Hey guys, just asking for some advice.
I'm in year 11 right now, however I do some year 12 subjects (accelerated courses). I want to become a doctor, however, I did a bit of research and found out that I need an ATAR of 99.95 for Usyd or very high percentile in the UMAT for other universities. I believe I can achieve 90+ ATAR, but I'm not so sure about 95+. What are some things I could do become a doctor via different routes?
How to become a doctor?
LmKilic on 16/05/2018 - 21:40
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As a GP, medicine is definitely worth it only if you genuinely enjoy caring for other people. Here is some advice:
- You will get over the fact you are doctor or going to be one very quickly
- Yes people do respect you but most people, including patients and colleagues, wont, unless you earn it.
- By 20 you stop caring what your parents think of you, do things to make yourself happy which in turn makes them happy, for the long run at least
- At high school no one knows what they are good at or what they like, try and experience as much as you can before investing a huge portion of your youth towards medicine
- the money is OK but not fair for the work you do
- by the time you finish its going to get extremely competitive (its already a mess) and would be very hard to get the job/pay you want. My mates who finished their fellowship training and are consultants in various specialties are finding it difficult to get jobs unless they go far away from home.
- at the end of the day, its the accomplishment you feel in making others lives better that will make you persevere. If you don't have that type of personality, you will hate it.
I am happy to answer any questions
Hey, I know it's been a while for this thread but I went over it a couple times to see if there was any hope. When you said it's the accomplishment you feel in making others lives better, that's exactly what makes me happy, making others happy, everyday ordinary individuals. Thanks man, I think I'll strive to achieve my goals.
You can achieve the same goals by being a nurse, a good politician, a priest, the lollipop man/lady, an emergency plumber even as some examples.
Don't have to be a doctor to achieve that.
Don't limit yourself and don't aim for that ATAR number. Just throw yourself hard at your studies and see where that gets you. USyd doesn't have direct entry to medicine, it's a postgrad course so the reason for that ATAR is probably for one of those feeder courses that guarantees you entry if you stay above a certain mark. That's a lot of pressure for a long time. I went to USyd and it's great but UNSW is fantastic for straight-in undergrad med, their graduates are all excellent.
As for GAMSAT vs UMAT, I personally thought the UMAT was a bit too esoteric what with the shapes and the empathy questions, although I think it's a lot easier to game because you can do copious amounts of practice and probably score really highly in it. The GAMSAT is better in the sense that you can study for it (don't listen to the knobs who tell you it can't be studied for), but it is tough - it's 5 hours, and the science questions are a bit mind breaking but very doable. The best part about it though is that the three sections - comprehension, essay writing, and science, are averaged for the final score. You can do terribly in one section and brilliantly in another and still get in. Science is doubly weighted so if you do well in that, you don't need to do well on the English side of things.
I know the standard route is med sci or biomed if you dont get the ATAR but I suggest doing physio or pharm if you can manage - people with those degrees always did fantastically in med school, and if you decide you dont want to med afterward, you still end up with a pretty well paid and rewarding job. The thing about med school is that if you want to do it badly enough, you'll find a way. Try for that high ATAR first though, do the pain and suffering now so that you can avoid the GAMSAT - and if you don't get as high as you want, the GAMSAT wont be as hard because you'll have thrown yourself into that for the ATAR and wont be unfamiliar. Just don't limit yourself - try for the highest score you can. Someone's gotta get it - why not you?
There are a million and one graduating pharmacists every year, and it's difficult to open your own pharmacy now with Chemist Warehouse everywhere (Who treat their pharmacists like shit). Just saying.
Same with doctors now too though - there's a huge oversupply of graduates. I've heard about Chemist Warehouse, it's pretty bad out there. What about hospital pharmacy jobs though? Are they hard to get?
Hospital Pharmacy is very competitive. Even getting a placement for learning it is hard, going rural is an option to gain entry into Hospital Pharmacy.
Sorry, I just cannot agree with this advice. I am a doctor nearing completion of my specialty training (PGY8). Wife was a pharmacist now re-training in dentistry after a stint in both hospital and community (Chemist Warehouse as well as non-corporate metropolitan and rural pharmacies). The 'Intern tsunami' that have existed since my med student days is nothing compared to just how terrible things are in the pharmacy world at the moment. Neither my wife nor I would recommend our worst enemies to go to pharm school at this point. Plenty of threads on Whirlpool about pharmacy as a career which seem pretty spot-on. Cannot comment on physio though.
Aren't these scores just what you need so that you can get into the course with a government loan?
