Thursday 14 April 2011

Sydney Uni to ditch ACER application consortium

Sydney med school will only be accepting applications directly starting this year for 2012 commencement. This means they will be conducting their own interviews and not be part of the three-preferences ACER application. This doesn't mean they will be ditching GAMSAT for the test results. Why? The school's dean Professor Robinson says ACER doesn't give them enough information to choose the most suitable students. But James Angus from Medical Deans says others may follow suit and it is tough on families (smh).

The good thing is you get an extra chance since you don't have to worry about putting USYD (known for its competitiveness) as first preference and possibly lose out on other med schools. The bad thing is you have to pay $100 for the interview in Sydney on top of another $100 for ACER application to be considered by other schools.

Money is tight for many but I think the pros have it since you will probably be travelling to other schools for interviews anyhow if you don't get your first preference. For a range of reasons I haven't considered med school at USYD.

With all this fuss, how to get into USYD?

(1) To apply, you must have a miminum GPA of 5.5 and a miminum Overall GAMSAT score of 50. (2) You will then be selected for interview depending on your Overall GAMSAT score until the number of interviews offered is about 1.4 times the number of offers available. (3) They will offer spots to applicants working from top to bottom off a ranked list based equally (50/50) on your Overall GAMSAT score and your interview score (usyd med).

For international students, the process is similar but MCAT can be used instead of GAMSAT and you will only be competing with other int'l students as will me domestics.

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