Current UQ-Ochsner students, how is it?

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foody

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Hi there. Back to ask this simple question. How is the first year there? Has anyone failed or dropped out of the program? Left for a US school or somewhere else? Decided they didn't like the program? Any tips before I start in February? I have read the student guide but not sure if I should be lightly reviewing anatomy, histology etc.

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Hi there. Back to ask this simple question. How is the first year there? Has anyone failed or dropped out of the program? Left for a US school or somewhere else? Decided they didn't like the program? Any tips before I start in February? I have read the student guide but not sure if I should be lightly reviewing anatomy, histology etc.

Honestly, as stated before, the program is what you make it out to be. The whole program is catered primarily for australians. Usmle tutorials are actually taught by students who volunteer in the first year, and are by paid tutors (again students) in the second year.

Im going to be blunt about this fact: This year and the last year there are definitely people who left either because they dropped out, repeated, or found a better place in the states. There could be a myriad of other reasons as well including home sickness, so one good advise is to keep a thick skin, both in staying a foreign country and dealing with the admins.

As for reviewing the subjects, just do it during the year. Youll be doing a lot of self directed studying anyway :/ UQ very lightly cover the major topics like histo, minor in pharmacology, and rarely on micro. They are doing hardcore anatomy recently however because many doctors have been complaining to Uq about the student anatomy knowledge, so that should be good.
 
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I don't know about Ochsner but I would suggest any Australian medical school over UQ. You've made the right choice by leaving the US, but UQ is the wrong school to attend
 
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I don't know about Ochsner but I would suggest any Australian medical school over UQ. You've made the right choice by leaving the US, but UQ is the wrong school to attend
Except that you've already admitted multiple times that your beef is with what you consider the "corporatization" of education in general, not with UQ in particular, about which you've made no unique claims.
 
All I can say is that in other states, internationals are taken care of and secure internships. At UQ they are thrown out to the wolves.
 
We've been through this before -- so far, int'ls have been taken care of in all states. And Qld is not just UQ. You make no sense.
 
The reality is there is very minimal opportunity for spots in public hospitals in QLD for international UQ grads (as far as I am aware, UQ is the only med school in QLD which takes internationals). They are almost wholly reliant on CMI spots. In the other states, internationals can generally secure spots through the regular allocation process. In some states, internationals within the state are the 2nd priority--in QLD they are 4th!
 
this thread is about UQ-ochsner, the people asking about this program are looking to go back to the US to practice.
 
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In some states, internationals within the state are the 2nd priority--in QLD they are 4th!
This is not true. We used to be 4th but recent changes put us into 6th priority. This is based on information from another Aussie thread on SDN that included a link to the QLD health priority system.
 
A discussion about internship Ballot matters is here:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/australian-2015-internship-ballots.1082694/

There are int'l students at all med schools in Qld (not just at UQ, where most of them are, but at JCU, Bond, and Griffith). Those studying in Qld are P4, while UQ Ochsner students (where the OP is heading) are now P6.

Please go to an appropriate thread for further details/discussions about the Ballot.
 
i've heard everyone talk about how disorganized the admin is at UQ-O... But what specifically? Please tell me some examples that you've seen so that i know if i can handle them... (i've encountered very bad admin in the US and i never want to deal with similar stuff again...)
 
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so how is the usmle prep going? or is that even happening? you did know that this year was the first MD class so isnt the problems due to 'growing' pains? Or is it more than that? How is the course work a lot of independent study?
 
I'm a 1st year MD UQO student 4 weeks into the second semester, and to be honest I'm disgusted with the program. I am at the Ipswich campus, which they have just decided to close without any input from the students. They even forgot to tell us it was closing. We had a meeting and they said, "As you know, this campus is closing." The entire room flipped. The email they sent a month earlier was only to administration, and not the students. They didn't even realize they hadn't told us. So now we have to pack up, find an apartment in Brisbane, and move over the end of the year break all while doing 8 weeks of rotations when the break is just over 2 months long.

I just spent a good half an hour drafting an email to Ochsner about how badly the administration of the MD program is running. This last two weeks we have have 8 hours of online material and only 4 hours of live lecture. We also have had further communication difficulties where we were told a special anatomy prac was cancelled only to have someone email us an hour before it started to tell us it was on. Needless to say, a bunch of people missed it. I'm fed up with this school, and if I could go back I would do DO instead of UQO.

