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First-year Health Sci and Law students are possibly the most desperate people on the planet. Even the ones who start out ‘just keeping their options open’, or those who ‘thought they looked like interesting papers’ tend to end up a quivering wreck by the end of BIOC192 or LAWS101. Surveying students seem to be a generally more sensible lot, but they’re not immune to the anxiety of knowing that a decent percentage of their class won’t make it to second year. Desperation wafts on the breeze from the competitive entry strongholds of St Margaret’s, Carrington, and Knox. And there are predators out there for whom the stench of desperation is also the sweet smell of money to be made.
 
As a first-year in a competitive entry course, you’re bombarded with offers that purport to be your best chance of maybe one day becoming a doctor, dentist, lawyer, surveyor, or whatever it is that tickles your fancy. There are apparently plenty of “third-year Med students with 100th-percentile UMAT scores” just waiting to help you on your way to the big money (or, you know, saving lives). For just half your weekly loan money, you could get the CHEM191 notes that helped someone get into second-year Dentistry! But on the other hand, your lecturers, tutors, and every other authority figure are telling you that it’s a waste of money: you’ll get all the information you need from course materials and texts, and it’s impossible to study for UMAT anyway.
For those who have somehow managed to avoid hearing about it, UMAT is the Undergraduate Medicine and Health Sciences Admissions test. It’s administered by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) on behalf of the UMAT consortium universities (of which Otago is one). It’s an aptitude test that ACER claims tests skills, relevant to health professionals, which have been developed over many years, and therefore can’t be studied for. It has three sections: section 1one ‘logical reasoning and problem solving’; section two, ‘understanding people’; and section three, ‘non-verbal reasoning’.
With all the conflicting information out there, most students don’t really know who to believe. Often it seems like you’d be better off to just buy everything in sight, because if you don’t, the people who do will have an unfair advantage. Considering the cost of many of these things, this is probably not the best idea in the long run. Another thing to consider is whether they could do more harm than good. If it hasn’t been prescribed by the faculty, there’s absolutely no promise that what you’re staking your future on is accurate or good quality.
This is particularly true when it comes to buying someone’s old notes. I know that when I look back on my first-year notes, I tend to come across mistakes. Sometimes as serious as “Oops, on second thought maybe that’s the spleen, not the pancreas.” Almost everybody has mistakes, gaps, or additions in their notes, not to mention the fact that content changes year to year. Even if they’re perfect notes, there’s still another thing to remember: they probably won’t tell you anything you couldn’t have learned from the lectures, tutorials, and textbooks.
There are even people who have set up business selling Health Sci notes. One example is the AptiTute books available from UBS for $35. There are two of these, one corresponding to HUBS191, and one to HUBS192. They basically seem to be a tidy version of the notes someone took in their Health Sci year. One student told Critic “There’s nothing in there that wasn’t in lectures, and there are some things missing. It’s only useful if you’re planning on wagging lectures.” Other copies have gone out in the recycling the day after purchase. The cost of these isn’t extortionate, however, so if you have trouble writing your own notes or making it to lectures, they could easily be worth it.
By this point in the year, UMAT is on every HSFY’s mind. The big day is in just over three months, and although first-semester exams are a more pressing concern, UMAT is maybe the most terrifying. After all, it’s a test you apparently can’t study for, which has a big impact on your future. Given the competitive natures of the vast majority of people sitting UMAT (with apologies to those who are really pretty easy-going folks who just happen to want to be health professionals), it’s hardly surprising that emotions run high about it. Rumours about how the University uses the scores, how they’re calculated, and how best to prepare for the exam, flood the residential halls.
There are plenty of health professional students moonlighting as UMAT tutors, and also plenty of companies who will happily take your money. Some of these are ridiculously expensive: both Medentry and umatNewZ, two of the companies offering workshops in Dunedin, have options that cost over $1000. There are even people who will pay all the costs involved with going to Australia to do one of the courses available there. All of these courses allege that you can improve your score hugely by doing them. And yet ACER, which actually runs the test, insists “intensive preparation is not advisable or necessary.” 
The truth is probably somewhere in between. If you sit down on the day of the test and know what to expect, how much time you have, what the questions will look like, and what sort of answers they want, you’ll probably do significantly better than if you’d never seen anything like it before. But that sort of familiarity is easily gained from running through the official UMAT books of practice questions. These are available through the UMAT website for $35 Australian each, and there are two of them this year. This sounds like a lot of money, but if you get a group together and chip in, it’s really not – especially compared to shelling out $1195 for a ‘platinum’ course with umatNewZ. 
Talking to a group of students in any professional course, you quickly realise that no two of them prepare in the same way, despite the fact that they may all achieve high-percentile scores. There are always a few who spend big bucks on courses, and some who stroll into the test without having so much as thought about it beforehand. Most students that Critic spoke to who made it into the promised land were dismissive of the UMAT preparation courses, calling them a waste of time and money that just exploit gullible (and desperate) freshers.
There is a lot of evidence to suggest that this is actually the case. ACER does not give any of the UMAT training providers any information that is not freely available to students; the teachers on these courses have no insider knowledge. In fact, MedEntry, one of the most popular, was started in 2003 by two medical student siblings, Ray and Ann Boyapati, whose primary qualifications were having done well in the UMAT in 2001 and 2003 respectively. UMAT training providers’ practice questions are often out of date, as the UMAT changes substantially from year to year. ACER, the Australian Medical Students’ Association (AMSA), the UMAT consortium universities, and other groups have repeatedly criticised these courses. In 2008, AMSA said they were “expensive, inequitable and don't improve students' chances of getting into medicine.” However, there are many students who have done these courses and found them helpful.
The important thing in any competitive entry course is not to get caught up in the mass hysteria. The sharks are circling, waiting for that crucial moment of weakness so that, for $60 (actual TradeMe auction for LAWS101 notes), they can sell you something you could have written yourself. Stay sane and you’ll be fine. Stay truly sane and you might realise being a doctor/dentist/lawyer really isn’t worth it after all.
 
