An Unofficial Guide to Admission to Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (for NUSHS students ONLY)

This is a guest article, contributed by Roy Ang, class of 2008.

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If you are reading this article, you must be a prospective applicant for the course of Medicine in NUS – one of the most highly sought after degrees in Singapore. Well, young padawan doctor-to-be, read on!

Due to the high – possibly bordering insane – academic demands of the course, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (YLLSoM) has in place a highly rigorous selection criteria set in place to pick their students to study medicine. Out of 2000+ applicants, only 260+ lucky students get admitted to the school by September. With that kind of admission rates, it is almost as competitive as top universities in US and UK!

I applied for admissions to Medicine in NUS in 2009, and received the offer when I was still in OCS in May that year. While the offer of disruption from NS and joining the many doctors in Singapore was tempting, I eventually decided to reject the offer put forward by YLLSoM. (more details on that in my next article) Though the thought of being an M.D. has since long passed me, I still clearly remember the ardous process I had to put myself through to finally receive that precious piece of good news in that merry month of May.

Without further ado, here’s the rundown on the admissions process.

Read the rest at his blog: http://rangspeakyourmind.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/an-unofficial-guide-to-admission-to-yong-loo-lin-school-of-medicine/

Sureties

If you're ever thinking of signing for a scholarship with a bond, you'll need two sureties. Check the approximate criteria here, from the MOH website. Varies between different scholarship boards but you might want to think about who could qualify and would agree to be your surety, given the possible consequences if you ever renege on your bond.

Should I apply for NUS Medicine?

Taken from a Brightsparks forum on NUS Medicine, copied and pasted here.

Just in case anyone is wondering, I will just mention briefly about disruption from national service. Guys who are offered admission into the School of Medicine are given official disruption from the Singapore Armed Forces. Most of the guys are disrupted officially on 1 July every year after the admission results come out.

In the past, the criteria for disruption used to be that you needed to be combat fit and passed BMT. But nowadays the rule is quite lax and in the past few years there were complete 100% disruptions. In case anyone is wondering, the reason why they disrupt you is cos they want you to serve in a professional capacity as a medical doctor in the Singapore Armed Forces. As you know they do lack doctors in the SAF. So after graduate from medical school, you serve a year of housemanship then you are drafted back to the SAF in 2 batches. The better your results, the earlier you are drafted. You will then go through a 4 months gruelling Medical Officer Cadet Course in Nee Soon Camp before you are commissioned as a Captain(DR). You will then serve the rest of your NS liabilities as an SAF doctor in any of its services.

You could however choose not to go ahead with disruption (yes the choice is yours), and complete your NS liabilities before entering medical school 2 years later than your peers. But very few, if any at all, actually do this. Your NS liabilities actually run concurrently with your Ministry of Health bond. In other words, while serving NS, you are actually serving your bond.

Undergraduate tuition fees for medical school is about $18100 for people enrolling in the 2009/2010 academic year, and is expected to rise to about $18900 the year after. There is much financial aid (administered by the Dean's Office) available for needy medical students, so you don't have to worry about not being to afford the hefty school fees.

Next, a short part about scholarships. To my knowledge there are a couple of scholarships that are avaliable for medical school, for those who are interested or eligible.

1) President's scholarship. Nothing to say really.

2) PSC Local Merit Scholarship (Open) Medicine. Competition is needless to say even more intense than medical school itself, only about 5 are awarded each year. After graduating, you may choose a professional medical career, or join the Management Associates Programme (MAP). (Note from Vanessa: Actually, if you look at the statistics in past years, it's more like 1 or 2 - the competition is extremely intense.)

3) ASTAR has a NSS (MBBS-PhD) scholarship. Basically you are given a scholarship to study an MBBS (in UK) followed by a PhD in a UK approved university. After you graduate finally with a PhD, you are expected to serve in an A*Star research institute. You have to apply and be accepted into NUS Medicine (and then reject it) to be eligible for this scholarship. Basically I think mainly females will be interested in this, as guys cannot be disrupted from NS for this scholarship. Keep in mind this scholarship is primarily for clinician scientists.