The quality is so bad that they are restructuring the pathology department half way through the year, and we are now having to go back and re-watch re-recorded online material because the new one "have more information". So we watched them once, and now have to waste time reviewing it again to find out the stuff they added.

I am beyond pissed with the whole thing and am fed up.

I'm disgusted with this school, and fully regret my decision to be a part of the obviously fractured and unorganized MD program.
I am really sorry to hear all of that. It's insane that the news didn't reach you all earlier- apparently the closing of the campus has been in the works for a while:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/hig...d-ipswich-campus/story-e6frgcjx-1226995277260
 
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That's really lousy. Thanks for the info.
 
The sale/selling out of the Ipswich campus is one of the most disgusting aspects of the corporate culture of UQ. It was a special campus and if you were there back when it opened years ago you wouldn't even be able to recognise it now. Shame on UQ.
 
I'm a 1st year MD UQO student 4 weeks into the second semester, and to be honest I'm disgusted with the program. I am at the Ipswich campus, which they have just decided to close without any input from the students. ... ...
Sorry to hear that. It does look like there are issues in administration and expectations on student academic background. UQO cohort was originally supposed to be in St Lucia campus, not Ipswich, is that right? How come you are in Ipswich? Could students just choose any campus? Will St Lucia will too crowded next year? Typically, how many students are there attending regular lectures on basic science courses? How good are the TA's? How easy is it for students to ask questions during lectures? Do you have to purchase extra quota in monthly internet usage - I heard that internet usage on the campus is not unlimited? How do you pay tuition in future, directly to UQ, or to MedEdPath, or to Ochsner? Thanks!
 
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Back from my hiatus to comment on a thread I started.

As a current first year as well, I felt the need to give some input. I won't agree/disagree with @Steele because they are at Ipswich. So those are their personal opinions. I can only comment on St. Lucia.

I was told to avoid Ipswich like the plague. That they had limited resources in terms of lecturers and anatomy. So I chose St. Lucia. Perhaps I was lucky in who I knew in the program beforehand.

It is disorganised here in St. Lucia. But it's a functional disorganised. If you are self-motivated, then you will succeed here.

Some of the problems encountered are physiology of the kidney for example being taught after we've been forced to learn it on our own. This led to some lectures feeling a bit pointless or repetitive. It was frustrating as it didn't seem to follow a logical order. I agree pathology can be taught much better and I hate learning it all online. The flipped classroom is stupid. But some people don't mind it. Gives you more free time to study for the USMLE, which is a huge advantage.

With some weird order of lectures and some stupid lectures (on chest x-rays), I found that at the end of semester 1, UQ medicine gave me a good knowledge base and education despite being slightly disorganised. Don't take my statement on the order of lectures too strongly, for the most part all the lectures were nicely organised and put together in logical order. I hear that Ipswich students lectures are terribly organised and there is a poor fellow on our facebook group who often asks every week almost for our lecture schedule to organise his lectures. I feel sorry for the Ipswich students, I'm not sure why they don't have the same order of lectures or access to materials we have. It is unfair completely.

It's weird that @Steele comments that they recently found out about the campus closing after this year because I knew about it just from general gossip and my friend at Ipswich many months ago. That same friend has already moved and found a house in Brisbane. So you might hear some different perspectives.

So in terms of St. Lucia, to summarise. I like it here. It feels disorganised at times but medicine is huge subject to teach. CBL is great, my group learns so much. I had a crap tutor last semester but still learned a lot. This semester, I have an excellent CBL tutor, he makes each session a golden opportunity to learn. I realised from all the disarray order came in terms of knowledge and I think it was well worth it. But this was my experience at St. Lucia. The only thing that made me unhappy really was learning pathology online. It is a vital subject and trying to teach it online is futuristic and all but it's dumb. Our USMLE tutors here in St. Lucia were excellent (except for a few) and I really have learned a lot from them. I admire their effort they put in to teach us, so again I feel sorry for Ipswich students that have suffered on this point. Another point I didn't like, is that the exams were hard to gauge in terms of what they wanted us to know. If you studied everything you were find. But if you focused too much on physiology, you were screwed. This isn't like exams from undergraduate, they are comprehensive in terms of knowledge which is good. You have to know specific receptors to what vitamin is deficient in certain disease states for example.

