Gamsat 2012

Stephan Grundy

Realitycheck - just to be clear, I'm not arguing one way or the other for UL, on the grounds that I haven't been there and know only what I've heard (from both sides of the discussion), only presenting what I have read about the increasing trend towards PBL on the other side of the Atlantic.
The absence of cadavers in UL is one of the really big downsides in my opinion - as a hunter who has butchered his own meat animals in the past, my experience is that any given body is not going to look exactly like the anatomy texts (or computer programs) say it ought to when you actually get in there; there are all sorts of perfectly harmless variations as well as the problematical ones. I think there's likely nothing like seeing some of them in real life to give one a sense for how much variation there actually can be.
I am fascinated to hear that UCD incorporates PBL, etc. into its programme, which brings it up a few points in my decision-making process, especially as I was quite impressed with how well-appointed the school seemed to be in general at the last open day (and just fell in love with the bones & body-parts library).

Stephan Grundy

Oh - and I also really like what you're saying about the UCD work with patients with chronic conditions. My feelings on this point are particularly strong, as my wife has a couple of different ones; nothing terribly dramatic, but obnoxious enough to interfere significantly with living a normal life (happily, she doesn't have to go to a standard job, which I think would be difficult or impossible for her). UCD's approach there sounds very good.

Stephan Grundy

And, like markitzero, I would be *really* fascinated to know if there's any feedback comparing the first UL cohort to graduates of the other programmes - have to agree that such a comparison is really the final criterion for the quality of the programme. UL is, I think, in the position of having to prove itself in a way that the older and more conventional programmes are not; and the relative performance of graduates is the only way to prove or disprove how the approach really compares (in particular, whether UL med students really do pick up the areas where the official course is, apparently, notoriously lacking as they work along).

TRG2012

Reality_Check1 wrote: »

And saying the dublin schools have a bigger population is kinda irrelevant considering that its med school and Ireland is a small place for all intents and purposes everywhere is relatively close. People want to go to Dublin schools because they are better for reasons mentioned before thats the only reason the gamsat scores are higher.

People may or may not feel that the Dublin schools are better but I don't think that you can completely dismiss the fact at least some of their draw has to do with the fact that so much of the population are from in and around Dublin - it's potentially cheaper for people from Dublin to stay there and they don't have to move to a new city leaving their family and friends, it has to have a bearing surely?

Here's one example:

boynesider wrote: »

I hope so anyway. I have a 57 and I really want UCD because of proximity, so would it be fair to say I have an outside chance?

Reality_Check1 wrote: »

bah PBL isnt student centered its cheap! the Irish government needed a way to have more junior doctors as cheap as possible. The fact of the matter is its not innovative or new its just cheap plain and simple. People that go to UL pay the same fees as other colleges and receive a fraction of the teaching time. what does the money go on then? oh yeah the med building that hasnt been built yet :rolleyes:


...:) like I said before not that much has been spent on the course its a cheap fill gap that relies on student fees (or else the med building would be finished 5 years into the programme...

I've heard that PBL is more expensive than the traditional method, I can't remember where I heard it, it may have been at a lecture on PBL in medicine in first year.

Regardless, the money that the Irish government contributes per student is the same for UL students as for students in every other med school so I don't see how the Irish government trying to save money on training doctors would influence the format of the teaching.

The reason the med school isn't finished is because like many building companies in the last few years the company building it went bust. It was nothing to do with a shortage of money on UL's part. It was restarted a while ago and by the look of it I would guess it will be finished early in the next semester - the windows are in, electricians are working on the interior etc.

As for the repeated myth that there is no pharmacology or biochemistry etc. etc. well that's just a myth, they are all covered, just not in individual modules but attached to each PBL case.

eimear25

Hi
I am probably freaking myself out too much here but I literally can't get it out of my head. I scored a 55 this year on the GAMSAT and I am panicking as to whether this score is enough to get me a place or not. I know it is hard to predict it but I am so worried. I am hoping for UCC but I would also be happy with UL. Do you all think I would get UCC or UL or neither on 55? I am confused as to whether or not I should keep studying for September GAMSAT? Any feedback will be so appreciated and be as honest as you can, I dont mind because I want to be realistic about this. It was my first ever attempt at the GAMSAT so hence the nerves
Thanks everyone and best of luck to all,
eimear

EngDoc

eimear25 wrote: »

Hi
I am probably freaking myself out too much here but I literally can't get it out of my head. I scored a 55 this year on the GAMSAT and I am panicking as to whether this score is enough to get me a place or not. I know it is hard to predict it but I am so worried. I am hoping for UCC but I would also be happy with UL. Do you all think I would get UCC or UL or neither on 55? I am confused as to whether or not I should keep studying for September GAMSAT? Any feedback will be so appreciated and be as honest as you can, I dont mind because I want to be realistic about this. It was my first ever attempt at the GAMSAT so hence the nerves
Thanks everyone and best of luck to all,
eimear

