergraduate medicine, I don't see a compelling reason for undergraduate medicine not to exist.]
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Hello, welcome to my blog.
Hello everyone. As you probably can guess from my title, I am currently going through the process of applying to graduate entry medicine in Australia. Right now, I have just completed my second year biomed exams.
Second year has been much harder than first year in terms of the core subjects. However, everything we learnt this year would be quite useful for medicine. Anyway, I think I did reasonably well and I'll get my results in a few weeks.
I plan to apply to the University of Melbourne's new "MD" medicine program as a first preference next year. This is although my best chance under the current entry criteria would be to preference UQ first, since they don't have an interview and only have a hurdle GPA which I could pass simply by passing every subject with a 50 from now on at uni (although the UQ selection criteria is speculated to change to "GPA rank" in the future) and rank 100% by GAMSAT score. I pass this year's threshold with a high margin.
My current GPA is not bad (above average relative to people who get into medicine graduate entry), but not as high as many of my peers. My GAMSAT, although very good for most unis, has some shine taken away from it due to Melbourne's "equal weighting" of sections instead of having a double weighted science section like most unis. I'm not sure why Melbourne would think that weighting "reasoning in humanities and social science" and "written communication" on par with "reasoning in biological and social sciences" would increase predictive ability (2/3 arts weighting!!!) but I guess that's how it is.
My main concern is the interview though. It's better than in the past where Melbourne weighted the interview 100%, but I still would have liked the interview to be foregone, since the other aspects of my application are much better.
Anyway, for a view of predictability of GPA, GAMSAT and Interview, here's a study by UQ. Note that they used a panel interview though, rather than a multi-mini interview. The MMI format was designed to eliminate interviewer bias and effects due to first impressions which are hard to overcome, and "halo" effects, so that the result should be more accurate. Nevertheless, the GAMSAT and interview were not very strong predictors compared to GPA: [1]
I don't particularly like interviews being part of the selection process, although others have discussed that topic a lot. I don't particularly think that the formation of a standardized test for selecting medical school applicants is a bad thing though; I consider exams to be a "gold standard" if the exam content is right. It does seem like the MCAT in the USA has relatively good predictive ability[2]. However, I think the GAMSAT under-emphasizes the value of remembering facts in science; being a reasoning test for the most part. Of course, reasoning is a good skill to have, but I think the most difficult part of studying is remembering everything. Perhaps that is why GAMSAT isn't such a good predictor.
It would seem like the "fairest" way to select people would be to just use the GPA to rank people, and disregard GAMSAT and interview. However, there are two problems I can see with that:
1. Universities other than Melbourne do not require prerequisites for graduate entry medicine. There at least needs to be a screening test to determine if applicants have enough science knowledge to succeed in a 4-year course; less time than the 5 or 6 year MBBS courses that undergrads do.
2. Grading practices are not equal for all subjects, or degrees, or universities. University of Melbourne is trying to address this by using their MAGPA in the future, although without standardization comparing against other unis as well, this may not be as effective as it can be[3]. But without such standardization, akin to scaling in VCE or HSC, there is no real fair comparison between different degrees or simply different subjects.
Of course, another solution to improve predictability would be to make the GAMSAT more like the MCAT, although that would disadvantage people from non-science backgrounds especially. Also the high predictability of the MCAT in the USA for medical school performance is from a background where most universities require science prerequisites for medical school admission, so the predictability may not be so great in Australia where that is not the case. However, I contend that the predictability would probably be better than the GAMSAT is right now.
Anyway, that's all for now. Enjoy reading!
From nucleophilic addition-elimination
Second year has been much harder than first year in terms of the core subjects. However, everything we learnt this year would be quite useful for medicine. Anyway, I think I did reasonably well and I'll get my results in a few weeks.
I plan to apply to the University of Melbourne's new "MD" medicine program as a first preference next year. This is although my best chance under the current entry criteria would be to preference UQ first, since they don't have an interview and only have a hurdle GPA which I could pass simply by passing every subject with a 50 from now on at uni (although the UQ selection criteria is speculated to change to "GPA rank" in the future) and rank 100% by GAMSAT score. I pass this year's threshold with a high margin.
My current GPA is not bad (above average relative to people who get into medicine graduate entry), but not as high as many of my peers. My GAMSAT, although very good for most unis, has some shine taken away from it due to Melbourne's "equal weighting" of sections instead of having a double weighted science section like most unis. I'm not sure why Melbourne would think that weighting "reasoning in humanities and social science" and "written communication" on par with "reasoning in biological and social sciences" would increase predictive ability (2/3 arts weighting!!!) but I guess that's how it is.
My main concern is the interview though. It's better than in the past where Melbourne weighted the interview 100%, but I still would have liked the interview to be foregone, since the other aspects of my application are much better.
Anyway, for a view of predictability of GPA, GAMSAT and Interview, here's a study by UQ. Note that they used a panel interview though, rather than a multi-mini interview. The MMI format was designed to eliminate interviewer bias and effects due to first impressions which are hard to overcome, and "halo" effects, so that the result should be more accurate. Nevertheless, the GAMSAT and interview were not very strong predictors compared to GPA: [1]
I don't particularly like interviews being part of the selection process, although others have discussed that topic a lot. I don't particularly think that the formation of a standardized test for selecting medical school applicants is a bad thing though; I consider exams to be a "gold standard" if the exam content is right. It does seem like the MCAT in the USA has relatively good predictive ability[2]. However, I think the GAMSAT under-emphasizes the value of remembering facts in science; being a reasoning test for the most part. Of course, reasoning is a good skill to have, but I think the most difficult part of studying is remembering everything. Perhaps that is why GAMSAT isn't such a good predictor.
It would seem like the "fairest" way to select people would be to just use the GPA to rank people, and disregard GAMSAT and interview. However, there are two problems I can see with that:
1. Universities other than Melbourne do not require prerequisites for graduate entry medicine. There at least needs to be a screening test to determine if applicants have enough science knowledge to succeed in a 4-year course; less time than the 5 or 6 year MBBS courses that undergrads do.
2. Grading practices are not equal for all subjects, or degrees, or universities. University of Melbourne is trying to address this by using their MAGPA in the future, although without standardization comparing against other unis as well, this may not be as effective as it can be[3]. But without such standardization, akin to scaling in VCE or HSC, there is no real fair comparison between different degrees or simply different subjects.
Of course, another solution to improve predictability would be to make the GAMSAT more like the MCAT, although that would disadvantage people from non-science backgrounds especially. Also the high predictability of the MCAT in the USA for medical school performance is from a background where most universities require science prerequisites for medical school admission, so the predictability may not be so great in Australia where that is not the case. However, I contend that the predictability would probably be better than the GAMSAT is right now.
Anyway, that's all for now. Enjoy reading!
From nucleophilic addition-elimination
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)