Let me know if you have any further questions. If you are debating on applying, figure out if you are a self-motivated learner. If not, it is not the right fit for you. Then again, no one will hold your hand in medical school. At the end of the day, it is up to YOU to learn the knowledge, no one can put it there for you. They can only give you the resources to learn. I would apply here again, no questions asked because it gave me the opportunity to become a doctor. Yes, I would have loved to go to medical school in the US but I didn't get in. So this ended up being my second choice. I do not regret coming here and recommend it to those who really want to become doctors. You will have to put in a lot of work and sometimes it will feel like you're teaching yourself from google and wikipedia. Which you will be. But the lectures and key learning issues and labs are all there to give you a framework to work around. CBL helps bring into real life perspective and is pure gold. Clinical practice is amazing and I learn so much in terms of how to examine patients.

So yeah. I like it.
 
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Haha hey @Steele. I see the connection to facebook in your name. Out of curiosity, how did you choose Ipswich? Did you not talk to current students about the lectures being streamed online? I find it unfair personally to tell people not to apply to UQ because of your experiences at Ipswich. I think when you come here next year your opinions will change for the better hopefully. I can't imagine how frustrating it is and feel sorry for you lot. It IS unfair what happened to you all but at the same time, **** has already hit the fan. Ipswich is closing, so all those problems are irrelevant now. I would chose your words carefully because those new to applying can misconstrue the entire program. But hey you have every right to complain about it.
 
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St Lucia campus is a lot worse than Ipswich. Ipswich is supposed to be giving additional lectures by Ipswich Hospital consultants. St Lucia lectures are all in a huge auditorium.

I think you should make a formal complaint to AHPRA on AMA about how the administration had handled the Ipswich campus.
 
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Sounds like it's going totally downhill. Are you 2nd year?Does JR still do the microbiology/biochemistry lectures? When I was at Ipswich we received all sorts of additional lectures and tutorials that St Lucia was not privy to...if you want the answer, look to the way GM views international students and read the transcripts from last year over the discussions about transferring the campus to USQ---by the way none of these new buildings (pharmacy, gym) that currently make the campus a corporate outpost existed just even two years ago---it's pretty depressing.

What really bothers me is that the school isn't letting you finish out your two years in Ipswich. I had to go some lectures at St Lucia, and let me tell you, it's not the place where you want to be. It's a terrible learning environment.
 
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We were supposed to be the last class at Ipswich. Now we are being forced to move. It's not a big deal for non-Ochsner students as they only have a 4 week elective at the end of the year, but Ochsner students have to do 8 weeks. That leaves an extremely limited amount of time to find an apartment and move to Brisbane. When this issue was brought up to the school, they simply said they were unwilling to help with commuting or to help us find placement in Brisbane for the final 4 weeks of our elective. They just told us that we could keep living in Ipswich and commute to Brisbane. That is ridiculous. Public transport from my apartment in Ipswich to Brisbane can take anywhere from 1.5 hours to 2 hours using public transport each way. If I buy a car then I have to work with the extremely sparse parking situation at St. Lucia. It's just not an option. It's just so frustrating when we were told we were going to be here for the entire two years, only to have it thrown in our faces.

I actually chose Ipswich because of the smaller cohort size. Some people were placed here when St. Lucia filled. If I could go back in time I would definitely not have chosen Ipswich.

Yes. St. Lucia will be overcrowded next year. The school says it won't be an issue after student attendance to lectures drops off though. Maybe this is true. I don't know. I've never been to a lecture with the St. Lucia cohort.

TAs? It's almost laughable. At Ipswich the only TAs we have are two or three 2nd years for anatomy who generally aren't that helpful. There are no other TAs. That's it. This is a topic that never came to mind, but it is ridiculous now that I think about it.

When there are lectures at Ipswich it's quite easy to ask questions because of the small cohort size, but then again, we have only had 4 hours of live lecture where we could ask questions in the last 2 weeks. I have no idea what it's like at St. Lucia.

I don't know about internet either. I know we get 40 gigs per month to work with and can purchase more. I think because I'm at Ipswich that my downloads don't count towards the quota. I think. Every time I check it still says I have 40 gigs. Again, I have no idea what it's like at St. Lucia.