The truth about …

Getting into Law: if you’re the average LAWS101 student, the thing that counts is your grade in that paper. You need to have a decent grade (at least a B- average according to the law faculty website) in another 72 points in any subject you like. There is an alternative entry pathway for people who have done their first year at another university or have done a different degree. Also, Maori descent may be taken into consideration. 200 places are available in second year.
Getting into Surveying: entry to the second year of a Bachelor of Surveying is limited to 60 students. Admission is based on academic records.
Getting into Dentistry: there are four categories under which students can apply for second-year study. The first chance is after HSFY, then after the second year of university study, then as a graduate, and finally the ‘alternative’ category. In each category, entrance is decided by an oral assessment (interview), the UMAT, and academic grades. Applicants have to reach a threshold score on all three sections of UMAT, and a threshold level in the interview, after which entry is decided by grades. 54 places are available in second year.
Getting into Pharmacy, Physio, and Medlabsci: these courses all have similar admissions categories to Dentistry. There are 120 places available in second-year Pharmacy, and admission is based entirely on grades. There are also 120 places in second-year Physiotherapy, but after reaching an academic and UMAT threshold, entrance is based on an interview. There are 60 places in second-year Medical Laboratory Science, and they are given out based on academic records and a UMAT score above a certain threshold.
Getting into Med: there are three different ways to gain entry to second-year Medicine. Postgraduate entry is decided on grades in the applicant’s degree combined with their UMAT score, while in the ‘other’ category it’s based on a number of things including qualifications, academic results, professional experience, and an interview. For HSFY students, academic grades contribute 66 percent and UMAT 34 percent to the overall score. The grades from the applicant’s top seven papers (including the optional humanities paper) are counted, but a student must get at least a B in all the HSFY papers, and pass the very basic English diagnostic test. 234 places are available in second year.
Rural, Maori, and Pacific entry: there are slightly different procedures for entry to Medicine for people with Maori, Pacific, or rural backgrounds, because these groups are under-represented in the field. Especially with rural entry, the idea is that these people are much more likely to work in rural communities (or Maori or Pacific) when they graduate, where they’re desperately needed – and the research agrees. Someone who gets in through rural origins can be required by the medical school to do a year of rural immersion work during their clinical years. They are considered separately from the ‘normal’ category. Dentistry, Pharmacy, Med Lab Sci, and Physio also have separate sub-categories for Maori and New Zealand Resident Pacific Islanders, but no rural entry scheme. So, oft-repeated claims that they’ve “stolen” other people’s place in Med are not entirely accurate. Or simply not true.
UMAT: the best source of information on UMAT is the ACER website. Anywhere else could be incorrect, outdated, or just keen to make money by scaring students into buying their products. There are many products, workshops, and tutorials available; most of them are overpriced, and some may even give you entirely incorrect information. Private tutors (i.e. people who have done it before) can be cheaper, but doing well in UMAT doesn’t mean they know how to teach other people to do it. Practicing with the official material can really help to familiarise you with what’s involved and how much time you have for each section, which can be important because time is tight. A lot of people reckon that doing lots of logic puzzles and IQ-type tests can help with the first and last section – the MENSA ones are particularly good. ACER recommend ‘wide and critical reading’ to help with sections 1 and 2 … but it could be getting a little late for that.