Couldn't you do the course regardless of the score, if you paid for it?
no, you still need excellent scores for full fee
Fee paying = slightly more lenient, but you still need high scores. It'd be pretty ridiculous if they let anyone 'regardless of score' become a doctor.
Whats wrong if they passed the same as anyons else.
'Pass' what? Got a high school diploma? No one's saying you need to be top percentile to be a good doctor, but you need around there to be considered as an undergrad because entry is just that competitive.
You will need to sacrifice a lot
Just do a PhD, you don't need to study medicine to be a Doctor.
Yup. I attended a graduation where medical students received the same title of Dr alongside a nutrition PhD for the submission of "Diabetes and You".
Participation trophies for everybody.
I always chuckle when medical doctors are precious about the use of the word doctor by academics. It is and always has been an academic title.
I have have no qualms when actual academics receive the title of doctor or professors.
I do find it off putting when I see dissertations not worthy of toilet reading material and professors of hokus pokus disciplines.
It's not even a protected title.
Anyone in fact can call themselves doctorI don't have a problem with it until someone with a PhD in Buffy Universe studies sticks their hand up in a medical emergency on a plane.
Dude, there is a LOT more to being a doctor than ATAR. 90% of my cohort got an ATAR above 95, maybe 2-3 out of 150 do medicine now. Your ATAR and UMAT matter just as much as your Interview. My sister currently studies medicine on a full scholarship, got an ATAR of 99.90 and a UMAT of 99. I know people with similar marks that didn't make it due to their interview. You need to willing to do ANYTHING to become a doctor. Interviewers will see right past you if they know you lack the drive, and that it's just parental pressure or something…Graduating with an MD takes commitment and focus, and someone who genuinely wants to become a doctor for reasons other than money. It's an incredibly, INCREDIBLY difficult course, much MUCH harder than the Engineering I do and the Actuarial studies my friends do. In year 11 I was nowhere near mature enough to decide on my career path. Just make sure it's the right choice for you and that you actually want to be doing this for the rest of your life. It's a big commitment.
"Engineering I do"
Chemistry? Software? Surveying? Sound?
ELSE WE MUST BURN THE HEATHEN FOR HIS LIES!
Woah…thats some high scores she got.
I do hear Electrical Engineering is pretty damn hard. Medicine is hard cos it goes on forever, the studying never stopsI agree - I wouldn't claim medicine is harder than engineering - they're completely different and require very different skillsets. I've had a few attempts at learning to code over the years and I completely lack the ability to lock myself in a room and focus on a problem for hours. Give me 4 problems, a patient not telling the truth, their family melting down and multiple alarms going off in the background any day.
I like the endless studying. Highly attractive to an arts grad.
TLDR; Medicine good for people with short attention spans.
- Fly to India
- Purchase box of cereal
- Claim free doctors degree
- Fly back to Australia and become doctor
Dude Indian doctors put us all to shame. Their knowledge is crazy and the medicine they've seen in their homeland is way beyond what we ever will. If you're referring to the Indian doctors (who I can count on one hand) who've gotten in trouble, I suggest going to the AHPRA tribunal decisions website and having a look at the register of doctors struck off and why. They are predominantly NOT Indian.
http://www.ahpra.gov.au/Publications/Tribunal-Decisions.aspx
Apply anyway. With an ATAR of 90 I applied to a course requiring ATAR 98.
University advisors told me it was futile. Joke's on them I got in anyway.
Source: graduated from said course lol.Do a Bachelor of Science or Health Science, take lots of relevant classes, apply for graduate entry med afterwards. Way more people take this path than undergrad med.
Get yourself a sonic screw driver and a TARDIS. Oh you also need 2 hearts and randomly start helping people with their alien issues.
Try to aim to be a specialist. GP might be replaced by automated machine soon.
Procedural specialists can be replaced by trained monkeys. Cognitive specialists (ie.e GPs)- not so much.
just watch a few DIY youtube videos you should be right after that
Finally something I can offer advice on. Ill be blunt. I have old friends who tried to get into medicine and could and were happy. those who didnt and did something else and were happy. and those that couldnt and kept trying and never did… and are NOT happy.
- if you think its hard, i would really take a step back and rethink the whole process. This is honestly the easiest part, it doesn't get easier as time goes on.
