To all vying for places in UK/Aussie unis next year : Pressure, Pressure!! 

Australia is getting ridiculously expensive - I wouldn't be surprised if Malaysian candidates will soon be priced out of studying here.

Monash University - and I really have to hand it to them - they sure know how to do business:

2010 MBBS tuition fee for international students: AUD 52,000

2011 MBBS tuition fee for international students: AUD 56,800

2012 MBBS tuition fee for international students: AUD 59,810

So, we have an increase of nearly 8,000 dollars in 2 years and yet demand still far out-strips supply - though I'm pretty sure the Malaysian numbers at Monash have dwindled over the last couple of years (JPA no longer sends medical students to Aus; not sure whether JPA PMS-route is still alive)

5 years in Australia would add up to roughly AUD 400,000 (including living expenses), at today's exchange rate adds up to over 1.2 million ringgit. So, to prospective applicants (who can afford the fees anyway), there's very little to sweat about provided you perform reasonably well in your pre-U/ISAT/interview. The money will kill off most of the competition for you - how many parents do you think have 1.2 million ringgit sitting around?

Like I said, demand outstrips supply, hence the luxury that Australian medical schools can afford in selecting their students...though I must agree that most applicants are self-selective as well.

This might not concern you just yet, but Australia currently has a policy of placing ALL local (read Australian citizen/PR) graduates first before international medical students can be considered for internship positions. Do you know how wretched it feels like when a local student who had to repeat an entire year is guaranteed employment while you're left hanging despite paying the exorbitant fees and having better grades than other local students. Now, before anyone starts bashing me for forgetting my place as an international student, I'd like to highlight the fact that this scenario was never explicitly discussed with previous generations of international medical students as the medical student tsunami only took off in the last 2 or 3 years. I'd assume that international students would know better about this situation, but looking at a few forum threads on pagingdr, I still see deluded replies such as "will change/apply for PR while in medical school"...I kid you not. In my uni at least, they have started calling final year students pre-interns; how ridiculous would it be for pre-interns to not continue on as interns the following year. Anyway, it's up to you to decide what you want to do, it's your money after all, but had I known this a couple of years back, I would have seriously considered studying elsewhere.

the sentence is still completely structurally wrong........even with renewed effort....and certainly not ielts band 8 standard....

"...........the bulk will come from um/ukm/oz/uk..........." Poor Malaysia The reason Malaysian medical graduates assimilate so well into the Singaporean system is partly down to the fact that they're normally good at more than one language - Mandarin Chinese comes into mind, along with the various dialects such as Hokkien, Cantonese and Tamil for the Indian students. Singapore gets the wheat while Malaysia gets the chaff...

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Added on August 29, 2011, 9:11 pm

ISAT results should have been released for those planning to enter next year, plus I presume interviews (live/telephone) are ongoing for successful candidates; so you should more or less know where you stand right now - an ISAT of 75th percentile or above and an ATAR equivalent of 98 should almost guarantee your progression to medical school, unless of course you perform very poorly in your interview.

Anyway, which schools are you aiming for in Australia? - there are only a few unis left with undergraduate entry: Adelaide, Monash, UNSW, UTAS (recognised in Singapore) James Cook and Western Sydney.

i presume you have an offer?....what's the conditions?.....

onelove is studying there, so he should be able to tell you everything.......

what's the minimum they want?

they didn't state specifically a cut off?......

and it is unusual for medical offers before results are out in the past.....maybe they have less applicants nowadays, what with the kind of fees they are charging........

there is no isat cut off.......they usually have a scoring system, marks for isat, projected atar, interview (those unis who do interviews), and then pick off the top x number to offer.....so poor isat scores can be compensated by high atar......

but since you are on shore, aren't you supposed to do umat?

yes, of course it is a conditional offer, since you have not got your final results.......atar 95 (or your equivalent, ?trinity?) should not be difficult to get.......

yes utas is the cheapest, and only 5 years, so it is significantly cheaper than unsw and adelaide........

problem is, it's not (yet) in both msia and spore's recognised uni list....

i think the fees are a bit more than utas.....and living cost will be significantly more........

you need to pay half as an acceptance? And you've only gotten a conditional offer? I'm not aware of such arrangement. it's a 5 year course. the extra year is optional. I don't think they've made it compulsory seeing that they just changed from a 6 year course to a 5 year course not long ago. Sure, everyone aims for the big names =) but just saying, I don't think the med education here is any inferior to their teachings. And no, I'm not paid by the school to say this =P I'm loving my faculty and my lecturers and i'm loving med. =) p/s the difference is just too big compared to my previous university.

it's actually the 1sem fees plus the oshc of $2520.....

it's only a conditional offer, and they don't tell you what that condition is.....so it's a bit sneaky of them, they want to lock you in, before offers from other unis come out.........knowing full well they will always loose out to the big boys like monash and unsw........

of course, they promise you a full refund should they deem you not fit after the release of the year 12 results.....while the website states a minimum of 95, they do NOT tell you if that will be your target, or they have a higher cutoff......

but the danger is, someone rejects other offers, thinking they have got utas, and then gets rejected.....

if you withdraw after they confirm an offer, more than 1 month before commencement, they will still refund you 90% of the fees........

i should add that utas fees is the 2nd cheapest, after newcastle.......monash is a whooping $18k more a year!!!

monash offers for off shore applicants was out last month.....

but looking at their fees, some people will have to think twice.....

the other thing is, most unis don't lock their fees nowadays, it increases yearly, supposedly indexed to inflation, although recent increases were obviously NOT inflation levels......

but it appears utas is locking theirs.......they clearly stated the total fees for 5 years is $205k......which is reassuring.....

yes.....