4) SAF Local Medicine Scholarship. Return to SAF as an SAF doctor, enough said. If you are seriously considering this, you could PM me and i can provide you with more information!

5) NUS Scholarships.

Useful links for people interested in doing medicine

Medicine seems like a pretty popular career aspiration for a lot of NUS High people. Unfortunately, it seems no Collegetalk writer has applied for it yet as of now. Or if they did, they didn't choose medicine after all. So I decided to look for links on what people who have been through the process experienced.

Click here for links to several blogs dedicated to medical school hopefuls.

This website, The Singapore Medical Student Wannabe, caters specifically to those hoping to do medicine in Singapore. It looks pretty good, got tons of useful information for anyone hoping for a glimpse of the admissions process.

And this one is a bit like a Collegetalk specially catered to the medical interview. It's got people describing what came out in their interviews, etc.

Someone wrote explicitly about the NUS Medical interview here and their feelings.

Quite a lot of people also apply to Hong Kong if they want to do medicine. Someone detailed their experiences in their blog.

18 tips to prepare for a medical school interview.

And of course, the must-read - what the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine wrote on its homepage. It's on the FAQs for the 2010 Admission cycle, so I'm unsure if the page will be on the web after this year.

Internships

So far I have not heard of any successful medical school applicants who didn't do at least one hospital internship. Of course, bear in mind that offhand, I can think of about 5 successful applicants and 2 non-successful ones, which does not make much sense statistically.

A list of useful forum posts + others.

So have you signed up on the googlegroup that Mr Allan has set up? If you havent, you really should because there are some interesting posts up there!

Here are a few:
If I could do everything again, this is probably what I would have done
Studying medicine overseas
Renowned universities in China

As a sidenote, today is the 7th month anniversary of collegetalk! Haha I know it's random but I forgot to celebrate the half a year anniversary of collegetalk, so i shall celebrate the 7th month anniversary! Thank you for all your support the past 7 months, my dear readers!

And since I am on that topic, again this is another call for seniors, juniors, etc alike to come on board and join us in continuing this collegetalk project! You dont have to be a walking dictionary, or a ivy-league bound student. All you need is a want to tell your juniors about your experiences in our school!

Why do we keep trying to recruit people to come and help us? You might have noticed that many of the writers from my batch dont really write but they are there. This is not because we dont want to write, but because university has started, and we are preparing for our classes and all and our lives are going to be rather busy. As such, we will need you, the 2nd/3rd/4th/nth graduating batch of nus high to continue with this blog, to take over and pass it on from batch to batch.

We currently have a dearth of writers from this year's year 6s, year 5s, and so on, and that's not a good thing because collegetalk is going to die a slow and natural death. As with all startups, sustainability is the key factor and we already have a GREAT number of people reading this blog, but we dont have enough writers to sustain this long term.

So this is why we implore to you to join us in helping your juniors, ESPECIALLY if you are a senior, and ESPECIALLY if you have benefitted from this blog!

Cheers!

RE: Choosing a school, Part IV

We have a comment regarding this post that I thought is relevant to bring to everyone's attention:

Duke-NUS Medical School said...

Hi,

I am a representative from Duke-NUS Medical School and I would like to correct the perception of Duke-NUS that you have mentioned in your blog.

We train our students to be successful medical leaders, be it whether they pursue a physician or researcher route.

Our curriculum follows Duke University's and it is unique in Asia. Our students do their clinical rotation in year 2, 1 year earlier than a typical medical school. And in the 3rd year, our students devote 1 full year to a research topic of their choice.

We emphasize teamwork, creative and critical thinking skills as we believe these are important skills to possess as a medical leader.

