how come only half of cambridge pre-clinicals go on to do clinicals? is it because the assessment is super tough?

IMHO while it is bad to have lax exam standards, there is no point in having super tough exams to the point where it goes beyond being a test of competency. except maybe to uphold the elitism

This post has been edited by arsenwagon: May 12 2012, 12:03 AM

Cambridge has an arrangement with Oxford and the London medical schools for the clinical aspect of their medical education. It's got nothing to do with assessments and pass rates.

oh i see. thanks for enlightening me.

in med schools with proper and careful selection of students, the drop out and failure rate is very low.....

only in unis with lax selection, and yet has to be strict in assessment due to strict requirements, are there high fail rates....

classical example is imu....

"A career in medicine requires true grit.
And so, if one expects a walk in the park, then that person is going to be sorely disappointed." - Vagus

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Added on May 13, 2012, 1:02 pmA Daily Express Forum article, by "Fair Play", dated 13 May 2012

An interesting excerpt: "..It is a fact that Mara paid millions to Irish and Indonesian medical colleges in donations to get their students in..."

Surprising to note this tidbit about Irish medical colleges.

Could not find any online link so hope this jpeg will do.



This post has been edited by podrunner: May 13 2012, 01:02 PM

Noted from the list of successful applicants this year with conditional offers to UK from Methodist College, KL, only one student made it to medic and he got an offer from Oxford. Last year, several got offers for medic from Manchester and Bristol. Yet to get any indication from Sunway and Taylors.

However, the college has done well and managed to secured quite a number of places in Imperial, LSE, Warwick etc for Law, Actuarial Science, Economics and Finance.

Are you tracking all the UK medic offers?

irish med schools have a long 'tradition' of being a medical degree mill....if you calculate the number of med schools against the population, you will note they are near msia level....

americans who failed to enter us med schools have for many years, been making a bee line to ireland med schools, and then after graduating and passing usmle step 2, gone back to us to work.....

Somehow having a keen interest. For my own sake and hopefully can share some info with others.

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Added on May 17, 2012, 11:14 amI have always thought that Irish med schools are one of the best in UK and was also impressed with the reports of Penang Medical College (until 2 or 3 years ago when the students mix suddenly changes).

Do you mean that Ireland was never one of the preferred choices even for that having a JV with Perdana?

This post has been edited by cckkpr: May 17 2012, 11:14 AM

Only northern island is part of the UK, and there's only one med school there, QUB. I think Perdana has tie ups with RCSI.

it is very common for people to confuse between ireland and the uk....

the uk is made up of england, scotland and wales (collectively known as great britain) and northern ireland.....it is part of eu, but outside the eurozone....

the rest of the irish island is the republic of ireland, a separate country completely, with dublin as the capital....it is part of the eu, and within eurozone (ie uses euro as currency).....

that statement above, best not to say in front of an irishman.....

it is relatively easy to enter irish med schools, and they have so MANY joint programmes...msia alone has 4.....

they have 5 med schools for a population of less than 4 million....compare this with msia (35 schools for 30 million) and uk (32 schools for 62 million) and usa (134 schools for 310 million)......the figures speak for themselves...

it is also a small country, and few foreign students want to stay back after graduating due to lack of work opportunities....perfect conditions for a degree mill....google, and you will find lots of forums on americans trying to get into irish med schools....

This post has been edited by limeuu: May 17 2012, 12:48 PM

Thank you for that history lesson.

I also did some googling and noted the 4 to be National U of Ireland, Cork and Galway, RCSI, University College Dublin and University of Dublin.

I also noted that Penang Medical College "parent colleges" are UCB and RCSI. Not that bad, rite? When relative shows interest in med, doctor friend said PMC good!

like i said many times, the most important determinant of the quality of an educational establishment is the quality they insist their students must be....

which is why the likes of harvards and oxbridge consistently are ranked the top....anyone who have ever tried to gain entry into them will know how rigorous their selection process are...

in this aspect, pmc fails badly....their entry requirement is way below even that of monash and imu.....they take weak students (atar<90, bbb) into a 6 year programme....adding an extra 'foundation' year.....

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Added on May 17, 2012, 3:41 pmbtw, it wasn't history......but geography....

there is also a very interesting history behind the 2 countries, but that is another story.....

This post has been edited by limeuu: May 17 2012, 03:41 PM

There's some info floating in the web that the 5 US universities from the Top 10 THE unis for critical courses, will be removed from MOE's scholarship list for critical courses. Announcement soon, apparently. It actually took them this long!

This post has been edited by podrunner: May 18 2012, 09:45 PM

Sorry but this is a bit random. It's kind of sad to hear people in msia regarding GPs as those underachievers whom can't become a specialist: as in they are discriminating against GPs. I'm not sure if many out there are having this view, but I've definitely heard quite a few people telling me so. Is there such discrimination at all?

in an environment where the spectrum of medical graduates is wide, there is some truth in the common assumption that gps are those who couldn't make specialisation.....certainly many have tried specialisation exams, but got stuck.....some actually managed to get their part 1....

this is of course different in other environments where probably most medical graduates could have made specialisation if they want, but choose to become gps.....

GPs for life? Perhaps they choose to be 'Jack of all trades, master of none' of medicine...
Then again... there is MRCGP...

Can someone educate me about "Family Medicine"? It sounds quite "general", yet it's a specialty in USA and I believe in Canada as well.

most gps in msia just have their primary qualification...

some countries try to make gp as specialists, by having exams and qualifications.....it is usually because of reimbursement systems that pay different rates for different categories of doctors....

and some systems make it an incentive to have gp postgraduate by differential reimbursements for gps with and without postgraduate (eg fracgp in oz)....

A friend's relative did not get a place in UK is looking at oz. As there are only 2 unis offering 5 years undergrad at Monash and Utas, is it a good option to consider 6 years program at UQ, Adelaide and James Cook? Any better options? Wanted an overseas education and can afford it. Quite a 'smart' chap academically. Other attributes so so.