Graduate Certificate or Diploma of Medical Science overview
Graduate certificates and diplomas serve a similar purpose, namely, they cover a specific portion of medical science. They take between six months and one year of full-time study, or one year and two years part-time respectively. Students can choose between programs focussed on medical imaging, regulatory science, laboratory quality analysis and more. As a result, the units offered to vary a great deal. Students from the University of Sydney’s medical imaging course can expect units in computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging and more. Conversely, students from the University of Wollongong’s regulatory science courses will learn relevant research methods and coursework in patient or customer safety.
Employment options
The employment options specified here are great ways of entering a meaningful career. Becoming a medical researcher with companies like CMAX Clinical Research or a forensic scientist with the government are both excellent uses of the skill. Medical science graduates can also try their hand at entrepreneurship to spread their medical innovations further.
Scholarships and funding
There are a variety of great funding opportunities available to students of medical science. The following are just a few of these.
- Endeavour Scholarships and Fellowships are cross-disciplinary opportunities valued at $69,500. They’re designed to allow students to conduct research overseas; this might be difficult in many graduate certificate or diploma programs. Students are therefore advised to observe the curriculum of their course carefully to see if they are eligible.
- $65,000 pa General Sir John Monash Scholarships are for ambitious, aspiring leaders willing to argue the merits of their course to gain entry. Medical science certainly has a lot of societal benefits, so this should be a reasonable proposition.
- Indigenous students undertaking a graduate diploma can apply for the Indigenous Australian Graduate Scholarship, valued at $27,082 pa. ANU students are automatically considered for this opportunity when they apply for their course; applications are therefore not necessary.
The full range of scholarship opportunities available can be viewed here.
Prerequisites and selection process
Applicants require a bachelor’s degree in a cognate discipline to enter these programs, namely engineering or science. It is sometimes the case that a credit GPA will also be required (5/7, or 65%), but this is rarely the case at this level.