Griffith vs UQ

UCAT-ANZ cut-offs. Griffith — 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. Griffith — Minimum 50 in each section AND 50 overall. Interview shortlist rank: 50:50 unweighted GPA (as %) + overall GAMSAT (out of 100). Final offer rank: 50% interview-selection rank + 50% GUMSAA interview… 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.

Griffith requires Bachelor/key degree with a minimum unweighted GEMSAS-schema GPA of 5.0/7.0; GAMSAT 50+ overall and 50+ in each section (valid 4 years) or MCAT 123+ in every section (valid 2 years); plus GUMSAA — an online MMI in Griffith's own terminology, but delivered as a self-scheduled recorded assessment rather than a live in-person station circuit.

Apply via GEMSAS (domestic) or direct to Griffith (international).

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. Griffith — no published cut-off. 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. Griffith — Minimum 5.0/7.0. Griffith explicitly states "a GPA required for interview selection is likely to be significantly higher than 5.0". Minimum eligibility is an unweighted GEMSAS-schema GPA of 5.0/7.0… 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.

Both Griffith and UQ 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: Griffith runs gumsaa — an asynchronous, one-way recorded online mmi delivered on the sammi (scalable automated multiple mini interviews) platform, self-scheduled within a set…; UQ runs multi-mini interview (8 stations). Mock practice tailored to each school's exact format is the highest-leverage prep.

Interview windows: Griffith interviews in Late September. For 2027 entry, a self-scheduled slot between 9am Mon 21 and 5pm Fri 25 September 2026 (AEST) — a single five-day window, not a September-October season. GEMSAS describes the window as tentative, so confirm before booking travel or leave.

Offers of interview must be accepted by 9am Friday 4 September 2026.; 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..

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

Specifics: 4-year graduate MD run in phases: Phase 1 Foundations (1.5 years) and Phase 2 Transitions (1.5 years) before the final clinical phase. Years 1-2 (Phas 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: Griffith — 2027 cycle: 208 domestic places (148 CSP + 60 BMP), of which about 80 are reserved for Griffith and UniSC Bachelor of…; 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.

Griffith: Griffith publishes the ratio rather than a conversion rate: around 200 candidates are interviewed at GUMSAA for approximately 110-120 places (2027 cycle).

Note places are not offers — top-up offers are made in later rounds to cover declines — and the final rank is a 50:50 combination of interview score and GPA/GAMSAT selection rank, so this is a cohort ratio, not an individual applicant's odds. The ~38% figure is not published by Griffith or GEMSAS. 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.

Griffith: Griffith's 4-year graduate MD is based at the Gold Coast campus (next to Gold Coast University Hospital) or the Sunshine Coast Health Institute at Birtinya.

A new Toowoomba teaching location carries 10 unencumbered CSPs from 2027, but it is not selectable at application — students who have already accepted Gold Coast or Sunshine Coast offers are invited to transfer in early November 2026. Early clinical contact in Phase 1 is through the General Practice Longitudinal Program and community placements; hospital rotations start in Year 3.

Strong rural (GURPAS) and First Peoples pathways — but neither is a separate interview stream. GURPAS gives competitive rural applicants priority access to the MD and does not itself make a place bonded; First Peoples applicants sit no GAMSAT and no GUMSAA at all, going instead to a dedicated panel interview.

Pre-interview ranking weights GAMSAT and GPA broadly equally; the MMI then carries substantial weight in the final composite.

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.