- your routes are undergrad or post grad. since your just in school focus on the undergrad route
- tutoring/prep courses for HSC and UMAT are advised, its what everyone else is doing
- if you don't make it, chose a degree that you'd actually like, rather than medical science
- then just resit the umat first year of uni and reapply to undergrad course. although be careful since i think the trend is some unis only want school leavers, and won't take you if you do 1 year of uni. I havent double checked it but heard it from students ive mentored
so it basically comes down to study a lot in year 12 and see how you go. lots of people i know only started properly studying in year 11 and 12 and made it.
just dont spend the next 3-5 years of your life trying to get it and then get stuck with a med sci degree without really wanting it.
if you want advice re a specific part let me know, but its been >7 years since ive finished schoolI just want to add:
If you don’t get in after a few tries and really want to work in healthcare/medical industry. Then medical science, biomedical or health science are useless and don’t lead anywhere (don’t mean to offend anyone, many people I have talked to that have done these courses have ended up doing further postgrad or do completely different degree.) My advice would be to do a allied health course e.g pod, physio, nursing, etc, that you really like. You will have a job when you finish and can try Med pathway if keen.
Unless you're Indigenous, rural, or both, you won't get in as an undergrad with an ATAR of 90. That's that. If you think you can do it, I'd suggest you start studying very hard at school and going to HSC tutoring and aim for an ATAR in the mid to high 99s, as well as a UMAT prep course like medentry, face2face, etc.
If there's no way you're going to get an ATAR in the high 99s, the grad pathway is the pathway for you. Do an undergrad that you enjoy, that you think you can get a high GPA in, and that has relevance even if you dont eventually make it into medicine. I know people who have done medsci undergrads, for which there are reasonably few jobs prospects unless you get into med. Study hard, get a high GPA, study for the GAMSAT (may or may not require additional study depending on which undergrad course you do), and apply for and interview at every med school in the country. Take whichever school you are offered.
Is it too old for a near 40yo to dream to be a doctor?
nope, i know plenty of mature age students who went through med who have not regretted their choice. you do need to, however, know 100% that this is something you will enjoy doing for the rest of your life, as you will give up a lot of time away from family studying and training. you also need to think about what specialty you want to do, as a competitive and long program such as surgical disciplines will be much more onerous to get through than something like GP or psychiatry
Not at all - but you will you will face discrimination with regard to certain specialty programs (mainly surgical and other super competitive ones). If you are happy not to be a surgeon/opthal/dermatologist you'll be fine. The oldest guy in my year at med school was 50 so you're a spring chicken. Mature age students make really good, compassionate doctors because they've been around the block, they get what their patients are going through. The biggest problem you'll have will be managing fatigue in internship and residency.
I agree with the others - absolutely not too old. But be prepared for the hard yards, especially the scut work between graduation and specialisation - you'll feel like a 14yo at work experience sometimes regardless of your age.
Consider specialties like GP, ED or psychiatry - they tend to attract the less mainstream / traditional entrants. Speaking for psych, and for myself, we / I will almost always prefer the person who's taken the "scenic route".
PagingDr has a lot of information about the GAMSAT and the postgraduate medicine application process.
I didn't decide to do medicine until I was in undergrad (Bachelor of Science), so I took the postgraduate pathway. Did reasonably well on the GAMSAT, achieved a good GPA and didn't completely flunk the interview.
oh wow i didnt know that site is still running. i think i came across that site years ago when the mod was still an AT
Good old Paging Dr, glad to see someone mentioned it. It's been around since around 2005, lots of good info there.
I did a bachelors degree. I then did GAMSAT and got into a post-graduate degree for medicine.
My ATAR was only 80. If you want to do it enough there are other pathways you can do it!
That is impressive. Did you really study when you got an ATAR of 80?
Sounds like you focused and did well later in lifeThere are a lot of people in graduate medicine with a less than stellar ATAR, or even no ATAR. That's why the GAMSAT exists.
What was you GPA for bachelors?
Bond University on the Gold Coast have undergrad med without UMAT required. They apparently do interviews to rank candidates instead
They also have a premed (Biomed I think) which if you complete it, you can skip a year off their med course and go straight into their second year (grades and interview permitting).
I think JCU in North qld also do undergraduate med.
Bond medical degree costs $388k last time I checked. You gotta be really certain you want to be a doctor before spending that sort of money.
Consider pursuing a career down Machine Learning with an end goal of participating in medical AI projects.
Do some research into James Cook University, Townsville. Very good course and more rational entrance criteria.
I second this - JCU proved once and for all that the way to get doctors into rural and regional Australia was to you know, actually put medical schools in regional and rural Australia instead of trying to force city kids from city unis to go bush. It's a good course.
