Originally posted by luba
I am looking for anyone that got into undergrad med. How is the UMAT & interview? Did u go 2 UMAT cources? what qs did they ask at the interview? do you have to fly over 4 interstate uni interviews? what UAI did u get 2 get into med?
I could probably write pages and pages on this, but as others have said, there are different answers for different universities. My first choice was UNSW med and it's the only place I applied to. Many of my friends applied all over the country, and yes, after HSC exams most of them were flying interstate to do their interviews.
I can only give you answers relating to UNSW though.
First round interviews for UNSW were during the holidays before the HSC last year. The questions they asked were of a personal nature (refer to timmii's post above), rather than visionary or based on reasoning, etc. This is because the UMAT tests reasoning and mental capacity to a certain extent. I did a prep course for UMAT and found it helpful. Many people say UMAT is the worst part of the three components most universities use to rank students for admission, but it really wasn't that bad.
My UAI was 99.85. Most universities also don't use the UAI alone anymore - so not everyone who gets high 99s will get in, and not everyone who gets less than that won't get in. 95 was the basic 'requirement' for UNSW, but from what I've been hearing you need at least high 97-98s to be considered.