The only thing people can do at this stage is use the points from last year as a guide. From the CAO website, the lowest cutoff for UCC last year was 56. The points might drop this year, so there's certainly a chance! It's honestly just a guessing game at this stage...

marmarr

If you scored 55 or more and applied for UL, you will more than likely get in. I got 55 last year, got UL (wasn't my first choice) and love it down here. PBL and SDL makes you the boss of your learning, and once you are mature and disciplined enough to knuckle down and do the graft, it's all worthwhile.
If you think you will end up in UL, join this group for new GEMS students, its a great froum for interaction with new and current students.
http://www.facebook.com/groups/201089616673238/

Stephan Grundy

Looking at the curve for this year, and assuming that the estimate of 700 candidates is roughly correct (assuming that "took it last year" and "entering school next year" numbers cancel out, which seems plausible), and if I am correct in counting places (30 in RCSI, someone said 75 in Dublin and 90 in Limerick - ca. 50 in Cork? Is that correct?), my guess is that you are very likely good for Limerick or possibly Cork - not sure what the competition is like for Cork since no one talks about it much. Roughly the top third of this year's GAMSATters, if I've counted places correctly, are pretty much guaranteed to get in somewhere, and it looks like 55 places you just into that bracket. Hard to tell exactly because the percentile curve slopes so sharply in the 55 region, but again, considering lower scores seem to have been getting into UL last year, and there are fewer candidates and lower overall scores this year, I'd think the odds are in your favour. If there were any fewer people, or are more places available than my top-of-head estimate here, then you're laughing.

Stephan Grundy

eimear25 wrote: »

Hi
I am probably freaking myself out too much here but I literally can't get it out of my head. I scored a 55 this year on the GAMSAT and I am panicking as to whether this score is enough to get me a place or not. I know it is hard to predict it but I am so worried. I am hoping for UCC but I would also be happy with UL. Do you all think I would get UCC or UL or neither on 55? I am confused as to whether or not I should keep studying for September GAMSAT? Any feedback will be so appreciated and be as honest as you can, I dont mind because I want to be realistic about this. It was my first ever attempt at the GAMSAT so hence the nerves
Thanks everyone and best of luck to all,
eimear

I'd also add that, particularly *because* you have (if my calculations are actually based on accurate data) a very good chance of getting into UL, continuing to study the background sciences (if you found your scores lower on the ghastly section III than you liked) will stand you in very good stead for both the high-probability outcome (you get into UL) and the low-probability outcome (retest). Being a total non-science head myself, I'm actually putting about 2/3 the insane cram study time I spent on GAMSAT into studying to prepare for med school now. If your section II was low, I'd advise finding one of the on-line services that critiques essays - shop around, some of them are gods-awfully overpriced! That did me a lot of good, even if they scared the arse off me by grading tougher than the actual GAMSAT examiners, then telling me that my real GAMSAT score for the same essay would probably be 3-5 points lower.

Joe2011

Stephan Grundy wrote: »

Looking at the curve for this year, and assuming that the estimate of 700 candidates is roughly correct (assuming that "took it last year" and "entering school next year" numbers cancel out, which seems plausible), and if I am correct in counting places (30 in RCSI, someone said 75 in Dublin and 90 in Limerick - ca. 50 in Cork? Is that correct?), my guess is that you are very likely good for Limerick or possibly Cork - not sure what the competition is like for Cork since no one talks about it much. Roughly the top third of this year's GAMSATters, if I've counted places correctly, are pretty much guaranteed to get in somewhere, and it looks like 55 places you just into that bracket. Hard to tell exactly because the percentile curve slopes so sharply in the 55 region, but again, considering lower scores seem to have been getting into UL last year, and there are fewer candidates and lower overall scores this year, I'd think the odds are in your favour. If there were any fewer people, or are more places available than my top-of-head estimate here, then you're laughing.

I think you are correct for all except Cork, which has 30 places as far as I know. Your theory behind the bell curve also sounds right. I would assume that the drop in scores last year mean that more people with a score from the previous year went through, and most of the good scores fro last year were cleared through there and then, unless a significant amount of people hel out for Dublin this year. As for the amount of people with good scores this year who want to enter in a year's time, I don't know how this information could be found, so its very hard to predict how it will play out overall.

Biologic

Stephan Grundy wrote: »

Being a total non-science head myself, I'm actually putting about 2/3 the insane cram study time I spent on GAMSAT into studying to prepare for med school now.

I'm not sure what you're studying to prepare for med school, but pretty much anything that's on the GAMSAT syllabus will be useless to you in med school. If you're keen to study, go for something high yield like anatomy or a basic human physiology book.

