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Friday, October 19, 2007

CUHK Medicine - Choosing a College

If you have started filling in the non-JUPAS application form, you should have noticed that there're 4 colleges from which to choose: Chung Chi College (崇基學院), New Asia College (新亞書院), United College (聯合書院), and Shaw College (逸夫書院). The college system of the CUHK is akin to that of some North American universities; the colleges are congenial communities with their own hostels, dining halls, and other facilities. All undergraduates are affiliated to one of them.

On the non-JUPAS application form, you're asked to indicate your preference and rank them from 1 to 4. You may wonder, which college is the best? Well, I don't know. There're always pros and cons to joining any one of them. When I applied to
CUHK in the past, my friends (who at the time were CUHK students themselves) told me Chung Chi College is the most popular among medical students. Of the 4 colleges, Chung Chi has the most med students. One possible reason is that Chung Chi
is the most generous in terms of offering grants and scholarships for its students.

You may wish to find out more on this by browsing the following Chinese forum:

http://www15.discuss.com.hk/forumdisplay.php?fid=196

For your info, triple rooms are not uncommon in CUHK hostels! If you can't even stand being in a double room, you may need to consider living off campus!

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

CUHK medicine (MBChB) interview (non-JUPAS stream) continued....

Prof. S.O.Chan (on the left) - Professor of Anatomy & one of my interviewers; he seems to be a very nice guy! He's been awarded "the best lecturer" title multiple times.


It's October already and the next application cycle for 2008 entry is just around the corner. By now you should be busy filling in your application forms and preparing your application essay. In my last post on this topic, I forgot to mention about the number of non-JUPAS applicants I saw on the day as well as the approximate number of non-JUPAS students accepted into CU med school each year. From the best of my knowledge, the figures change from time to time depending on government fundings and various other factors. Please note that what I've quoted here is only true for the year I applied (2005).


When I attended my interview, the setup was like this: there were 5 interviewing rooms, with 2 interviewers in each. On any given day, each pair of interviewers interviewed 10 applicants (5 in the morning, 5 in the afternoon); that makes for a total of 50 applicants interviewed per day.

I was interviewed in June and was told by the facilitator (a CU med student herself) there were 3 days of interviews in that month, with the same happening in July and August. Therefore, in June alone, they interviewed 150 applicants (assuming the number of interviewees remains the same throughout the 3 days)! That was quite a massive number, considering the fact that they only take roughly 10-15 non-JUPAS applicants into their course. Keep in mind that there are applicants being interviewed in July and August as well, and it's probably safe to assume that the total number of interviewees may well exceed 200.

From common sense, any medical school normally wouldn't invite more than 50% of the applicants for interviews. Thinking along this line, the MINIMUM number of non-JUPAS applicants would have been at least 400. 10 divided by 400 gives you a chance of 2.5% of being accepted. This is a rather optimistic assumption.

The conclusion is, if you view CUHK medical school as a backup school, you're probably setting yourself up for misery. Judging from numbers alone, CUHK is harder to get in for a non-JUPAS applicant than the majority of the American/Canadian medical schools. For example, the acceptance rate in Ontario (Canada) is roughly 10%. In America, the acceptance rate is slightly over 40% (I stand to be corrected on this last point).


I hope the figures above do not discourage you from applying, but rather motivate you to try your very best to prepare for the application and to impress the interview panel. Yes, getting in CUHK medicine as a non-JUPAS candidate is extremely tough, but it's still worth trying. The fact is, the more schools to which you apply, the higher your chance of getting in one of them. Don't limit yourself to just one or two medical schools; in fact, don't limit yourself to just schools in your home country! Getting in a legitimate medical school anywhere in the world is tough, and you should give yourself the best advantage by applying to as many schools as you can afford. Med school applicants rarely get to choose their desired schools; more often than not, it's the other way around. If you've done your research, you'll realise there're top-notch medical schools in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Singapore, etc. that accept international students. Returning home to practise after your studies is a separate topic that you'll need to think about, but in short, it's doable.

If you have further queries, please do not hesitate to leave your comments and I'll try my best to answer them when time allows.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

On CUHK medicine (MBChB) interview (non-JUPAS stream)....


If you're reading this, chances are you've been granted an interview by CUHK Medical Faculty and are in the process of preparing for it. If you live outside of Hong Kong, you'll have to get ready to fly back to Hong Kong for this important 15-minute process that will potentially determine your future career. To start off, I'd like to congratulate you on the interview invitation as the applicant pool is very large, consisting of applicants from many many countries, including Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the USA. Understandably, only people who have stellar academic results coupled with an excellent track record of health-related extracurricular activities will have a shot. Having been in your shoes, I'm fully aware of the stress, time, energy, and money associated with applying for medical schools. I've been through the whole application process for CUHK non-jupas medicine admission, and it is my hope that you may benefit from my experience and be at greater ease in front of the interviewers. As things change over time, your experience may well differ from mine, so please take the information that I'm sharing here as a reference instead of hard and fast rules.

So, here we go....

If you receive an invitation for an interview, you MUST personally attend it in Hong Kong. They don't conduct telephone interviews. I think it's important that you attend the interview on the given date and at the given time, instead of postponing it unless you absolutely can't make it. Some schools accept students on a rolling basis, and you would be doing yourself a disservice by attending the interview later rather than earlier.

They usually conduct 2 to 3 rounds of interviews from June to August, and offers of acceptance are given out along the way. The interview lasts for 15 minutes. You'll be interviewed by a panel of 2 interviewers, and they are likely to be one of the Assistant Deans of the medical school. See the following link for who they are:

http://www.med.cuhk.edu.hk/people.htm


I was interviewed by
Prof S.O. Chan and Prof Y.K.Wing. The interview was conducted in English and English only. I guess it'd be nice, if you have the time, to read up a bit on the research interests of the Assistant Deans so, when opportunities arise, you may use your knowledge to develop some sort of rapport with them; but of course, you have to be tactful so as not to seem over-ambitious and aggressive. The interview is semi-structured. You'll very likely be asked some standard questions like "why medicine", but you'll also be asked specific questions that directly relate to your application profile; they can ask you anything in your application from your marks to your personal essay. It's strongly advised that you go over them prior to the interview to refresh your memory. During the interview, they'll have your entire application sitting on the table in front of them. The questions I got asked are as follows (in the order below):

1) Why do you want to study medicine?

2) (This one is directly related to my response to question 1, so it's irrelevant to you.) Who is the first principal of [my high school]?

3) Why do you want to study medicine in Hong Kong?

4) What is your academic qualification?

5) What is the training like in [my extracurricular activity]? Any memorable moments?

6) (This one again is related to my response to question 5)

7) Have you applied for HKU medical school or other schools overseas?

8) Are you aware of some of the problems that the HK medical field is facing?

9) What would you do if we don't accept you?

After the nine questions, I got a chance to ask them questions, and that concluded the whole interview process. It is important that you have a pretty good understanding of the HK medical system and other medically-related news, for example, public/private imbalance, insufficient government funding, the "3+3" contract, etc. For Hong Kong medical news, try the following:

http://www.hkma.org/english/newsroom/newsroom.htm (English)
http://www.hkma.org/chinese/newsroom/newsroom.htm (Chinese)

(Note: The above URLs change periodically for some odd reasons; should they become outdated, simply google the keywords "Hong Kong Medical Association" and "newsroom".)

I started reading those news clippings about half a year prior to the interview to familiarise myself with the HK health system. If you have time, I'd encourage you to start now. Oh yes, wear formal dress for the interview. Otherwise, you'll look like the odd man out.

I wish you the best of luck!