Everything HPAT and medicine for 2010 (R1 points post #1247)

Zenith23

gem2010 wrote: »

I agree. I emailed to complain. (you have seven days to do this). To be fair, I've had all my college exams in the RDS and it's usually great,, very well organised, but that's probably more down to UCD than anything else. Always warm, tons of clocks, everyone has done it before so knows the drills, phones off, on the floor, student card on your desk, etc etc

I thought the HPAT (in trinity) was a joke. So poorly organised, and what were they thinking !!?? one toilet? for everybody? and one clock? How is it fair that other people got to do it in UCD where the facilities were great, their bladders were empty, and they could keep track of their time !??

I hope they sort it out for next years group, which is why I emailed them...

I think if you want to be a Doctor you should be equipped to prepare for the unexpected. Could these little errors in the test centres be something more than meets the eye? :P

gem2010

Zenith23 wrote: »

I think if you want to be a Doctor you should be equipped to prepare for the unexpected. Could these little errors in the test centres be something more than meets the eye? :P

Lol, I know it seems like a small thing to get pissed off about, but seriously, can you imagine trying to concentrate on that 2 and 1/2 hour test when your bladder is so full that its getting painful?

I know I should have brought a watch,, I left it on my stupid bed, but that being said, there wasn't even a clock to roughly gauge the time by.

I don't really think they're little things - toilets and clocks - I actually think they're fairly basic things, your standard things in an exam, which is why it pissed me off so much that it was overlooked.

I just think that an organisation that's charging us to do these exams should at least put some thought into how they're going to carry them out.

Plus, maybe it didn't affect my grade, it hopefully didn't but the only reason I emailed them is so that next years group don't go in and have the same problems. Plus, trinners are SO not winners. Amen

gem2010

Jessibelle wrote: »

I wonder if you complained would it have any impact if you had to query your end result? I know tons of folk, that felt last years venue (The RDS) had a negative impact on their end results....

I doubt it...

sigh

Hope the gamsat goes better now. Ugh. Got my ticket today... It's in RCSI, here's hoping they have toilets...

wouldbedoc

I'd recommend to anyone who gets leaving cert results eg.550+ and still is unable to secure a place to take a year to study the Hpat. I spent 7 months studying the Hpat to give myself the best possible chance to get into medicine. There's no point in repeating the leaving since it's only going to make up a 10 point difference at most. I felt so much more prepared this year...but June will tell all!:o

briankirby

gem2010 wrote: »

I agree. I emailed to complain. (you have seven days to do this). To be fair, I've had all my college exams in the RDS and it's usually great,, very well organised, but that's probably more down to UCD than anything else. Always warm, tons of clocks, everyone has done it before so knows the drills, phones off, on the floor, student card on your desk, etc etc

I thought the HPAT (in trinity) was a joke. So poorly organised, and what were they thinking !!?? one toilet? for everybody? and one clock? How is it fair that other people got to do it in UCD where the facilities were great, their bladders were empty, and they could keep track of their time !??

I hope they sort it out for next years group, which is why I emailed them...

I wz in ucc and found it well organised.We started the exam at around 10;20 which was good seein as the arrival times was 10.There was only 1 clock though and i was at the very back of the test room.Lucky i had my stopwatch!

wouldbedoc

The Waterford centre was pretty efficient overall although I think aspects like official starting time,times allocated for bathroom breaks,orientation of clocks.etc really need to be considered. The leaving exams are so structured so everyone is treated equally, the HPAT points are essentially the same as counting 3A1s...:rolleyes:

Zenith23

wouldbedoc wrote: »

The Waterford centre was pretty efficient overall although I think aspects like official starting time,times allocated for bathroom breaks,orientation of clocks.etc really need to be considered. The leaving exams are so structured so everyone is treated equally, the HPAT points are essentially the same as counting 3A1s...:rolleyes:

Ummm...More like 2 A1s. Nobody gets 300 HPAT points. :rolleyes:

Lola92

@Gem2010
I was sitting about 3 rows opposite you, fair play for telling that eejit what he was supposed to be doing.....dozy amadan hadn't got a CLUE!!!!! If I was sitting a bit closer and had a bit more nerve I probably would have done the same lol:D


On another note I didn't realise you could complain about the test centres, Examination Hall in TCD was ridiculous. Way way too hot when we went in and then absolutely freezing by the end, and we couldn't keep our coats with us!!:(:mad: Not my fault I'm cold blooded lol:p

grrrrrrrrrr

gf89 wrote: »

anyone interested in setting up a poll of practice test scores out of 110.. that way we can get an idea of where we stand relative to everyone else?

