By Michael
FOR the next six years Taylors Lakes resident Tyson Fricke will slog it out with some of Australia’s brightest and most ambitious in Melbourne University’s prestigious faculty of medicine after last week landing himself a place in one of the state’s most sought-after degrees.
The 18-year-old was last week thrilled to receive an offer to study medicine at Melbourne University – something he’s wanted to do for years – after very successful VCE at Penleigh and Essendon Grammar last year, where he topped his graduating class, and the state, with an ENTER score of 99.95.
On the night when results were released he was at Federation Square in the CBD with thousands of other anxious university aspirants to hear the good, although not unexpected, news.
“I was pretty confident I would get in (to medicine) because of my ENTER,” Mr Fricke said last week, but said he was still excited when the official announcement came.
Medicine, he said, was the one way to marry community service and academic achievement.
“I thought it would be a really interesting career because it would feed my academic desire and I think it would be a really interesting career working with people,” Mr Fricke said.
As for what branch of medicine he would specialise in, Mr Fricke said surgery was a growing interest, but that he would have to see where the course took him.
Although the offer to study medicine was not unexpected, the perfect ENTER score came as a little more of a shock to Mr Fricke, who expected to do well, but never imagined he would be one of the 35 Victorian students to achieve the perfect score.
He woke up at 5am the day that VCE results were out, anxious to see whether he’d scored highly enough to be considered for medicine, but was pleasantly surprised.
“When I got the news on the internet I pretty much went crazy, just ran out the door and was screaming … it was pretty overwhelming,” he said.
As for the stigma that Melbourne’s West is under-represented in high-profile courses such as medicine and law, Mr Fricke believes it’s the student, not the suburb, that shines through.
“I think it pretty much comes down to the student – whether they go to a public school or a private school – it’s really up to you to do the work,” he said.
“So I think even if you don’t come from a particular sector that has the so-called best schools, if you do the work yourself I think anything’s really achievable.”
