Bond vs UQ

UCAT-ANZ cut-offs. Bond — no published cut-off. UQ — Required for Provisional Entry (school-leaver) and for the new 6-year BMedSc/MD direct-entry dual; must be sat in the year you apply. Latest published figures are for the 2026 intake: the lowest UCAT…

GAMSAT cut-offs. Bond — not used or not published. UQ — Minimum 50 in each of Sections I, II, III (any section below 50 = ineligible). Interview shortlist: 50% unweighted GAMSAT (mean of 3 sections) + 50% GPA, GPA as tiebreaker. Final offer: UQ does not…

Timing shapes the choice as much as the score. GAMSAT is graduate-only and sits in March and September; UCAT-ANZ is mostly undergraduate and sits in July. A few schools run their own selection model with no national test at all.

Bond requires Undergraduate (Year 12) ATAR 96+ / IB 38+ / OP 1-3, OR Graduate cumulative GPA ≥ 6.0/7.0 from recognised tertiary program. English (Units 3/4, C) or equivalent prerequisite. Bond psychometric test (two assessments, ~90 min, online and webcam-proctored; $346.50 inc. GST in 2025) + an online selection interview.

Direct entry is open only to Australian citizens and permanent residents, Australian Humanitarian visa holders and New Zealand citizens (not NZ permanent residents).

Lateral entry into Year 2 BMedSt is available to graduates of Bond's BBiomedSci (Pre-Health Professional major), MOT, DPT or MNDP at GPA ≥ 3.00/4.00 (Bond scale) — and to Master of Healthcare Innovations graduates only if they completed a Bond BBiomedSci first, assessed case-by-case on transcripts. Lateral entry is the only route open to international students.

UQ requires Graduate entry: bachelor (key degree) completed in the last 10 years with minimum GPA 5.0/7.0; GAMSAT minimum 50 in EACH section (no overall threshold is published), or MCAT 504, taken within 4 years before you commence; 8-station online MMI.

UQ also assumes — but does not require as a prerequisite — prior tertiary study in cell and tissue biology and systems physiology (UQ BIOM2011 and BIOM2012, or equivalent). Provisional entry instead needs an adjusted ATAR 95, Queensland Year 12 English, a UCAT ANZ score from the year you apply, and the MMI.

ATAR.

Bond — Undergraduate (Year 12): minimum competitive academic rank OP 1-3 / ATAR 96+ / IB Dip 38+ — Bond frames this as the bar to be competitive for psychometric-test selection, not a guaranteed offer… UQ — Adjusted ATAR 95 (or equivalent) is the published MINIMUM for both school-leaver routes — provisional entry (QTAC 721302 / 721402) and the 6-year BMedSc/MD dual (QTAC 721502) — and meeting it…

Graduate-entry GPA. Bond — not applicable or not published. UQ — Minimum 5.0/7.0 in key degree. Currency rule: degrees > 10 years before commencement require ≥ 0.50 FTE subsequent coursework at GPA ≥ 5.0.

Read every ATAR figure as a selection rank, not a raw score. Educational access bonuses, rural-origin uplift and Indigenous pathways all adjust it, so the published number is rarely the one that decides your application.

Bond uses Assessment day (Bond psychometric assessment + online selection interview (~90 min including registration and debriefing; Bond does not publish the interview structure)); UQ uses MMI (Multi-Mini Interview (8 stations)). These two formats reward different skills — Assessment day emphasises academic reasoning and thinking aloud through unfamiliar problems, while MMI rewards breadth and quick recovery.

If your strengths lie in conversational depth, either may suit you more. If you prefer discrete capsule answers under time pressure, UQ is the better fit.

Interview windows: Bond interviews in 2027 entry: online interviews 9-12 March 2027 (technical checks 4, 5 and 8 March); psychometric testing online 12-17 Feb 2027; psychometric invitations 9 Feb 2027; interview invitations 26 Feb 2027; UQ in Graduate (GEMSAS): mid-September 2026 for 2027 entry. Graduate direct/MCAT: w/b 13 July 2026 (Round 1) or w/b 14 September 2026 (Round 2).

Provisional entry and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander provisional pathway: mid-late November 2026..

Bond runs a PBL curriculum; UQ runs a Integrated curriculum. The teaching philosophies are different — Bond leans on small-group case-based learning from year 1, while UQ uses a more traditional lecture-led structure.

Specifics: 4-year-8-month accelerated Bachelor of Medical Studies (BMedSt, 8 semesters) + Doctor of Medicine (MD, 6 semesters, AQF extended Level 9) on a three-s 4-year graduate MD. Years 1-2 foundations and clinical skills at the Herston Health Sciences precinct. Years 3-4 clinical placements distributed acros

Intake size: Bond — Up to 180-200 domestic places a year across two intakes (May + September) — Bond's entry-requirements page says "up to 180 domestic…; UQ — 2027 graduate intake: 107 CSP + 43 BMP + up to 190 international = up to 340 across the GEMSAS graduate route….

A larger cohort means more peer breadth; a smaller cohort means more tutor contact.

Bond: Bond does not publish an interview-to-offer rate. Inferring from its own figures — the 2026 guide's approximately 400 applicants invited to interview against up to 180-200 domestic places — roughly half of interviewees end up with a place, but that is an inference across two separately published numbers, offers are not places, and Bond publishes no conversion figure.

UQ: Not published. Neither UQ, GEMSAS nor QTAC publishes the number of MMI invitations issued or an interview-to-offer conversion rate for the UQ MD. Treat any quoted percentage as an unsourced estimate.

Post-interview odds give you the clearest signal of how competitive each school is at the final stage — a school with a 60% post-interview success rate is structurally easier to convert than one at 25%, even if the interview thresholds look identical on paper.

Bond: Bond is a private, not-for-profit university and its medical program is entirely full-fee — no Commonwealth Supported Places and no Bonded Medical Program participation (Macquarie's MD is the other Australian medicine program with no CSPs).

It is unusual in running two intakes a year (May, September — NO February intake) on an accelerated calendar: 3 semesters per year, 14 semesters over 4 years 8 months.

No UCAT-ANZ, GAMSAT or UMAT — Bond runs its own online psychometric sitting (a personality test and an emotional intelligence test; the instruments were changed in October 2025 and Bond does not name them). All places are full-fee (no CSP, FEE-HELP eligible for domestic students but capped well below the total cost; no BMP).

At 2026 rates that is $33,610/semester × 14 ≈ $470,540 — Bond has not published 2027 rates and warns fees "are subject to change on an annual basis", so a 2027 starter should expect to pay more than that.

UQ: UQ runs Australia's largest 4-year graduate-entry MD (~470 places), anchored at the St Lucia MD Learning Hub and the Greater Brisbane Clinical School's eight clinical units — Children's Health Queensland, General Practice, Greenslopes, Ipswich, Mater, Northside, PA-Southside and Royal Brisbane.

The UQ-Ochsner Clinical School runs Years 1-2 in Brisbane and Years 3-4 in New Orleans, but it is open only to US citizens and permanent residents and selects on the MCAT (minimum 504).

Pre-interview ranking for graduate entry is a flat 50:50 of unweighted average GAMSAT and assessed GPA; after the MMI, applicants are ranked in merit order by pathway and tier, with the MMI score as the tiebreaker.