Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Biomedical science

[AbominableMowman]

Hi
I was looking at the Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Biomedical Science at Monash, and I just wanted to know if anyone was doing it/ knows about it. How is the workload and what career prospects do I have out of uni (if any) that will make use of both degrees? 

[IndefatigableLover]

Not an answer but I too am quite interested in this course as well so I'm posting in here so if a reply comes then it'll come up in my replies.

[EspoirTron]

Hey guys,

I am doing the Bachelor of Biomedical Science and the Bachelor of Science! My course structure is the same however. Basically I do two Biomed subjects each semester and two science subjects (these will be Commerce units in your case). The structure is like this throughout the degree, but you will get two electives in your Biomedicine degree (it may be more, I can't remember the precise number).

As for the workload, I'll be blunt, this is no walk in the park and be prepared to have 20+ contact hours and expect to be doing a lot of studying outside of Uni itself. It's all about a juggling act really. Biomed and Comm or Science is not for the faint hearted and you have to be really resilient because the work is going to pile on like crazy and you're going to have to deal with it. I have friends doing Biomed/Comm and we're in the similar boat. I don't want to discourage you from this degree, because honestly it is amazing and an absolute joy. You learn things that are applicable in real life and you'll begin to think much more critically as you progress.

As for career prospects, again, I am not too sure. You could be looking at things like: Pharmaceutical company rep, Drug design, research and the list goes on. Obviously one option is postgrad Med, Denistry and Optometry but if you do Comm you'll also open you doors to enter the Finance industry and other Commerce related fields.

If you have any further questions please ask away and I'll try my best to answer them

[IndefatigableLover]

Thanks for that EspoirTron! Helps a lot

I'm kind of looking at majoring in Biotechnology or Bioinformatics (for Biomed) as well as Finance (for Commerce) and hoping to follow that up with Honours in Commerce. The ideal 'plan' is to maybe work at an IB Bank which I hope the skills in research in handling/analysing data in Biomed would come in handy and compliment my degree in Commerce or to apply for postgrad Med (as you stated above).

^Not sure but you can have two majors because of the double degree right? ._.

Sorry for hijacking your thread AbominableMowman >.<

[keltingmeith]

Monash biomed degree doesn't have majors full stop, sorry.

[AbominableMowman]

Hey guys,

I am doing the Bachelor of Biomedical Science and the Bachelor of Science! My course structure is the same however. Basically I do two Biomed subjects each semester and two science subjects (these will be Commerce units in your case). The structure is like this throughout the degree, but you will get two electives in your Biomedicine degree (it may be more, I can't remember the precise number).

As for the workload, I'll be blunt, this is no walk in the park and be prepared to have 20+ contact hours and expect to be doing a lot of studying outside of Uni itself. It's all about a juggling act really. Biomed and Comm or Science is not for the faint hearted and you have to be really resilient because the work is going to pile on like crazy and you're going to have to deal with it. I have friends doing Biomed/Comm and we're in the similar boat. I don't want to discourage you from this degree, because honestly it is amazing and an absolute joy. You learn things that are applicable in real life and you'll begin to think much more critically as you progress.

As for career prospects, again, I am not too sure. You could be looking at things like: Pharmaceutical company rep, Drug design, research and the list goes on. Obviously one option is postgrad Med, Denistry and Optometry but if you do Comm you'll also open you doors to enter the Finance industry and other Commerce related fields.

If you have any further questions please ask away and I'll try my best to answer them

Thanks, that helps a lot!

Thanks for that EspoirTron! Helps a lot

I'm kind of looking at majoring in Biotechnology or Bioinformatics (for Biomed) as well as Finance (for Commerce) and hoping to follow that up with Honours in Commerce. The ideal 'plan' is to maybe work at an IB Bank which I hope the skills in research in handling/analysing data in Biomed would come in handy and compliment my degree in Commerce or to apply for postgrad Med (as you stated above).

^Not sure but you can have two majors because of the double degree right? ._.

Sorry for hijacking your thread AbominableMowman >.<

My plan is exactly the same as yours haha
Pretty sure there's no majors for Biomed, only compulsory subjects and two electives

[IndefatigableLover]

Monash biomed degree doesn't have majors full stop, sorry.

Haha well that's awkward LOL

My plan is exactly the same as yours haha
Pretty sure there's no majors for Biomed, only compulsory subjects and two electives

LOL well if do end up going down this path then I know who to turn to next year when it's my time to submit my VTAC preferences

[EspoirTron]

That to clarify guys there are no majors but there are 'specilisations'. This means you can dedicate your electives to one field, e.g. Immunology, Pathology, Microbiology or something along the lines of that. It's nothing on paper but for your own piece of mind.