Hey, I'm personally doing the GAMSAT route (fwundergrade) because the UMAT route is extremely competitive.
I was an average performer at school and as long as you work hard do decently in your initial degree, you'll be fine :)
It's a lot of hard work
GAMSAT is more competitive than UMAT…
I was in the same situation as you, however with a higher atar 98+. All of my friends who achieved 99+ who wanted to do med all failed, it's hard. Now I'm doing law/commerce at monash and i have no regrets not doing medicine. If you are not sure about it do not do it, it's too big a commitment…
There are alternate paths to becoming a doctor if you don't achieve 99+. I know at melb uni, alot of biomed students have gotten into med afterwards. This is dependant on your GPA though, so you have to be pretty focused i reckon. Other health science type degrees can lead to med. As stated its dependant on your performance.
Based on a young family member's experience and the experience of their colleagues, you need to be aware OP that the path to medicine is hard, stressful, and demanding at all stages.
You need to think carefully about your motivation and your willingness to see it through. Compared to your friends taking other paths, you will make many sacrifices in your initial study years and afterwards. It will consume your life to a greater extent than most other careers. You are not likely to have time for much else particularly during your time at university and for about 5 years afterwards. While potentially rewarding and fulfilling in a personal sense, you cannot expect the recognition and status you might be imagining and most people who are capable of doing medicine would make much more money elsewhere. Especially if you follow the now more common path of undergraduate first degree and then postgraduate medical degree, you will be saddled with a larger HECS debt than those in other disciplines, and even more financial overhang if the only uni place you can get comes with a bonded scholarship.
Yes, you will be helping people (if they want to be helped) and there will be the thrill and responsibility of deciding on actions that have major effects on people's lives, and perhaps take part in advancing human knowledge. But you will always have to make decisions based on imperfect information and without much time - things can and do go wrong and whether it is your fault or not, there can be severe consequences for you as well as for the patient https://www.smh.com.au/healthcare/australian-doctors-disturb…All of this adds up. The suicide rate among young medicos is alarming with a couple of my family member's uni cohort already succumbing.
Ten years out of school. my family member is earning $84k, 2/3 or less than the salary that many of their schoolmates enjoy, and for far fewer hours. Even though in their hospital, they in theory have a 38 hour week over rotating shifts (due to an AMA 'safe hours' campaign some years ago), they routinely work far longer for zero extra pay (the doctors award provides for overtime but they are in practice not allowed by the hospital to claim it). Meal breaks are non existent and time to use the toilet is frequently hard to find. The shift schedule can be demanding, with time for sleep between shifts sometimes less than 10 hours, even ignoring the need to spend time travelling home and back again - often an hour each way in the city. And work is not finished when you leave the hospital- there are very frequent calls and messages and followups about patients. (Nurses with the backing of a strong union are much better off in all of these respects - for instance they tend to get breaks and rules about overtime and time between shifts are enforced).
Job security is poor. Employment contracts tend to be for one year only and every year as a consequence young doctors need to compete for next year's jobs.
And then there are the time and costs of ongoing study. Every specialty including General Practice has a study and and training requirement and the costs (up to tens of thousands per year) and time commitment are substantial, although costs are typically tax deductible if you can paint the right picture to the ATO. For many specialties, you need to move cities (often more than once) to get a training position. Even during the training period, professional registration is about $1500 per year and that does not of course include professional indemnity insurance which is modest in the early years but climbs rapidly.
So I hope this is food for thought for the OP - go in with open eyes, be clear about your motives and motivation and how much hard work and stress lies ahead. Don't be surprised if most people you know in other professions have more of a life outside work and study than you do. Don't be surprised either if many of your friends are rewarded financially much more than you are. Maybe however you will enjoy more of a warm inner glow than they do.
Wall of text from the perspective of a hospital registrar.
Think very carefully as to why you want to do it. Are you prepared to sacrifice your quality of life, spare time, and youth for this? Medicine is not a 9-5 job where you can go home and stop working. Majority of the specialties have on-call, and get woken up at all hours of the night… irrespective of whether you're working in the morning or not. When you're done working, you go home and study for the next big post-grad exam or to sharpen your skills because yet another situation happened where you felt like you didn't know enough. By the time you reach consultancy, after all the stress (look up suicide rates, burn out, and under reporting of mental health issues for doctors), you think you're set right? Nope. If you do private practice, you're perpetually on call for your private patients. Your daughter's big birthday is today, and you're at a nice restaurant celebrating? Well, one of your private patients needs to be admitted, and your phone is going to go off, because the world doesn't care that you're at a family event… medicine waits for no man.