Stephan Grundy

Biologic wrote: »

I'm not sure what you're studying to prepare for med school, but pretty much anything that's on the GAMSAT syllabus will be useless to you in med school. If you're keen to study, go for something high yield like anatomy or a basic human physiology book.

Not as convinced of the uselessness of the GAMSAT syllabus to med school as you are. Maybe it's just my own ignorance, maybe I approached GAMSAT study differently. Or, more likely, I had a greater need of filling in the overall science backing to understand the actual medicine than you (or anyone else). I found the outline presented by the Gold Standard science review to be very useful in regards to getting an overview of the basic bodily structures, functions, and biological processes, though I had to go to the Internet to fill in things like diagrams for the actual molecular structures for the stages in the Krebs cycle (yeah, I knew that was unlikely to be on the GAMSAT, but it made a lot more sense out of the process for me), etc. In any case, I appreciate the advice for pre-medical study, and think it's sound in general, though I actually have the advantage of being privately tutored by a highly motivated professor of internal medicine (my father, who is just ecstatic that I'm going into medicine at last). But I'd have had a bugger of a time making sense of his lessons without the background I got studying for GAMSAT!

Biologic

Stephan Grundy wrote: »

Not as convinced of the uselessness of the GAMSAT syllabus to med school as you are. Maybe it's just my own ignorance, maybe I approached GAMSAT study differently. Or, more likely, I had a greater need of filling in the overall science backing to understand the actual medicine than you (or anyone else). I found the outline presented by the Gold Standard science review to be very useful in regards to getting an overview of the basic bodily structures, functions, and biological processes, though I had to go to the Internet to fill in things like diagrams for the actual molecular structures for the stages in the Krebs cycle (yeah, I knew that was unlikely to be on the GAMSAT, but it made a lot more sense out of the process for me), etc. In any case, I appreciate the advice for pre-medical study, and think it's sound in general, though I actually have the advantage of being privately tutored by a highly motivated professor of internal medicine (my father, who is just ecstatic that I'm going into medicine at last). But I'd have had a bugger of a time making sense of his lessons without the background I got studying for GAMSAT!

Cool. It sounds like you're doing things that are somewhat relevant then. I'd just hate to think of someone wasting time studying organic chemistry or physics equations when so much GAMSAT material will never be seen again.

eimear25

thanks for all of the advice guys, I feel I have hope. I heard rumours that UCC are increasing places so the points should go down and I have heard that UL are reducing places so the points may go up. They may be just rumours and I don't want to freak anyone out but those anyone out there know for sure if there is any truth to this?

insanity50

Stephan Grundy wrote: »

Not as convinced of the uselessness of the GAMSAT syllabus to med school as you are. Maybe it's just my own ignorance, maybe I approached GAMSAT study differently. Or, more likely, I had a greater need of filling in the overall science backing to understand the actual medicine than you (or anyone else). I found the outline presented by the Gold Standard science review to be very useful in regards to getting an overview of the basic bodily structures, functions, and biological processes, though I had to go to the Internet to fill in things like diagrams for the actual molecular structures for the stages in the Krebs cycle (yeah, I knew that was unlikely to be on the GAMSAT, but it made a lot more sense out of the process for me), etc. In any case, I appreciate the advice for pre-medical study, and think it's sound in general, though I actually have the advantage of being privately tutored by a highly motivated professor of internal medicine (my father, who is just ecstatic that I'm going into medicine at last). But I'd have had a bugger of a time making sense of his lessons without the background I got studying for GAMSAT!

wow. just wow. a border jumper cast off from the states, not good enough to get into medical school in his own country, insulting an actual medical student on what you suspect of his desire to understand the course he is two years into.A course which you are 5 months from even starting.

you're either the biggest asshole or the biggest troll ever.

If you're american then you'll have no business with the GAMSAT.

take you're pontificating and your lies somewhere else, you're full of sh*t.

beardedmaster

Wa-hat?! Insanity... calm down a bit there, you're living up to your name. I've been following this forum for a while, and Stephan's posts not troll-material in the slightest, quite the opposite.

From what I gathered, Stephan was only saying that he was in more of need to increase his overall knowledge of science in preparation to his GAMSAT, as he wasn't coming from a Science background.

Stephan Grundy wrote:

I had a greater need of filling in the overall science backing to understand the actual medicine than you (or anyone else).

All he's (quite clearly) saying was that he needed to learn more of science overall, much more than Biologic, or anyone else, as he didn't have much previous experience in the field.

jtsuited

if you want to prepare for med school, there is one book which will make your life a lot easier. The First Aid for the USMLE step 1.
We're in the middle of exams right now and I can't emphasise enough how brilliant that book is for breaking everything down.

