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

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.....

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)....

jcu and uws are 5 year undergraduate entry programmes.....

but generally, it is easier to get into uk, than oz....

i stand corrected, i always thought jcu was 5 years....

uws i think just graduated their 1st batch i think.....currently not recognised by smc....

like podrunner said, oxbridge looks beyond 'academic issues'.....nobody with 'academic issues' will even think about applying, which would have been an exercise in futility.....

that is simply because selection is done (for the majority of people) BEFORE one even sits for the a2 exam....based on criteria other than academic performance....

once they have deemed you acceptable, then the academic criteria they want is an easy a*aa, which maybe translate to atar90......although i will bet the majority accepted will eventually be getting 3a*.....certainly that has been the case of people i know who got accepted in recent years.....

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Added on May 19, 2012, 6:09 pmi can suggest a very stress free medical application.....any of the ipts med school.....

This post has been edited by limeuu: May 19 2012, 06:09 PM

you can only apply for the tier 4 visa 3 months before commencement of the course.....even if you have your cas no. earlier...

it appears australia does have the need for more doctors, especially the regional areas, but there is a bottleneck in the internship phase, due to the 50% increase in graduating doctors at the moment....

they have been absorbing as many as 1k img immigrants each year all these while.....

however, with already 18 medical schools for a population of only 22 million, they are starting to look like msia if they approve more med schools....especially when several of the new ones have not even graduated any student.....

it will take a long time for curtin's proposed new programme to get established, so they will not be bringing it to miri any time soon, and i think the circumstances will have changed by then.....it will no longer be lucrative to start med schools.....

i have wondered why uwa have decided to go graduate entry, in the light of the experiences of uq and umelb......

you exchange more matured and perhaps more motivated students for the academic best students....

uq had to restart a double degree undergraduate entry pathway to attract the top students from year 12....

studies do indicate the best predictor of good outcome of doctor training is still academic ability...

it doesn't matter in the us, because ALL med schools are graduate entry.....but in oz, with an even mixture, natural selection and human behaviour will result in skews in the 2 cohorts....

the contention whether 'passion' (or interest/motivation) or academic ability is more important in doctor training has been extensively debated, and i think there is some general consensus.....

first and foremost, the student MUST have the intellectual ability to function as a doctor (NOT just train as one....there is a difference between the two)...and it is well accepted that the top 5% of a student cohort will have the academic and intellectual capacity to cope with the demands of studying and functioning as a doctor....

from this quite large group, then selection process attempts to predict the potential best outcome....and various means are used, be they ps, interviews, exams, etc....to varying degrees of predictive success.....

none of these parameters are fail proof.....and the criteria that predicts best outcome remains academic results.....and many med schools sticks to that criteria.....

in the us system, it selects both the academic best and the most motivated, through the graduate entry mode....so there is no issue....

in dual pathway systems, like oz (and increasingly so in uk too), it does produce 2 cohort of students with different characteristics.....which is very obvious because they exist side by side....

and the dual pathway system will also give rise to the perception (which is generally true) that graduate entry students are those who failed to get in the first time, and this is a second chance....if they are carefully selected, they will perform as well as undergraduate entry students, after all, one only need to be in the top 5%.....

the hope is that these graduate entry students will self select motivated people.....but that throws the argument back to the original question above.....which is more important.....passion or ability....?

the question is partly answered by the fact that many of these gemp also have year 12 entry streams..... now why would they do that?.....

she didn't get an offer based on her ps, ukcat and interview, presumable, as offers are made way before the a levels results.....appears she did NOT do the bmat, so she would have been automatically be disqualified from ucl and oxford.......i know someone who also made that mistake of not knowing the need for bmat for the 4 odd man out unis......

finally, based on the forecast a*aa minimum now required, they are choosing from the top 10%, so there are lots of people with other characteristic they want, other than academic results......

This post has been edited by limeuu: May 27 2012, 10:05 AM

thanks for the heads up....

has there been any change for the other states as well?.....

i think the lowering of entry criteria in sunway may have something to do with this as well....

there may be a rule against oz citizens and prs taking the course at sunway......

for imu, they are prohibited from matching to oz/nz.........

smc does not recognise monash sunway mbbs, so sporeans will not be able to practice in spore....

gmc also does not recognise, so the uk residents will either practice in their country of citizenship (i presume mostly msia), or sit for the plab......

it is not possible for prs to conceal their pr status in imu, because on successful matching, they will need to apply for a student visa, and it will be revealed in the diac database.....

similarly, for monash, when they do the compulsory attachment in oz, processing of visa application will reveal the pr status.....

of course, they can request cancellation of their pr visa anytime (i know people who allow their pr visas to lapse because of this).....but that will then make them non residents.....

i believe there is a guarantee all domestic students will get an internship place....so the excess graduates will be all internationals.....

i am not sure the oz gov will have the political will, or even wish, to expand places to accommodate these internationals....

there was an era, in the late 80's and early 90's, where foreign students were not allowed to stay on and do their housemanship....that however, was not full fees students, although they have already started charging some fees by that time.....many msians went off to uk for that (spore was restricted only to melb/syd grades)....

i would think a majority of full fees (and plus actually) international students are willing to pay because of the opportunity of residence and work in oz post study.....take that away, and enrolment will drop.....

canucks and americans will probably not be affected...sporeans probably little affected....

the irony is, there is still a shortage of doctors, especially in regional areas.....but a bottle neck in internship is driving away doctors!

i think we have to realise, by studying there, we are only buying an education.....and they have NEVER promised the right to internship after, nor right to work......

therefore, what is happening is NOT that they failed to keep their promise, since they promised nothing except an education....it's just that in the past, they have accepted foreigners to stay on and work.....and this may slowly be a closing door.....and we assume the open door comes with the education and get upset when it closes........

there should be no assumption....in fact, the offer letters very clearly state there is NO guarantee of internship/housemanship placement.........

like i said, there was a time when not only there was no guarantee, non residents were barred from taking up housemanship places in oz....and doctors was not in the list of needed professionals and being a doctor is even deducted points in the pr application....