Think that once you're a doctor, that everyone will respect you and treat you well? Australia has some of the most entitled patients I've ever seen in the countries I've worked in… unreasonably so. If you choose to be a GP, lots of inpatient specialties will think you know nothing. Working as a hospitalist then, surely will be better right? Nope, your other colleagues will think you're an idiot, because you consult them for anything remotely not specific to your specialty (i.e. responsibility sharing). Everyone hates on each other essentially, and pretty much all of it is unfounded. Don't think that doctors sit on top of the pile either, because nursing managers and administrators can be the most annoying and senior of the bunch, and often speak on over heads of departments. Combine that with a lot of type A personalities that mostly can't accept being wrong, and you've got yourself a recipe for conflict. Some of the interpersonal garbage that goes on in hospitals would not be tolerated in an office job. What other jobs outside of healthcare get sworn at, urinated/defecated on, or physically abused… and HR doesn't really care (or tell you that speaking your mind back at the offender is "unprofessional")?
That being said, medicine can be very rewarding. If you're ready to give up financial freedom (yes, we are somewhat fortunate in our pay, but no we don't make bank like a lot of people think… many of my engineering high school friends make more than I do, with much less debt), and a significant part of your life, to live and breathe medicine, then try shadowing a doctor to see what the life is about. Those that go into it for money/fame/respect don't usually do very well. The opportunities to save lives and make a difference is amazing… very few professions can point at one event and say I did that today, and it saved their life. Allied healthcare has similar roles to "helping people", but have better hours/work-life balance. Lots of nurses I know admit that they would never want to do medicine because the lifestyle is too garbage (i.e. they get scheduled breaks… but we eat/toilet break when we can). There's also physiotherapy, occupational therapy, radiology technicians, and other specialist technicians that contribute to helping patients with a much better investment to lifestyle ratio and less responsibility, while still being able to provide a positive force to patient care. I hear less gripes from allied health about how they wish they chose something else as a profession, than I do from doctors.
Graduate entry students, at least from my experience, seem to be a lot more mature than graduate entry students. A combination of work or life experience prior to jumping into the deep end, seems to help get rid of youthful excess (i.e. last week a few students left hours early on their placement because they wanted to go drinking at a birthday party… and one of them clearly required more time on the wards). There's more than one path to medicine, and it shapes the different attitudes and skill sets that each member brings. A few of us have advanced professional degrees prior to entry (i.e. pharmacy, law, physiotherapy), and it's refreshing to see the different holistic approaches to treatment. Don't fret if you know you want this and can't get in right away… concentrate on making yourself better as a person and future doctor, and it will all fall into place later. No "extra" education ever goes to waste.
tl;dr - be very sure that this is what you want before you go for it. Try shadowing a doctor for a few weeks, including on call and night shifts, to get a feel of the lifestyle. Many people regret doing it for the wrong reasons.
This is 100% great advice
Shit that was thorough. But very helpful. Thanks.
This is so true! Im a junior doctor working in a public hospital system (below the rank of @raun).
So much bureaucracy. Sometimes I wonder if anyone actually cares about the patient. ED doctors (and nurse managers/flow nurses who have an entire role ensuring patients move locations and continually ask doctors what the plan for the patient is after we've seen them for a grand total of 5 minutes and not yet had a chance to think - can you tell I'm sour about this haha) care about getting them a destination (home or a ward), acute medicine cares about what specialty team they can turf the patient too, the specialty teams try to knock back every referral (most of them not appropriate anyway) because they have no capacity, and ICU doesn't take the perpetually MET-calling patient on the sparsely covered ward because they're full). Then I catch myself doing the same things that made me wonder if that other Doctor cared about their patient. It's generally not a nice place to work. Administrators have so much power over things the have no idea about.I did shift work for 6 months (on a combination of three different rotations), worked ~40-50% weekends and ~1/3 night shift. For 3 months of this I only got my roster 2 weeks in advance for the next 2 weeks. And this is in accordance with the AMA agreement.
Though shift work is similar to what nurses and many other professions do, it's something you need to think about. This is at least 2-3 years if you choose GP, but more realistically 5-6 years if you stay in the hospital system.And the lifestyle when you become a consultant, as @raun has mentioned is not that much better.
My advice is to think about why you want to become a doctor.
I had a lot of friends do law degrees for money and ended up making far, far less than I do.If you have love for the game, go for it.