Adeline07

I live in the same street as James Connolly hospital. Traffic is not bad at all moreover your trip to and from college will be against traffic.

I hope this helps.

CiMaster wrote: »

HI Biologic,

I see from your previous posts you're in RCSI - i never thought i'd have the option of going to RCSI, so didnt do much research, but now it seems like it might just be feasible and I'm frantically trying to decide between RSCI and UCD (not a bad problem to have, i know).

The only thing that I can see as a bit of a negative point is the second year in Blancherstown. Is the commute not a nightmare? Is there free parking for staff? Also, how well equiped is the gym in RSCI? Cant tell much from the teeny picture, but is there showers etc?

Seems that year one course load is tougher than UCD, but i think i kinda like the idea of getting stuck in from the get go!

Thanks in advance for anything you wish to share! (i've read your summary on your first two years in RCSI which i found very helpful!).

Adeline07

Hi jtsuited,

Please clarify is USMLE step 1 for GAMSAT preparation or for the med lectures after admission?

jtsuited wrote: »

if you want to prepare for med school, there is one book which will make your life a lot easier. The First Aid for the USMLE step 1.
We're in the middle of exams right now and I can't emphasise enough how brilliant that book is for breaking everything down.

jtsuited

it's for med school. will be of no use for gamsat

Nonoperational

Stephan Grundy wrote: »

I'd also add that, particularly *because* you have (if my calculations are actually based on accurate data) a very good chance of getting into UL, continuing to study the background sciences (if you found your scores lower on the ghastly section III than you liked) will stand you in very good stead for both the high-probability outcome (you get into UL) and the low-probability outcome (retest). Being a total non-science head myself, I'm actually putting about 2/3 the insane cram study time I spent on GAMSAT into studying to prepare for med school now. If your section II was low, I'd advise finding one of the on-line services that critiques essays - shop around, some of them are gods-awfully overpriced! That did me a lot of good, even if they scared the arse off me by grading tougher than the actual GAMSAT examiners, then telling me that my real GAMSAT score for the same essay would probably be 3-5 points lower.

I'd take it handy a small bit. It your cramming for med school now before you even start I can only imagine how you'll be when you actually stat. What are you even studying? Take it handy and enjoy the summer. You'll have more than enough time during the year to study, science or non science background.

2012 hopefull

Hi guys. I have seen a few people posting on here about UL cutting places this year. Does anybody know if this is just a rumour or is it actually true.

Biologic

jtsuited wrote: »

if you want to prepare for med school, there is one book which will make your life a lot easier. The First Aid for the USMLE step 1.
We're in the middle of exams right now and I can't emphasise enough how brilliant that book is for breaking everything down.

Every med student should have that book, it's amazing. I doubt it would be much use to someone pre-med though. It's gibberish without some sort of foundation.

boynesider

I'm considering doing a bit of preparatory study during the summer as I don't feel overly confident in my general scientific knowledge.

Would anyone recommend any specific areas which would be worth focussing on, or even a particular text book?

I'm not planning on killing myself mind, so nothing too rigorous please!

GOING4BROKE

Apologies if this has already been covered but are the Gamsat offers on the same day as the leaving cert ones? Round 1 offers are on the 20th of August followed by the second round early September. Really does not give people much time to make arrangements especially if they are offered their chosen course in a latter round.

Bella885041

GOING4BROKE wrote: »

Apologies if this has already been covered but are the Gamsat offers on the same day as the leaving cert ones? Round 1 offers are on the 20th of August followed by the second round early September. Really does not give people much time to make arrangements especially if they are offered their chosen course in a latter round.

Hey they come out in "Round 0" before the leaving cert offers in early August http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/education/third_level_education/applying_to_college/application_procedures_and_entry_requirements.html

Oxford_

Is it any wonder that the GAMSAT scores are down with people like Stephen Grundy sitting the exams.

supraspinaswim

What do u need to do for the sociology aspect of the gamsat ?

ive 2 yrs so far in trinity doing human health and disease , we've cvered anatomy , physiology , biochem , immunology , research , organic chem , psychology and others . Is there specifics that need to be done ?

Want to do some prep for gamsat 2013 , given we do clinical med , pharmacology etc nxt yr = crazy !

Nonoperational

boynesider wrote: »

I'm considering doing a bit of preparatory study during the summer as I don't feel overly confident in my general scientific knowledge.

Would anyone recommend any specific areas which would be worth focussing on, or even a particular text book?

I'm not planning on killing myself mind, so nothing too rigorous please!

USMLE first aid if you must. I wouldn't bother. Plenty time next year.

Gordonia

Oxford_ wrote: »

Is it any wonder that the GAMSAT scores are down with people like Stephen Grundy sitting the exams.

????

Did I miss something?