If you would like more information on our school, please visit: www.duke-nus.edu.sg
or write into: info@duke-nus.edu.sg

So, what we've heard about Duke-NUS is actually wrong (maybe not we, but at least this is what I've been hearing). Duke-NUS trains students to practise medicine either as doctors or researchers.

Something I took from their website:
We are seeking outstanding students who have completed their undergraduate (or Master's or Ph.D.'s) training in the life sciences, engineering, pharmacology, chemistry, physics, computer science, or similar fields. Students with any background other than MBBS degrees are welcome to apply.

So for those of you who think you can't make it to undergrad med, you can always take a science degree and then go on to graduate med in Duke-NUS and still fulfill your dreams of becoming a doctor.

Choosing a School - Part IV

Now I will talk about local schools. Aside from popular courses like medicine, dentistry or law, local universities are generally easier to get in than overseas universities. Aside from being a lot cheaper, you will also be at home, which is a very good perk for some who eventually decide not to go overseas for further studies.

I will cover only NUS, NTU and SMU as I dont think you will be interested in UniSim and other private universities. I am not an expert on NTU and SMU (I didnt apply) so I wont talk very much about them either. Please do correct me if I have any errors below.

In terms of culture:
NUS, well most of you have been there for research projects or field trips so I think you have had plenty of opportunities to soak in their culture and see if you like it or not. Personally I felt that it seemed more academically inclined than NTU or SMU, but I leave you to make your conclusions.

SMU projects the very 'cool' and 'fun' image, but some seniors from SMU have said that it's becoming more and more 'muggerish' due to the mix of students that they attract. Not sure what to make out of that because I didnt say it and I was never a student there, but again you make your judgments based on the feel you get when you go in etc.

In terms of academics:
If you are interested in doing medicine, NUS is the only local university thus far which has a medicine school. There has been talks lately about opening another one, but I dont think it will materialize within your time and so you got to fight for the 200-300 places in NUS medical school for undergraduate, or go to the Duke-NUS medical school for graduate studies. The NUS medical school is probably what you are looking at if you intend to practice after studying, from what I heard the Duke-NUS medical school trains you to be a researcher instead of a practicing doctor.

If you are interested in law, NUS and SMU have law programmes, however a friend doing law now tells me that NUS's programme is more established. Take it for what you will.

If you want to do sciences, SMU does not offer science, so your only choices are NUS and NTU. NUS science fac should be easy for most of you, ditto for NTU. I wont comment about which one is better because both schools have their strong and weak points, but you probably already know whether you want to go to NUS or NTU. If you dont know just apply to both.

If you want to do business, it seems like that is SMU's forte (accountancy and business)and it seems to be 1 of the more popular courses for NUS as well.

If you want to do arts and social sciences, I have no opinion other than doing psychology at any of our local universities is not as good as going to the US.

>> Choosing a School - Part IV

NUS Medicine admission process.

This goes out to all doctor aspirants, I found a post on brightsparks that was particularly insightful to the process of admission for NUS medicine.

http://forum.brightsparks.com.sg/showthread.php?p=8239#post8239

I shall copy and paste it here for your info:
hi im a current student in the school of medicine. let me just give a quick overview of the admission system as far as i know it to be. admission scores into med comprises both a university score and a faculty score. both are worth equal weightage.

The university score is calculated by the office of admission and is a standardised admission score for all faculties of the university.

Took this from the office of admissions website:
To compute your University score you would include:
the best four content subjects (i.e. 3 H2 and 1 H1 content subjects, with at least 1 content subject to be from a contrasting discipline)
either GP or KI grade taken in the same sitting
H1 Project Work
The maximum points for H2 and H1 subjects are 20 and 10 respectively.
We will include in the scoring your best MTL subject grade (e.g. ‘H1’ MTL or ‘O’ Level Higher MTL) only if you present the result for consideration and only if it raises your University Score.