Its over and would prob be a waste of time but sounds good! i second this motion!

Zenith23

grrrrrrrrrr wrote: »

Its over and would prob be a waste of time but sounds good! i second this motion!

I think it'd be better if there was a poll for estimation of percentile. So if you're pretty confident, but not too confident you'd estimate like 70-80th percentile.

Or maybe a poll regarding section difficulty. Like, 'which section did you find the hardest in the HPAT?'

OR MAYBE one like 'what is you 1st college choice for med?'

Just some suggestions :P

zam

Can't wait to see how I do! June the whateverth couldn't come soon enough! Also pretty interested to see if repeaters did any better, or those who did prep courses...

briankirby

zam wrote: »

Here, what's everyone's contingency plan??

As in, if you get a reasonable amount of points but don't get a good HPAT what will you do? Take a year out and repeat? (could get bored) Or go and do Pharmacy or something for a year and repeat the HPAT? (would be expensive) Or repeat the LC year altogether? (boring, depressing AND expensive)

Hopefully I don't need to be making plans like this but you never know what went wrong

Ill probably apply tobudapest and prague if hpat goes badly.Might do dentistry in ucc,but i dont think id like it

wouldbedoc

I think it's well worth putting in the time studying solely the Hpat for the sake of a few months, it really surprising the amount of resources that are out there for it, you know that you're prepared when you start seeing patterns on road signs!:oCan't wait until June 28th!

ummtea

briankirby wrote: »

Ill probably apply tobudapest and prague if hpat goes badly.Might do dentistry in ucc,but i dont think id like it

Haha, I'm resorting to Budapest as well. An MD is an MD! Besides, who doesn't want to learn another obscure language?

gem2010

wouldbedoc wrote: »

The Waterford centre was pretty efficient overall although I think aspects like official starting time,times allocated for bathroom breaks,orientation of clocks.etc really need to be considered. The leaving exams are so structured so everyone is treated equally, the HPAT points are essentially the same as counting 3A1s...:rolleyes:

So you definitely got bathroom breaks yeh...?
We had absolutely no breaks in between sections in trinity, it was literally like 'put down your pencils...aaaand open section two'
probably because they knew it would be a two hour break with 341 of us and only one toilet. Such a mess.

gem2010

ummtea wrote: »

Haha, I'm resorting to Budapest as well. An MD is an MD! Besides, who doesn't want to learn another obscure language?

My cousin's doing veterinary in budapest! Why not sure!

briankirby

gem2010 wrote: »

My cousin's doing veterinary in budapest! Why not sure!

My cousins doing vet there too:D 3rd year.

Problem wit budapest is that u wouldnt be able to come bk to ireland afterward,so if ur a home bird then its a big no no.
Uk and US would be the options.
And anyway, imo im quite good at languages

gem2010

briankirby wrote: »

My cousins doing vet there too:D 3rd year.

Problem wit budapest is that u wouldnt be able to come bk to ireland afterward,so if ur a home bird then its a big no no.
Uk and US would be the options.
And anyway, imo im quite good at languages

I think my cousins in third year too! lol they probably know each other !
I did an exchange year in US so i know i'm not a home bird...
Question is...where is the CHEAPEST place to do med...?
lol

briankirby

gem2010 wrote: »

I think my cousins in third year too! lol they probably know each other !
I did an exchange year in US so i know i'm not a home bird...
Question is...where is the CHEAPEST place to do med...?
lol

Probably places like debrecen or szeged in hungary but i wouldnt go there as iv heard there is very little english spoken in those towns,wen compared to budapest.Id say u should apply to the big places like charles uni in prague or semmelweis in budapest.From wat i hear,these courses are very well respected worldwide,compared to the other places

zam

Aren't Budapest etc ridiculously expensive? I'd rather repeat both HPAT and LC than pay that much.

ummtea

zam wrote: »

Aren't Budapest etc ridiculously expensive? I'd rather repeat both HPAT and LC than pay that much.

