Transferring into Medicine in first year?

The Other Padfoot

Hey guys,

So I'm currently in 6th year with the HPAT looming (only a week away now!) But I've had a change of heart recently and am considering reordering my CAO list to have Theoretical Physics as my top choice. My question is that if I was accepted into TP but had another change of heart, provided I would have had the points from the leaving cert and HPAT to go for med (I'm quite a good student so I would be aiming for high points), would it be feasible to transfer into medicine?

Sorry if it sounds long-winded. Any help would be appreciated!

PS sorry if this isn't in the right place, I'm kinda new here

You can transfer between courses without a doubt (someone I know transferred from Pharmacy to Dentistry) however I'm not sure if you can transfer into Medicine. It would be easier to transfer to TP from medicine, to be honest. I would see if you can contact anyone in the Medicine department in TCD to clarify this.

Mr Pseudonym

Being permitted to transfer is contingent on there being places. I would imagine that, as very few within Trinity who have achieved the necessary points are likely to want to transfer, they wouldn't reserve many places.

I would recommend that you come to a decision before going in, and not rely on the possibility of a transfer. I did the exact same: switched from Economics to Science a day before CAO deadline, with the fall-back of transferring if I didn't like it. Throughout the whole first semester, I was yo-yoing between positivity and negativity with my course, and was constantly evaluating whether I should switch to Economics (or whether to switch to TPhys - because the maths in Science was embarrassing, because I had to do Chem in it, and because I had an inferiority complex!). In the end, I missed the transfer deadline, and decided to drop out!

The Other Padfoot

Thanks for the replies

hfallada

I had a career guidance councilor who was connected to a well known university ( not TCD though). She said that universities will do whatever to stop you dropping out as they want to keep their funding for you. So they will let you switch courses within a university. I imagine there will be at least a few drop outs in medicine. I know engineering has a fair few that switch to BESS and TCD let them switch no problem

Justice!

hfallada wrote: »

I know engineering has a fair few that switch to BESS and TCD let them switch no problem

Both engineering and BESS have a huge intake of students to each course and naturally there would be a fair few dropping out / transferring from each. Medicine is almost impossible to transfer into since the LC and HPAT points are incredibly high.
OP I'd second what's been said by Mr Pseudonym and do your best to decide between TP and Med before the final CAO deadline. As someone who dropped out last year because of a failed transfer, I can safely say that the transfer system is NOT reliable at all.

languagenerd

hfallada wrote: »

I. So they will let you switch courses within a university. I imagine there will be at least a few drop outs in medicine.

As has already been said, you can only switch between courses if:
(a) you have all the points and other entry requirements (HPAT, specific grades in science subjects, etc.)
and
(b) if there is space on the course you want to transfer into.
Medicine is hugely over-subscribed, it's unlikely there'll be free places. No matter how much College want your funding, if there's no space on the course, they can't let you in.

Thing is, in Trinity, if you're switching in first year, you usually have to apply by Week 6 of term. So even if a few people do drop out of Medicine, there's no guarantee they'll have done it by then (it's more likely that they'd drop out after Christmas - because you save half the fees that way - or after the annual exams). And I don't know if they'd even allow that sort of change into Medicine - it seems the sort of course it'd be difficult to catch up on the first 6 weeks by yourself; you may miss essential training and labs.

It is easier to switch later on in the year if your course has a link and shared content with the one you want to do (i.e. Maths to TP, Economics to BESS, Business & a Language to BESS, European Studies to TSM Languages).

I really wouldn't bank on being able to switch into Medicine, I'm afraid.

Just Like Heaven

At the start of Medicine you have to sign some attendance contract thing, because by the end of the course you have to have been in training for 5500 hours or something. So, that could be a problem as 6 weeks is quite a lot of time and you won't have a doctor's note to excuse you. No harm in emailing the college I guess and asking if it's been done before.

AndrewJD

fewtins wrote: »

At the start of Medicine you have to sign some attendance contract thing, because by the end of the course you have to have been in training for 5500 hours or something. So, that could be a problem as 6 weeks is quite a lot of time and you won't have a doctor's note to excuse you. No harm in emailing the college I guess and asking if it's been done before.

It's a requirement under EU directive which is also codified into Irish Law saying that medical courses must include 5500 hours of clinical training over a minimum of 4 years. The truth is that there is a significant buffer over the TCD 5 year course to get that many hours, but the school would risk their accreditation as a medical training program if they awarded a degree to anyone who hadn't achieved that, so they're hugely anal about it. With the changing attitudes of students to attending lectures they've felt the need to implement attendance recording in a lot of areas because they became aware that there were people who had skipped enough lectures to fall short of that limit. Whilst this was possibly always the case, general attendance was high enough to mask the problem, but this has now changed. So whilst theoretically I would imagine one could miss 6 weeks and still be OK, the School of medicine is less likely to take that chance now than they would have been five years ago.

I would also imagine you'd have missed out too much (more than half of the first term) from the medical sciences for them to consider transferring at 6 weeks. Maybe the first week or two.

jjC123

I recommend that you put down TP if its what you feel you would prefer. Transfer to medicine is possible but not probable in first year but if you really feel like you've made the wrong decision you can reapply through CAO, and switch to first year med in your second year. An extra year, granted, but it would work out the same as if you'd done it in UCD or Cork (both 6 year courses I believe)

Abby19

hfallada wrote: »

I had a career guidance councilor who was connected to a well known university ( not TCD though). She said that universities will do whatever to stop you dropping out as they want to keep their funding for you. So they will let you switch courses within a university. I imagine there will be at least a few drop outs in medicine. I know engineering has a fair few that switch to BESS and TCD let them switch no problem

I know of people who were marked up on rechecks and the course was deemed too full to allow them to switch in from another course. And it was also felt they had missed too much for them to catch up. They had to take the year out and were allowed to take up their place the following year. If the course cannot accommodate someone who actually had the course as their first preference but there was an error marking their paper, the chances of them accommodating someone who simply changed their mind is v slim.

There's a lot of info below on hours and attendance, but tbh if you miss 6 weeks in first year, you have missed 25% of the year. There is continuous assessment in some subjects, and it would be extremely hard to catch up.

Also you get one shot at free fees - if you change course after certain dates you have to pay either half year fees or full year fees. And for medicine this is €8,456.

I would imagine it would be easier to switch from Medicine to TP, but why not see if you could decide more definitively between them. And you could always take a year out post LC to figure this out.