Correct me if im wrong, but this basically puts your maximum attainable score at 90. basically what this means is that your H2 subjects are worth doubly as much as your H1 subjects, including PW and GP. of and yes you absolutely have to do chemistry at H2. and either biology or physics. theres no exception to this rule. H3s/S papers do NOT count at all towards your admission score. they only serve as brag factors in your CV/interview.

Unfortunately admission into med is very competitive as only 260 people out of the many thousands who applied will be offered admission. the first stage of this ardous admission process is the shortlisting that is done purely on the basis of your university score (ie based on your A level results only). Out of the many people who apply for medicine, almost all of them will have perfect content subject scores (ie 4 H2 As or at least 3 H2As and 1 H1A).

The main distinguishing factor between most of the applicants is therefore their GP and PW scores, where even the toppest JCs do not have throngs of distinction scorers. It basically boils down to a game of math. From my experience, the lowest score that i have seen shortlisted is H2:AAA,H1:ABC so i think in my opinion you can use this as a guide in your chances of being shortlisted. for those who took the old A level syllabus and are reapplying this year, the lowest grades i have seen being shortlisted is A:AAA, GP B3, PW Band 2)

I am assuming that there is a linear relationship between the grades you get for a subject and your university score for that subject. ie the difference between an A and a B is worth the same in score as the diff between a B and a C. If anyone has more info on this, pls feel free to correct me. Therefore, to rate your chances more accurately, you can only have a total of 3 H1 grades worth of blemishes (sorry i cant think of a better word) from the perfect score or 1H2 grade level + 1H1. but of course this is from what i gathered from last year, this year's competition may be even more stiff. but in general if the only flaws in your result slips are a GP B and PW B you can sleep soundly, you should get thru the first round easily.

Once you get through the first round, it will then be a different ball game altogether. You will be assessed based on a faculty score comprising 2 interviews, 1 essay and a portfolio. For those who want more information/tips, you can pm me for more details. However, the final admission score that is used to rank you (yes there is a rank) comprises both the faculty score and admission score in equal weightage as said earlier. So people who know that they barely got past the first round, have to work extremely hard for the second round if they want a chance at all. I remember the dean telling us before that the difference between the last admitted and the first rejected applicant has a final score difference of <0.1.

I am going to conclude this lenghty message with a few final tips. number 1. i think i have given you a good gauge of the score you probably need to get shortlisted. for people who definitely do not make the cut, you should probably not waste your 'first choice' option on medicine. it could help you secure a place in another faculty that you might like even better. secondly, people who are currently serving national service and are pretty sure that they will get pass the shortlisting round should start preparing your portfolio *_NOW_*. When the final shortlisting results come out, you have less than 2 weeks to prepare it for submission. if you are confined, lagi worse. and theres quite a lot work you need to do to submit a good portfolio, including obtaining 2 letters of recommendations and a personal statement. thirdly, even before you make that application for medicine in the next couple of days, ask yourself why you are doing it. are you doing it for yourself because that
is genuinely have the passion for it, or are you doing it for your parents/money. Medical school is NOT a honeymoon place and the life of a doctor is honestly a very hard one. countless hours in the hospital, neglected families and outcasted socially. granted, the monetary rewards are not bad at all, but i sincerely believe there are better ways of getting rich. be sure you are applying for the right reasons, as the whole application process is not just to shortlist the best applicants for medical school but also to ensure that medicine will fit you best as a career in the future.

very lastly, for those who are thniking of applying thru the Exceptional Individual Scheme (EIS), please feel free to do so. However i wish to clarify that getting accepted through EIS is definitely not an easy thing (definitely not easier than the mainstream route) as the people who apply through it have very compelling cases that you have to compete against. and not to say the number of positions avaliable are very very few.

I will be more than happy to answer any other queries you may have. including recommendations for overseas unis, costs etc. please feel free to pm me or reply below. I hope this post has answered many of your queries. Heres to the the best of luck for each and every1 of you. hope to see you come august.