Semmelweis in Budapest is about $8000 per semester excl. other fees for health insurance etc. I think it's worth it, considering a year at an Irish college would cost around €6000 a year anyway, not to mention the differences in the cost of living.

wouldbedoc

gem2010 wrote: »

So you definitely got bathroom breaks yeh...?
We had absolutely no breaks in between sections in trinity, it was literally like 'put down your pencils...aaaand open section two'
probably because they knew it would be a two hour break with 341 of us and only one toilet. Such a mess.

Nope...we had no bathroom breaks,which was odd since last year the supervisors gave 5-10 minute break...the trinity set up sounds like the way Waterford was run. Yet in a way I think it suited better to just plough through the exam, I was entirely focussed the whole time...don't know if the breaks are too beneficial Since it is an official exam the test conditions should be the same to provide an even playing field:

zam

ummtea wrote: »

Semmelweis in Budapest is about $8000 per semester excl. other fees for health insurance etc. I think it's worth it, considering a year at an Irish college would cost around €6000 a year anyway, not to mention the differences in the cost of living.

Not too bad I guess... how hard is it to get in?

Still don't think I'd wanna live in Hungary though! Are there many Irish people?

Irish colleges don't have fees...

briankirby

zam wrote: »

Not too bad I guess... how hard is it to get in?

Still don't think I'd wanna live in Hungary though! Are there many Irish people?

Irish colleges don't have fees...

There are 50 irish in 1st yr veterinary but only 10 in first year med this year.Fees are gonna be introduced in ireland by 2012.At the moment,budapest option works out at 5k more than dublin per year(due to cost of living,accom etc),but with the intoduction of fees in ireland immenent,they will be roughly the same in 5 years.

You need at least 520 pts for semmelweis and exam is a level bio and LC chem

gem2010

wouldbedoc wrote: »

Nope...we had no bathroom breaks,which was odd since last year the supervisors gave 5-10 minute break...the trinity set up sounds like the way Waterford was run. Yet in a way I think it suited better to just plough through the exam, I was entirely focussed the whole time...don't know if the breaks are too beneficial Since it is an official exam the test conditions should be the same to provide an even playing field:

Yeah, I've heard other people got bathroom breaks alright... I suppose it suits to plough through as long as you don't need to use the bathroom! Our exam was started before everybody got a chance to go.
It is such an intense exam though like rush rush rush -times up- that it would be nice to even get a minutes breather before the next section is started I think, not like twenty mins or anything, just like 2 or 3 imo.

OH WELL

wouldbedoc

That's true, I suppose come June 28th I'll have to see exactly just how imortant these breaks are!:o

H2student

I was in RCSI and there was little delay (apart from 2 mins of "who owns this credit card"). Temperature was just right and I prefer having no breaks at all, ideal place for me.

tommy92

Hey everyone, sorry VERY off topic here, but I'm looking to do Medicine, hopefully in Trinity, but i have a pretty wide range of interests too. Are there any options to do Medicine and then minor in something like a foreign language, or do english on the side or anything? Or is it if you're in medicine, that's all you can do? Apparently there's some flexibility in UCD but I'm still not totally clear on it. Any ideas?

gf89

tommy92 wrote: »

Hey everyone, sorry VERY off topic here, but I'm looking to do Medicine, hopefully in Trinity, but i have a pretty wide range of interests too. Are there any options to do Medicine and then minor in something like a foreign language, or do english on the side or anything? Or is it if you're in medicine, that's all you can do? Apparently there's some flexibility in UCD but I'm still not totally clear on it. Any ideas?

not sure about other colleges but yeah in UCD you have to pick an elective every semester and this can be from any discipline, so you can study a language or whatever, and its worth the same credits as any of your core medicine modules.

Trinity has a 'medical humanities' module where you look at medicine from the opinion of the arts and humanities...think you can do a language too. There's some Trinity med students lurking about I'm sure they can let you know what the story is.