r/UoApremed

Someone said if you went through something traumatic and couldn’t finish biomed so you only took sem 1 and didnt take sem 2, with the new admission scheme, would you be able to retake biomed first year next yesr and apply via that pathway?

basically, my grades are okay. Plussage for chem will pull through so i’m sure i’ll land a A+, i’m at a A+ for biosci overall and overall a B+ for pophlth (got cooked) currently w/o considering exams.

But during this period i went through someone so unimaginable ☹️ i don’t want to specify details on here cause my friends use reddit, but i had to really sacrifice to get these grades and it’s taken me out - mentally, physically and socially.. i don’t know if i can continue not because it’s academically challenging but moreso the trauma. Like ngl i didn’t fully get to go through it and i tried my best with midsems but my dream is medicine. ☹️

anwyas i know this migut be a cliche post and / or some people might not like the fact ive come onto here but i lowkey just needed to get this out

currently doing health sci, dont qualify for any admission schemes. and i feel like i need someone to be completely realistic and not just tell me that i can potentially bring my grades back. because im needing to really think about whether i change degrees or do something else next sem to stop wasting time

currently:

B+ average in biosci

A- average poplhlth111

dont have midterms back for others, but assuming i meet the B+ necessary

Is there anyone who studied premed last year or the year before able to indicate what the GPA for MMI invite was for admission schemes? Specifically MAPAS, but any information would help :)

You’re telling me I have to work my ass off to maintain a 9.0 gpa when they’re going to change it so that you just need a 6.0 and then it’s based on 50% MMI and Caspar

hi guys idk if im just overly anxious but what are yalls plans for the finals? i did some grade calculations and i just need a 20% to get a B overall for the class so what are yalls grade goal for the final/overall cus idk im shooting myself in the foot or something like not studying for it?? idk i was js planning to do some revision for 2 days and write some crap for the saq and laq

im unsure if the 8.25 gpa from last year is a minimum required gpa for an mmi offer, or if that was the average gpa of those who got sent offers

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.

Guys I got 80% on all my mid-terms after studying my ass off and I've been so deflated. Exams are around the cornor and i'm so behind, is there even hope. Yes I can lock in now but how would I work after the mid-term grind didn't even work.

I didn't mind the idea of post-grad untill I realised how tough it is to maintain a solid GPA, how tough is post-grad entry and whats the biomed experience like?

I have no idea how some people are so put together and keep up with the content, kudos to you diligent people who can. I lwk ask spent 2k on ucat prep and its gone to waste too with a shit GPA and still shit ucat um.

sorry if this wasn't what this forum is for erm sorry if its venty

Do you guys think that an 8.3 GPA is good enough to get into med? I'm not MAPAS/ rural or anything like that

Hi guys, I’m really stressed and honestly need some realistic advice.

I’m in first-year biomed and my midterm grades have been pretty bad:
- BIOSCI: 25/70
- CHEM: 37/70
- POPHLTH: 13/40

I know these aren’t good, and I’m panicking because I feel like I’ve already ruined my chances of getting into any clinical programme.

The thing is, I don’t even want to do med specifically, but I was hoping for another clinical pathway and now I’m scared those are out of reach too.

I genuinely don’t know if it’s still mathematically possible to recover from this if I completely lock in for the rest of the year, or if I’m being delusional and should start thinking about other options instead of wasting the year chasing something unrealistic.

Has anyone been in a similar position or knows how much recovery is actually possible from grades like this? Please be honest.

I can roughly imagine that everyone's groups (wtr/pophlth/chem) aren't very good... but I'm curious about what kind of problems they're bad at….

For example, one of my group members skips every class/workshop/meeting, another always assigns the easiest tasks to themselves, and another is always doing their own thing during meetings...

are there any group assignments for biomed in semester 2? i genuinely cannot do this anymore. group assignments put so much stress on me because i always have to do most of the part because ppl are either not acting on their own or not even communicating with me at all. it's so hard and my mental health has been so bad because of it.

also why are ppl like this lmao. it's kinda weird that they wanna get into the medical field when they can't even work in a team at this level. this is just absurd. sorry for the rant but i'm genuinely just so tired.

Hey there I am trying for optom through graduate entry. I am a bit worried about my gpa, for my first two years my gpa was around 7.3 (containing geneds and other science papers) but I tried for first year and second year entry. I don’t think my first year mmi went great and second year I didn’t get offered a mmi and what I think it is due to is how first years get a boost for their second sem papers but ofc by second year I had already done medsci 142 and that was my worst from first year. I am a bit worried I was about to switch to another degree but I am hoping 3rd time is the charm. I am also wondering how does graduate entry work? It takes your final 2 years I heard but does this include every paper you did in the last 2 years including geneds?

Quick question about entry requirements for grads. I have done 3/4 of the core papers expect pop health. The thing is I have B- in the core papers, some people have said you need at least a B others have said this isn’t true. I was wondering if anyone knows the requirements :).

does anyone just watch the lecture + make anki at the same time for this module - if you did, how did you manage with the sheer amount of info...

help..

Hey, currently part 2 engineering, and I've always regretted not having tried to get into med, and it's been looming over me for a while.

I don't particularly want to try post-grad entry because I don't think my GPA would be that good by the end of this degree.

I want to try doing biomed first year next year and see how it goes, but if that doesn't work out, can I go back to Engineering part 3 as my back-up option or is that not feasible as my spot in eng would've been given away.

Any advice would be super helpful. Thank you!

Hi,

Just wanted to ask here how our overall gpa is calculated? Like the gpa that counts whether you get into a clinical programme or not. I'm a bit confused if it's the grade we get from sem1 subjects or if it's from both sem1 and 2? If anyone could enlighten me:)

much appreciated xx

I know you guys are stressed for ucat and midterms but for people that have the time,

Did doing well in high school correlate to doing well in first year? All the people I know that want to do biomed are the smartest people I know that accelerated multiple year levels. Im still an excellence-level student but I feel below average compared to them and wonder if I can keep up with these people next year who are in a completely different league

Have no subject accelerations or plan to do scholarship exams btw. Im a normie.