Deakin vs Newcastle / JMP

UCAT-ANZ cut-offs. Deakin — no published cut-off. Newcastle / JMP — No published cut-off: once the ATAR hurdle is met, invitation to the JMP Assessment is decided on the UCAT ANZ aggregate of Verbal Reasoning, Decision Making and Quantitative Reasoning alone, with no…

GAMSAT cut-offs. Deakin — Minimum 50 in each section + 50 overall. Minimum 50 in each of the three GAMSAT sections and 50 overall, obtained within four years preceding the year of application. Deakin publishes the average… Newcastle / JMP — not used or not published.

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.

Deakin requires Bachelor degree (completed, or final year scheduled for completion by 23 December in the year of application) with minimum weighted GPA 5.0/7.0 over the most recent 3 FTE years; GAMSAT 50+ in each of the three sections and 50+ overall, sat within the preceding four years; online MMI.

The degree must normally be awarded within 10 years of commencement, though applicants outside that window may still be considered if they complete 0.5 FTE of AQF Level 8 or higher study by 31 July in the year of application.

GAMSAT and the 10-year recency rule are both waived for Rural Training Stream Tier 1 applicants, and GAMSAT is not required at all for the Indigenous Entry Stream. International applicants may use GAMSAT or MCAT and sit a structured panel interview instead of the MMI.

Newcastle / JMP requires Minimum ATAR 94.30 (85.00 if you sat Year 12 at an MM2-7 rural/remote school under the Rural Bonus Scheme), or tertiary results at roughly credit level after one full-time year of university study; no subject prerequisites.

UCAT ANZ decides who is invited; the half-day in-person JMP Assessment - a rotating-station Multiple Skills Assessment plus an online Personal Qualities Assessment - then sets the final rank. 2027 entry.

ATAR. Deakin — no published cut-off. Newcastle / JMP — ATAR hurdle: 94.30 standard; 85.00 under the Rural Bonus Scheme, which turns on the Modified Monash MM2-7 location of the high school where you sat Year 12, not where you live. Applicants with at…

Graduate-entry GPA. Deakin — Minimum 5.0/7.0 weighted. GEMSAS weighting (Final-2 × 1 + Final-1 × 2 + Final × 3) / 6; each GPA year must contain at least 0.25 FTE of graded results and 2020 calendar-year results are excluded. The… Newcastle / JMP — not applicable or not published.

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.

Both Deakin and Newcastle / JMP use MMI interviews, so the underlying prep approach is the same — practise ethics frameworks, Australian health-system topics (Medicare, rural workforce, Indigenous health) and (for MMI) structured station responses against a timer.

That said, the specifics differ slightly: Deakin runs multiple mini interview (up to 6 stations, 5 minutes each; held online for 2027 entry); Newcastle / JMP runs multiple skills assessment (msa) - rotating 8-minute stations (six, per the jmp's applicant assessment guide). Mock practice tailored to each school's exact format is the highest-leverage prep.

Interview windows: Deakin interviews in September (domestic MMI, online, per GEMSAS).

International applicants are interviewed in Deakin's own rounds instead — for the 2027 cycle Deakin published rounds in May, August and October 2026; round dates are set on Deakin's international course page and change each cycle.; Newcastle / JMP in Late November - early December (30 Nov - 11 Dec 2026 for 2027 entry); mid-January 2027 for interstate non-rural applicants, and w/c 11 Jan 2027 for Excellence through Equity and Regional Excellence Pathway applicants.

Invitations go out early-to-mid November. International applicants sit the MSA online 30 Sep - 2 Oct 2026..

Both schools deliver a PBL-style curriculum, so day-to-day study habits will feel similar across years 1-3.

Specifics: 4-year graduate MD with problem-based learning. Years 1-2 at Waurn Ponds (Geelong) for General Entry Stream students. Rural Training Stream students d Five years, two degrees taken consecutively: Bachelor of Medical Science in years 1-3, Doctor of Medicine in years 4-5. Campus-based problem-based lea

Intake size: Deakin — 2027: ~160 total (up to 100 CSP + 45 BMP + 15 international + 30 RTS reserved subset); Newcastle / JMP — 170 places a year across the JMP (UoN + UNE combined) for more than 3,000 applicants. A larger cohort means more peer breadth; a smaller cohort means more tutor contact.

Deakin: Not publicly disclosed. Deakin interviews a maximum of 220 applicants for the roughly 145 domestic places (100 CSP + 45 BMP) available for 2027 entry; neither Deakin nor GEMSAS publishes an interview-to-offer conversion rate.

Newcastle / JMP: Not published - the JMP discloses 170 places against more than 3,000 applicants, but not how many are invited to the assessment day, so no interview-to-offer rate can be stated.

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.

Deakin: Deakin was established as a rural-focused graduate-entry MD and remains one of the strongest pipelines into Victorian rural practice. Deakin's Years 3-4 clinical partners are named health services — Barwon Health (Geelong), Eastern Health (Melbourne), Grampians Health (Ballarat) and South West Healthcare (Warrnambool) — plus the nine-location Rural Communities network.

A substantial proportion of places are reserved for rural-origin applicants, with bonded service options. Years 3-4 are spent at one of five Deakin Medical School sites — Eastern Health (Melbourne), Geelong-Barwon, Rural Communities, Warrnambool-South West or Ballarat-Grampians — allocated in Year 2 by preference and place availability.

The Rural Communities site is the distinctive one: a 12-month Year 3 longitudinal placement following patients over time, at one of nine rural and regional Victorian locations. It is one option among five, not something every student does.

Newcastle / JMP: The Joint Medical Program is delivered jointly by the University of Newcastle and the University of New England, but admission is administered at Newcastle through one common process: a direct JMP application plus a single UAC preference (code 785000). You nominate a preferred enrolment location, and there is no guarantee you get it.

The program targets a minimum 30% rural or remote background intake (33 places at Newcastle, 18 at UNE) and sets aside up to 17 places a year for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander applicants.

Invitation to the assessment day is decided on the UCAT ANZ aggregate alone; the final selection rank then comes from assessment-day performance, with UCAT used only to break ties.