Medical School Entrance: OLY1 at Auckland NCEA & Cambridge

There will be premed students from IB, Cambridge and NCEA, but since I came from NCEA, I can only talk from experience. 

Typically, there isn't much difference between Cambridge and NCEA students entering biomed, there undoubtedly IS a difference.

1. Content

Most of the content taught in premed will be new to both NCEA and Cambridge students except for Chem110. NCEA students will have only covered ~20% of the course, while Cambridge students will have covered ~80%. This puts Cambridge students at an advantage so if you're from NCEA, don't freak out if the person sitting next to you is a lot more relaxed. But it's up to you to put in the extra effort to reach the same level as Cambridge students. 

Cambridge and IB also have more of a focus on Human Bio, compared to NCEA so again, it's up to you to do extra work.

2. Tests and exams 

In NCEA, it was all about the writing in exams. You needed to be able to link your concepts and sentenced well in order to get the grade. Don't know the exact answer? Write down as much as you know. 

Well, Uni is a little different. They don't care if you can't articulate your sentences. They care about knowledge. You can bullet point answers and keywords. As long as the right answer is there, they don't care about all the other jibberish. 

Therefore, you have to be a lot more concise when writing answers. If they give you a box to write it in, anything outside it won't be marked. 

 

They could test flow diagrams or labelling to see if you know exact detail. Be prepared. 

3. Grading 

NCEA students are used to getting N, A, M or E. In Uni, grading is based on GPA. The highest is a 9, equivalent to A+, 8 is A, 7 is A-, etc. It's important to keep this in mind and also be aware that to have a good chance of getting into Medicine, you should aim for a GPA between 8 to 9. This ranks you higher, and can act as a buffer in case your interview doesn't go as well as planned. If you get a lower GPA, then you'll have a lot more riding on your interview. 

Hope this helps, and if there are any questions, please feel free to ask away! 

-Diana