We pay directly to UQ, not Ochsner as far as I know.
Thanks! I hope next year in St Lucia you will have a better time! Obviously it is not a good decision for UQ to move students around in the middle of an academic year.
 
I'm a 1st year, and ya, JR still does the microbiology/biochemistry lectures. He's pretty good. He has always been really good about coming to Ipswich to give lectures too.

It's even more depressing to hear that Ipswich is missing out on all the stuff they used to get (as in extra lectures).

I think it's a huge problem that the school is leaving students hanging and forcing them to switch to St Lucia, which has a totally different culture to Ipswich. You know at St Lucia the PBLs are all held at hospitals so you have to rely on public transportation every day instead of being able to simply walk up a flight of stairs from lecture to PBL or clinical coaching. It's a serious deficiency in the way the administration operates.
 
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@qldking I am a first year and your information is incorrect. I personally think St. Lucia is a beautiful campus and our lectures are excellent for the most part. That you say it is horrible makes me laugh because it is really pretty here. It is not a terrible learning environment at all. Yes our lectures are quite large but only about 250 of us show up. This doesn't change anything on the quality of the lectures. This number is much smaller than my undergraduate chemistry classes where there were 500 people in the room.

Our first year CBL's are conducted on campus currently. For second year, I believe CBL is conducted at the hospitals. Clinical coaching is conducted at the hospitals first and second year.

@Steele, that is true that you guys are suffering currently and therefore your needs should be addressed. I hope things get better on that side. Well at least next year things will be better for sure. I agree they are disorganised but in a functional way still. I'm not sure contacting Ochsner would be your best bet to fix UQ's side of things but I could be wrong. I would say instead of emailing, try and set up an appointment so you can voice your concerns in person. Anytime, I've had a major problem I just go in person and things go a lot quicker vs. waiting for an email three days later. Sorry to hear your grades aren't what you wanted but maybe that is more on study habits. Most of our cohort has done really well on exams (75% average about) and I hear those that do really well in the course do well on the USMLE. In regards to anatomy resources, it is frustrating that Ipswich students are told to come here to view specimens. However, that is just something you were told in the beginning of the year and just have to do. It's annoying but I still think it's possible to do well in anatomy without the wet specimens. Myself and other friends only went to the labs and I studied through textbooks like Rohen's and Netter's. Rohen's is great as it contains actual specimen pictures only. I agree that looking at the specimen is the best bet but you can still do well. I wish you good luck and hope school gets better for you.
 
Well when I had to attend St Lucia lectures the entire campus was under construction. The monstrosity that they call an auditorium reeked of **** and piss from the adjacent bathroom stalls and you could barely hear anything during lectures over all the chattering by younger students. The campus is hard to get to and it's expensive to live in the city. And you couldn't get any quiet study in the library because it was full of 18 year olds on their Facebook etc cluttering up the computers. Not to mention the cohort there is enormous so there's no individualized learning nor face to face opportunities with lecturers. The Ipswich campus is all heritage listed buildings in one of the most natural areas of Southeast Queensland, in comparison.

All in all, it seemed like a ****ty learning environment.
 
Yeah, so that's not at all correct. We have access to our CBL rooms 24/7, and they are all limited access to just your own CBL with keycards. I never have trouble finding a quiet place to study. I am sitting in the CBL room right now actually and there is just one other guy in here, and he is quietly watching a movie and relaxing. The two libraries on campus I agree are ****, but no med students go there anymore. As far as the auditorium goes: why go to lecture? They are all recorded. You get nothing out of going other than sitting in a ****ty chair. And besides, the lecture room is dead silent usually. I don't know what kind of dingus students you went to Uni with, but the ones in this class are all pretty chill.
 
If you break down the cost of tuition, each lecture costs about $60-70, so you can be sure I would be there instead of watching a recording. And thats the point. In Ipswich those lectures were interactive because of the small cohort. St Lucia is nothing more than a corporate outpost that is producing about three times as many medical graduates as are necessary.
 
If you actually did the math about $60-70/lecture then fine, but what is your point? You would rather go sit in a chair and listen in person, than at home where you can pause lecture, take notes, etc? Your political agenda is falling on moot ears here buddy. For one, I am Ochsner so I could care less about the number of doctors being produced in Australia, and two, it is an unnecessary point in this argument. As far as 'interactive' lectures, all of the pracs that we attend are small and the lecturers are all very approachable and love to talk to students after and during prac sessions.
 
