Careers
Claire Pech – Careers Advisor
Anyone interested in Medicine?
I was at a Get into Medicine workshop last week. This is the Doctor Life Cycle below…
How to get into Medicine?
Australian Medical Association: https://ama.com.au/
Training pathways: https://ama.com.au/careers/becoming-a-doctor
Undergraduate pathways: https://ama.com.au/careers/becoming-a-doctor
Fifty nine institutions offer Medicine training programs in Australia. Once you are in the medicine pathway ask yourself what interests you the most? It is a competitive landscape. What would you be most interested in…?
- Then apply to speciality training colleges
- Spend time getting experiences out of College
- Increasingly colleges are limiting the number of attempts– students can try and get onto training programs and places are becoming very competitive.
- Medicine is an incredibly rich, diverse and interesting career path with lots of choice and options.
Careers in Medicine
What should students expect when they become a doctor? How many places are there?
Undergraduate Medicine – there are 1,600 places in total for Medicine. These are at three Universities for Undergraduate Medicine in NSW:
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- UNSW
- Newcastle University
- University of Western Sydney (WSU)
As these places are incredibly competitive, more candidates consider Postgraduate Med.
Postgraduate Medicine has 2,200 places (Monash reserve places generally for Monash undergraduates). Sydney University also takes in students from a broad range of Undergrad degree backgrounds.
Three requirements to get into Undergraduate Medicine:
- Academic (ATAR). The Doctor who gave this talk felt the ATAR requirement was way too high, with demand skewing the ATAR requirements.
- Psychometric results (UCAT, GAMSAT etc) (https://www.ucat.edu.au/)
- Personal assessment (Interviews, References, Personal Statement, Portfolio etc) – this will continue to grow in its importance as the need for Emotional Intelligence becomes stronger.
There are finer details with all of this, so thorough research by the applicant is needed. Use great organisational skills to keep these processes on track.
Offer of an interview suggests students are in with a chance and this can then move to an offer of a place. There are three undergraduate medicine Universities in NSW:
UNSW Medicine (The odds) https://med.unsw.edu.au/
Local Applicants 2021 applicants in total
Interviews 400 1 in 5 20%
Places offered 143 7%
Rural Applicants 218 applicants in total
Interviews 150 2 in 3 69%
Places offered 55 1 in 4 24%
Newcastle Medicine: https://www.newcastle.edu.au/joint-medical-program
Western Sydney University: https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/medicine/som
Postgraduate medicine is the alternative path: https://ama.com.au/careers/becoming-a-doctor