THOUSANDS OF students aspiring to study medicine next year will sit the Health Professions Admission Test (HPat) tomorrow in centres across the country.
In its third year, the controversial examination was designed to identify the most suitable candidates for a career in medicine.
Rote learning is not supposed to help in the exam, which is split into three sections testing reasoning, understanding and working with people.
Results from the HPat are combined with a maximum of 550 Leaving Cert points. Students with the highest cumulative scores qualify to study medicine at third level.
“The reason for the inclusion of an aptitude test as part of the selection process for undergraduate medical students was to examine an applicant’s ability and fundamental understanding rather than factual knowledge,” a spokeswoman for the HPat said.
Another reason for its introduction, she said, was to “take the pressure off the high points requirements”, in which students needed 570-plus points out of 600 to study medicine.
However, many are now treating the HPat like any other subject, spending hours each week studying its questions.
The HPat is scored out of 300 points, the equivalent of three higher-level subjects. Scores cannot be used with a Leaving Cert from a separate year.
One student sitting the exam tomorrow is Andrea Hennessy (19), a repeat Leaving Cert student from Tipperary whose two older sisters both study medicine. She believes that the system her older siblings came through was fairer and should be reinstated.
“I don’t like [the HPat]. It should be done by just the Leaving Cert and the person who works the hardest for it should get in. When you get into college you are going to have to study biology, not the type of stuff on the HPat,” she said.
For first-year medical student Carl Ó Briain (19), the HPat was an advantage. He enrolled in specialist preparation courses and scored in the top one percentile which helped him to a place in first-year medicine at UCC last September. “I felt like I knew every facet of the exam really well before I sat it,” he said.