Also, what exactly do you need to talk about during lecture? It's not like there are a million questions to be asked, unless you are literally one of those students that just had to talk to every lecturer after every lecture because they needed to feel special. Almost every question I may have thought I even had was answered in the text in a much clearer fashion than any person could probably give on the spot.
 
Dude you sound ******ed
 
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I find it funny someone has their panties in a twist over having to leave Ipswich!

It's something to be excited about, everyone tries to avoid Ipswich
 
St Lucia is an absolute dump.
 
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match day is coming. anyone have the match list for UQ-O this year, please post! :)
 
most recent Step I statistics - average score 224. The pass rate was 91%.
 
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Back from my hiatus to comment on a thread I started.

As a current first year as well, I felt the need to give some input. I won't agree/disagree with @Steele because they are at Ipswich. So those are their personal opinions. I can only comment on St. Lucia.

I was told to avoid Ipswich like the plague. That they had limited resources in terms of lecturers and anatomy. So I chose St. Lucia. Perhaps I was lucky in who I knew in the program beforehand.

It is disorganised here in St. Lucia. But it's a functional disorganised. If you are self-motivated, then you will succeed here.

Some of the problems encountered are physiology of the kidney for example being taught after we've been forced to learn it on our own. This led to some lectures feeling a bit pointless or repetitive. It was frustrating as it didn't seem to follow a logical order. I agree pathology can be taught much better and I hate learning it all online. The flipped classroom is stupid. But some people don't mind it. Gives you more free time to study for the USMLE, which is a huge advantage.

With some weird order of lectures and some stupid lectures (on chest x-rays), I found that at the end of semester 1, UQ medicine gave me a good knowledge base and education despite being slightly disorganised. Don't take my statement on the order of lectures too strongly, for the most part all the lectures were nicely organised and put together in logical order. I hear that Ipswich students lectures are terribly organised and there is a poor fellow on our facebook group who often asks every week almost for our lecture schedule to organise his lectures. I feel sorry for the Ipswich students, I'm not sure why they don't have the same order of lectures or access to materials we have. It is unfair completely.

It's weird that @Steele comments that they recently found out about the campus closing after this year because I knew about it just from general gossip and my friend at Ipswich many months ago. That same friend has already moved and found a house in Brisbane. So you might hear some different perspectives.

So in terms of St. Lucia, to summarise. I like it here. It feels disorganised at times but medicine is huge subject to teach. CBL is great, my group learns so much. I had a crap tutor last semester but still learned a lot. This semester, I have an excellent CBL tutor, he makes each session a golden opportunity to learn. I realised from all the disarray order came in terms of knowledge and I think it was well worth it. But this was my experience at St. Lucia. The only thing that made me unhappy really was learning pathology online. It is a vital subject and trying to teach it online is futuristic and all but it's dumb. Our USMLE tutors here in St. Lucia were excellent (except for a few) and I really have learned a lot from them. I admire their effort they put in to teach us, so again I feel sorry for Ipswich students that have suffered on this point. Another point I didn't like, is that the exams were hard to gauge in terms of what they wanted us to know. If you studied everything you were find. But if you focused too much on physiology, you were screwed. This isn't like exams from undergraduate, they are comprehensive in terms of knowledge which is good. You have to know specific receptors to what vitamin is deficient in certain disease states for example.

Let me know if you have any further questions. If you are debating on applying, figure out if you are a self-motivated learner. If not, it is not the right fit for you. Then again, no one will hold your hand in medical school. At the end of the day, it is up to YOU to learn the knowledge, no one can put it there for you. They can only give you the resources to learn. I would apply here again, no questions asked because it gave me the opportunity to become a doctor. Yes, I would have loved to go to medical school in the US but I didn't get in. So this ended up being my second choice. I do not regret coming here and recommend it to those who really want to become doctors. You will have to put in a lot of work and sometimes it will feel like you're teaching yourself from google and wikipedia. Which you will be. But the lectures and key learning issues and labs are all there to give you a framework to work around. CBL helps bring into real life perspective and is pure gold. Clinical practice is amazing and I learn so much in terms of how to examine patients.

So yeah. I like it.


Hey, thanks so much for giving your input. I'm wondering how things are going for you right now and if you can comment a bit on your experience and the curriculum?
 
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