HSFY Blog

As the end of semester one wraps up, four big examinations loom for health sci students with added pressure with COVID-19 inducing extra stress. Although I haven’t kept up with the content or the exam structure this year; I am here to give you guys some advice as well as some tips as you head into your first major exams of the year (at least from my perspective from last years exams). I’ll share a few tips to help ease the stress (or add to it) for each of the four papers as well as some uplifting advice if you’re struggling. HUBS191: The way that this exam is structured is heavy multi choice orientated as you have to answer 90 of them as well as 4 essays. The best way to prepare for this paper is to rote learn everything, follow the learning objectives and learn the main pathways (nervous system, endocrine, immunology etc). Absolutely abuse quizlet or anki to force feed the content into your brain especially as the examsoft software doesn’t let you search stuff up, thus you need ...

UCAT: The UCAT is an aptitude test that is designed to test for skills that are important for any health professional but are not tested in the core HSFY curriculum. It replaces the UMAT and comprises of 5 subtests, all carried out on a computer and generally multiple choice. At the University of Otago, it is used as an additional tool to help select those who gain entry into professional programs. It was used as a threshold for medicine and dentistry with the latter being a higher threshold (a minimum score needed to be achieved in certain sections for your application to be considered). In Australia, it is a tool that is very important in whether or not you gain entry into medical school because it is not a threshold and contributes significantly to your application. I am not sure how the test is used at the University of Auckland or other institutions. At Otago at least there seemed to be less of an emphasis on the UCAT than in previous years due to the new formatting where yo...

NCEA exams (and Cambridge/IB) have finished now and I think it’s perfect time to write about what you I recommend you do in your summer. In this blog I’ll be writing about stuff to do in the summer, the last points will be HSFY focused but overall will be applicable to all school leavers. I think it’s important to relax, take time for yourself, do things that you enjoy. After spending countless hours in the library (or not!) throughout the exam period you’ve deserved some time to relax and just chill out. There are many things that people do, take a road trip, surround yourself with friends and family, take some time to exercise or read. Your brain has been filled with so much knowledge and content from year 13 and now you can let that all go. Your high school friends are people that you should take some time to hang out with, after all these are the people that you’ve been surrounding yourself with for the last 5 years; maintaining these relationships even if you all are going do...

In this blog I will be giving a brief recap of the CELS 191 and CHEM 191 first semester papers. In each paper I will touch on the content, the labs, how the paper related to NCEA and high school, study techniques that I used and my overall opinion of the paper. CELS 191: Content: This paper can be split up into 4 main blocks you could say: 1)      Cell Structure and Diversity:  -         Three domains of life, endosymbiosis. -         Carbohydrates, lipids, proteins and nucleic acids and their roles and functions in the cell. -         Plasma membrane and transportation mechanisms, membrane proteins. -         Endomembrane system, bulk transport processes, lysosomes. -         Cytoskeleton structure and function, cell junctions and extracellular matrix. - ...