Thanks for that EspoirTron! Helps a lot

I'm kind of looking at majoring in Biotechnology or Bioinformatics (for Biomed) as well as Finance (for Commerce) and hoping to follow that up with Honours in Commerce. The ideal 'plan' is to maybe work at an IB Bank which I hope the skills in research in handling/analysing data in Biomed would come in handy and compliment my degree in Commerce or to apply for postgrad Med (as you stated above).

^Not sure but you can have two majors because of the double degree right? ._.

Sorry for hijacking your thread AbominableMowman >.<

It is my pleasure

You can do a double major in Science, but I am not sure if you can for Commerce. Tbh I hear a lot that firms do like candidates that have more than just finance skills, so you would seem to be setting yourself up well

[alondouek]

Good degree(s) choice OP, like EspoirTron said biomed isn't easy by any stretch (plus it gets quite intense in second year) but it's worthwhile and the course content is generally extremely interesting and relevant. Plus, BComm unit contact hours are usually pretty low so you won't be in the same situation of ~24 contact hours per week as we BBiomedSc/BSc students will have.

I'm currently in my second year of biomed/science and I'm really enjoying both of these, but I reckon it'd be really good to be able to study something outside of the strict scientific disciplines so if you think that biomed/commerce might interest you then go for it! Keep in mind that if you wanted to, you could do just biomed and use your elective places to take commerce units (Pros: 1 less year at uni, fewer fees; Con: You get one fewer qualification out of it).

Let me know if you'd like to know anything specific about the BBiomedSc!

[grannysmith]

How bad are the contact hours for biomed/engineering?

[alondouek]

How bad are the contact hours for biomed/engineering?

Well (going by the handbook entry), let's take the following units:

BMS1011: 6 hrs/wk
BMS1021: 6 hrs/wk
ENG1010: 6 hrs/wk
ENG1091: 5 hrs/wk

So 23 based on those choices. Generally biomed units are 6 hrs contact per week, I'm unsure if there is much variability in ENG units but I doubt it'd fall below 5 hrs/wk in any unit.


EDIT: Important note; I made my choices from the first eng stream that was in the handbook entry for the double degree, which happened to be Biomed/Chemical Engineering. Here's the handbook entry for the new course, make sure you base any calculation of hours or unit structures on the correct engineering stream you're after!

[keltingmeith]

How bad are the contact hours for biomed/engineering?

Considering what alon has said, you shouldn't pick a course based on contact hours - if you love what you're doing, the contact hours won't seem that bad. I had 30 hours last semester, and the worst parts weren't showing up to uni for 30 hours a week, they were when I had to go to the stuff I didn't like (ie. physics crap). Not to mention you can drop to three units a semester and still be considered a full-time student if the contact hours do become an issue.

[Eevee]

Hey guys,
I'm also interested in this course but I have a few questions.
According to VTAC, Monash Uni only gave out 54 first round offers. Is that how many people actually wanted to do the topic and got the ATAR? Surely more than 50 people in almost 30ish thousand students sitting VCE this year + other states' students would be interested in this course? Furthermore, the ATAR needed isn't above 95+. And they also accepted students that had below 94.
How do you check how much students they actually let in? 

Thanks.

[alondouek]

Hey guys,
I'm also interested in this course but I have a few questions.
According to VTAC, Monash Uni only gave out 54 first round offers. Is that how many people actually wanted to do the topic and got the ATAR? Surely more than 50 people in almost 30ish thousand students sitting VCE this year + other states' students would be interested in this course? Furthermore, the ATAR needed isn't above 95+. And they also accepted students that had below 94.
How do you check how much students they actually let in? 

Thanks.

Keep in mind that this is a double degree, which makes it considerably more niche than single-degree biomed (as a comparison, look up the number of admissions to the single BBiomedSc last year and you'll see that it's much higher). Because the university (and therefore VTAC) lists double degrees such as BBiomedSc+BComm/BSc/LLB/BEng as separate degrees, the stats will only reflect intake for a particular course. However, in practice at university all biomed students in a given unit will be attending the same lectures, have the same course requirements (subject to some variation due to the nature of double-degrees) and are assessed in the same way, at the same time.

The statistics issued by VTAC or whoever does them are the offers made (i.e. these people have been offered a place in the course). Whether or not all these offers are accepted determine the course intake. Also, the ATAR listed in the handbook is the lowest score for which a first-round offer was made. Depending on if there is space for intake in the course (as well as other factors, probably), people with ATARs below what is listed will be offered a place.

[yazza]

i am also interested in this course! Just wondering if anyone knows or can predict if or by how much the atar for this double will increase due to the 50 guaranteed spots for post grad med? thanks