Hi! first year UQ-O student here. I wanted to put myself out there to answer any questions and provide y'all with some info about the program that I have not encountered elsewhere on the internet!
disclaimer- Some of my opinions are negative and I just want to be clear I am not here to bash this program for my own benefit. I am really just trying to help future/prospective students by telling the truth. I wish I had known a lot of this earlier so that I could be more prepared. Please feel free to reach out/message me directly with any other questions!!
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Lectures: UQ uses a lot of guest lecturers. Because of this, the quality of lecture is inconsistent and all over the place. Overall for me this is not a huge problem but do note that you will need to use these to study for UQ exams as they like to include minutia from lectures. They are available online which is super convenient and it's up to you to decide if you benefit from attending them in person. Keep in mind there are about 500 first year med students so it's very impersonal; if you're not there no one will miss you
-CBL/CCE: These are the classes you are obligated to attend and you will be with the same CBL group of ~10 students the whole year. This is about 7 hours total per week. All tutors and coaches are not created equal and this can severely impact your experience. For CBL the only thing a bad tutor will impact is your sanity but for CCE a bad tutor can make it difficult to learn the clinical examinations properly (these are graded). My personal experience with this has been unfortunately pretty bad but I have friends who have been blessed with great CBL members/tutors so it's kind of the luck of the draw!
-All other "tutes": These are practicals (labs) that are built into your schedule. Pretty sure none of them are mandatory and again the tutors for these vary so unless you luck out with good tutors, most students have concluded that these are a waste of time and therefore don't attend. Some people still go and you will be able to determine for yourself if you will learn better by reading through the notes as home. Most people will recommend going to "GAF" which is anatomy lab but YMMV because these are very crowded and they are unguided unless you are lucky enough to find a tutor to go through things with you. Teach yourself everything beforehand so that you are not a lost puppy in the lab!!
-Exams: The way UQ exam questions are written will make you want to bang your head against a wall. Often they include several questions that should be thrown out for being vague or having multiple answers but they always keep them in there. This is one of those things that everyone just finds a way to accept and deal with. I think this is a really common sentiment in medical school so I don't know how much worse UQ is than average.
-Observership: I want to be really, really clear with something that was not obvious to me beforehand. UQ does not help you with securing your observerships besides offering the possibility to place you for 4 of the 8 weeks (you do not get to choose location or specialty if you apply for this, and nothing is guaranteed). You will need to cold call random doctors and pray that someone will be willing to sign a placement agreement. Flashback to undergrad when you were reaching out to doctors and asking if you could shadow them once a week; except this time they have to commit to doing extra work and being responsible for your education. Some people luck out with this and don't have much problem. For others this process has been an absolute nightmare. UQ prohibits you from reaching out to any public health facility across the entire state as well as any practitioner that is affiliated with UQ or any UQ clinical sites. There is so much I could say about how unreasonable and unprofessional this is on UQs part but I will save you the rant and get to the point- worst case scenario, expect to have to pay tuition to other institutions for observership placement ($1000+ per placement) that is not included in your loans so budget accordingly. Because of how limited we are in where we can observe in Brisbane the other option is to do an observership out of state which will be at an added cost regardless. If by some miracle you are able to secure a full 8 weeks in Brisbane without paying extra tuition fees it will be with a GP in an outer suburb; so contact these people first.
-Ochsner: At the beginning of the year you will get a really good explanation of Step resources and recommendations from other students. For the rest of year 1 there is not really a ton of added support or anything specific to Ochsnser besides the student association so for all intents and purposes you are just like any other UQ med student (except that your tuition is way more lol). You will have minimal communication with Ochsner admin. (For example: still no one has really told us about how the program is changing or anything because of the MedEd contract ending)
-UQ Med: No medical school is perfect, and I really have nothing to compare this to since I have obviously never attended any other med school. I think this is a common consensus; and many programs are plagued by the similar problems, so I probably would not use this as a deciding factor. But I will say... the lack of respect and support that the UQ faculty of medicine has for their students is seriously shocking. Don't expect them to listen or care to anything you have to say. If they make any kind of mistake, do not expect them to take responsibility for it or try to fix it. There are some admin staff that are nice and seem like they almost want to help but in the end they will not do anything for you, whether it's because they just don't want to or because their hands are tied. My experience with this administration has been so awful that it has made me regret turning down other schools to come here. There is so much that happens that is blatantly unfair and you can certainly just "suck it up and get through it" but it is a significant added layer of stress that is unecessary and important to take into account.
-Brisbane: Some people love it and others don't, but I have been pleasantly surprised with this city. It's really affordable and the transport is better than in most of the US, plus it's relatively safe. I highly recommend living along the busway because it is reliable and bypasses traffic. Specifically I'd recommend looking at places in walking distance of Wollongabba station, South Bank station, Mater Hill station, or Cultural Center station. However, there are plenty of students living in other places (Toowong, Milton, CBD) that are very happy there. I did not find the process of finding a place/signing a lease/moving in as quick as some other people suggested, so I recommend getting to Brisbane a good 2-3 weeks before orientation to sort this out.