I'd like to become a doctor just so I can treat myself, and not have to rely on the innumerable useless, slow, disinterested, and dumb GPs that plague Sydney. Even getting prescriptions is a nightmare.
The irony
Finish year 12 "I believe I can achieve 90+ ATAR" - i love your confidence - I got two friends that did the pathway into med after my physiotherapy Masters degree.
Here is how they did it
1 - Did the UK version of the GAMSAT (wasnt good enough to get in Aus) and went full fee paying in London - please note this guys family was loaded and fronted all the upfront costs - currently in his final year of med had to move to london from melb
2 - This guy did the GAMSAT (twice spent 9 months studying) had a around a distinction average in his Physiotherapy Masters Degree and scored i think in the two like 2-3% in the GAMSAT go into Sydney University - graduated at the end of last year is now working and wants to become a GP had to move from melb to Sydney
Med is hard to get into and it also requires a lot of commitment. Being a Doctor is long hours and although they can end up on very good money if you go the longer (pathway) route it does take a serious amount of time from of your life. Many people asked me 'why i didnt try' the main reason is that be the time you finish the degree then specialise it is about 8-10 years of your life.
I finished uni a my Physio Masters at 22 my friends where 21 by the time they got in to med friend 1 was 23 friend 2 was 22 assuming you pass everything and dont have to repeat your whole 20s are gone.
Friend 1 the last time i saw him was really struggling with the work load said his was doing 3-5 hours a study a day and struggling moving away from family and friends in melb.
Friend 2 had a better run because he met his girlfriend in his 1st year of med which kind of kept him ground and stopped him from getting lonely and depressed from all the study and never going out having fun.
Keep in mind both my friends got 96 Enter scores Pre-ATAR and both found the path difficult but managed to do it.
This what I've seen not saying it isn't worth it but just flagging it is a huge commitment and it is more then just hard work and study that is required there is a lot of sacrifice that people dont realise…
UMAT or GAMSAT? If you're really, really keen on getting into medicine, there's actually a 3rd option… go to New Zealand.
Seriously.
Entry into med is slightly different from Australia. It's less dependent on your high school grades, and more so on your performance during your first uni year. Instead of going into med school straight out of high school, you do your first year of uni as a 1st year Health Sciences course (in Otago. Auckland does it slightly differently). Then your grades during that year +/- UMAT +/- interview will determine if you move into 2nd year medicine. This Health Sci year is also the point entry into the 2nd year of many other health degrees (dental, pharm, physio, etc). Both NZ med schools are accredited by the Australian Medical Council so the degrees are recognized without needing to jump through too many hoops.
I'm not up to date with any recent (recent, as in, within the last 10 years) changes in entry requirements, so it's still best you do your own research before crossing the ditch.
A few caveats though:
*Internship positions are tight (at least in NSW), so if you do go over to NZ, you will likely not be able to come back to NSW to do your internship, as local graduates are given priority over inter-state/national ones.
*Coming back after internship may be easier, but I don't know enough recent NZ graduates to give guidance on that one.
*Finally, to a Kiwi, you're JAFA… particularly bad immediately after (most) Bledisloe Cups. You just have to deal with it ;)I really do recommend putting in more sweat and tears into improving your potential ATAR. The medical course work (not just medicine but most university courses) is much harder than that of Secondary schooling.
Some would consider going through a graduate program (i.e. through GAMSAT) to be even more challenging than undergraduate entry; as now you're now competing with Tertiary Educated and even more so driven individuals.
From anecdotal experience, very few Health Science students actually end up getting into the medicine course.
What high school are you with? If you are with a selective high school and you are rank top 35, the chances is you will quite easily get 99+. Enrol with MedEntry early 2019 to prepare for UMAT. Start your MedEntry practice papers in March/Apr and complete all your practice question papers two weeks before the UMAT exam at end of July. You should be spot on ready for UMAT. Dont neglect your HSC Trials. Select factual subjects like English, 4 Unit Maths, Chemistry and Physics are easy to obtain good scores and a high ATAR.
My HS is ranked around 100th or so last time I checked. I do 3 unit maths, economics (told by HSC marker I could get state ranking), advanced English, legal studies, biology and turkish (possibly can come 1st in state).
You should do well if you keep going at your pace. You will need Chemistry for Medicine. If you dont take Chemistry for HSC, you are required to take a Chemistry bridging course prior to starting Medicine. All the best to you. From my kids experience, you will get 100 percentile in UMAT if you can get 100 with your MedEntry practice questions. Its important you complete your MedEntry practice papers 2 weeks before UMAT exams.
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Dont