Massive changes for admissions into clinical programmes (& biomed / health sci)
still working my mind over this, but here's what i've found out. 'The most significant refresh of undergraduate health education at the University of Auckland in decades' - UoA
i assume its in response to the Waikato med school going forward (though changes like these must have been in planning for a while).
major changes (2027 onward):
EDIT 1: GPA has been entirely removed from consideration into MBChB - what the fuck!
first years & post grads are required to reach a B+ average threshold, from then entry is judged entirely from MMI (50%) & the Auckland SJT test 'Casper' (50%) for final selection into the MBChB programme. grade distributions (e.g. A+) are not taken into account.
also more insider info: GAMSAT is planned to be introduced for graduates but FMHS has not yet moved ahead with the change, and they want to consider the specific graduate groups it will apply to (so won't be unanimous). confirmed that there will be no GAMSAT requirement for 2028 entry at the very least (though 2029 onward is uncertain.
like, wow, hahahha.
EDIT 2: not sure how to interpret this (i'll give a non-verbatim statement): the content of the core papers are being 'adjusted' to reflect the new rank score. have no details on the extremity of this. will update this section as i find out more.
1,
the NCEA rank score for biomedical science & health science has been lowered to 200 (from 280 & 250 respectively)
biomedical science & health science are no longer the only two first-year entry pathways into clinical programmes. UoA has created a new first year premed category:
'health majors in science'
these include:
Physiology (was major, still is)
Pharmacology (was major, still is)
Exercise Science (was major, still is)
Nutrition (new major, was BSc food science specialisation: nutrition pathway)
Medicinal Chemistry (new major, was BSc specialisation)
Cell and Molecular Bioscience (new major, was BSc major in biological sciences: cellular and molecular biology)
All of these pathways now directly lead into the second year of the following programmes (ie, they act much how biomed & healthsci currently do):
- Bachelor of Medical Imaging (Honours)
- Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery
- Bachelor of Optometry
- Bachelor of Pharmacy
the rank score for all of the health majors in science has been raised to 200 (matching the new biomed & health sci rank score) - note that the rank score for other BSc non-health majors remains at 160 though these cannot directly feed into second year of clinical programmes after year 1.
the programme structure of each of these majors has also changed (some more substantially than others) - ie, some papers have been deleted / replaced, requirements have shifted (though are generally more favourable from what i've seen).
UCAT has been discontinued, and is being replaced with a new test centred only on SJT (situational judgement). i believe this is called the 'CASPer' test.
CHEM 110 has been discontinued, a brand-new core paper is being developed to replace it; 'CHEM 190'
from what i understand this will shift the focus more onto the human / biological aspects of chemistry with a heavier emphasis on organics. interested to see how much the course structure will differ.
hence the new selection of core papers (and when they're offered) are:
- biosci 107 - sem 1
- chem 190 - sem 1
- medsci 142 - sem 2 (left the king on its own lollll)
- poplhlth 111 - sem 1
Note from uni: 'A combined GPA of at least 6 across these courses and a B or higher grade across all eight courses will make you eligible for selection into clinical programmes.'
BSc specialising in biomedical science has been discontinued, it is now a seperate degree: Bachelor of Biomedical Science (BBiomedSc)
somewhat related to the above; the bachelor of biomedical science & bachelor of health science degrees have undergone MAJOR reworks.
- they each have 12+ entirely new courses that make up the 'core' of each degree (ie; the core papers of each degree have been changed completely - they are more specific to each degree rather than feeling like some poorly designed faux programme)
- e.g. biomed core papers are no longer a mix of biosci and medsci, they are now labelled 'biomed' specifically. (e.g. biomed 202 - homeostasis)
- biomed no longer involves biosci 101, 106, physics 160, and chem 110 as year 1 core papers (these have been swapped to the new biomed specific courses)
- health sci year 1 no longer involves the other irrelevant poplhlth papers i can't be bothered to list.
- from what i've seen SO FAR, biomed specialisations have been removed. they no longer exist on the curriculum catalogue. i think this was done as the new biomed 2.0 is a much more focused degree than it once was and seems to prep post-grads for med entry more effectively than before (one of the new biomed specific courses is centred on clinical diagnosis, for example).
- the new BBiomedSc programme will be cohort based (like the clinical programmes, which i guess makes sense when considering the amount of new courses).
- three new BHSc majors have been put in place (each have brand new courses associated with them - the last two are completely new)
- these are nutrition, community health, and health systems & data analytics
7,
and finally, you can now repeat first year attempts into desired clinical - this is the major one! follows similar to otago allowing HSFY students to attempt repeat (though only if student had not successfully completed all 7 core papers). I don't have the specific details on this; i don't know what the conditions are.
THIS WAS FALSE. my friend is an idiot.
8,
the MBChB programme is undergoing a complete redesign / rework which will be put into place for the 2029 starting cohort. 'major adjustments will be needed to take into account the less clinical hours students will undergo.'
all i know about this regards the introduction of 'new unique clinical pathways' for the medical students to balance the placements between the med schools. they are also focusing on disciplines in medicine that are more 'specialised / low demand specialist services' (opposite approach to Waikato); specific example mentioned was oncology.
really excited to see how this goes. imo each med school is going to be more focused on producing specific types of doctors ; e.g. Waikato will be responsible for the GP's while UoA will be more specialist focused. Not too sure about Otago.
so yeah...
I'm super excited to see how this will affect admissions into med next year. UoA will gain soooo much money from this, though their course capacity really needs to be increased to accommodate the new influx of students, imo.
(old stuff i wrote prior to finding out about the grade admission changes):
grades will 100% be higher on average. doubt they'd match the inflation seen down in Otago but i wouldn't be surprised if 8.5 or .75 was the lowest to get into med (with stellar GPA & MMI).
also curious about how their post-grad criteria are changing, no way they've overlooked that whilst making all these changes for first year entry. though haven't seen anything on it yet. (it doesn't make sense to me that (e.g.) a third year physiology student would need to compete with a first year physiology student for entry, especially since uni has been complaining about lack of post grad students in their programme + Waikato med school being post grad only)
hope everything is going well. meow.
