Macquarie vs UNSW

UCAT-ANZ cut-offs. Macquarie — no published cut-off. UNSW — UNSW publishes a hard minimum: UCAT ANZ 50th percentile or above for General, Gateway, Lateral and international entry, and 40th percentile or above for the Rural Entry Admission Pathway. It…

GAMSAT cut-offs. Macquarie — Minimum 50 overall, 50 in each section. Used at 50% weight (alongside 50% GPA) for interview shortlist. Minimum 50 overall and 50 in each of the three sections, sat within four years of intended… UNSW — 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.

Macquarie requires AQF Level 7 bachelor degree (or NOOSR-recognised equivalent) completed within 10 years of intended enrolment; minimum weighted GPA 5.0/7.0, or WAM 65, to be considered for interview; GAMSAT minimum 50 overall AND 50 in each of the three sections, sat within four years of intended enrolment (domestic applicants and international applicants residing in Australia or New Zealand) — international applicants residing outside Australia may submit MCAT 500+ instead, within three years; satisfactory Multiple Mini Interview performance; IELTS 7.0 overall with 7.0 in every band where English proficiency is not met through prior study.

Human anatomy and human physiology are assumed knowledge, not prerequisites. Macquarie states that "interview opportunity and offers are competitive, meeting minimum requirements does not guarantee offer of admission". (2027 entry.).

UNSW requires Minimum eligibility ATAR 96.00 without EAS adjustment (91.00 for the Rural Entry Admission Pathway and the Gateway Entry Scheme) plus a UCAT ANZ result at or above the 50th percentile (40th for rural); these are hurdles, not competitive marks. English Standard assumed knowledge only - no maths, chemistry or biology prerequisite.

Selection concludes with a structured interview with two interviewers.

ATAR. Macquarie — no published cut-off. UNSW — Minimum eligibility ATAR 96.00 without EAS adjustment (General and international); 91.00 without adjustment for the Rural Entry Admission Pathway and the Gateway Entry Scheme. For 2026 entry UNSW…

Graduate-entry GPA. Macquarie — Minimum 5.0/7.0 (or WAM 65). Minimum weighted GPA 5.0/7.0, or WAM 65, to be considered for interview; weighted 50% for the shortlist and 50% again for the offer. GEMSAS notes only that "entry is… UNSW — 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.

Macquarie uses MMI (Multiple Mini Interview — Macquarie's published 2027 admission guides describe four short stations of up to 8 minutes each, with a different…); UNSW uses Panel (Structured interview with two interviewers (not an MMI)). These two formats reward different skills — MMI emphasises breadth, station-recovery and structured answers under time pressure, while Panel rewards depth and consistency.

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

Interview windows: Macquarie interviews in Domestic: one fixed Saturday — 26 September 2026 for 2027 entry, face-to-face on the Macquarie campus (no alternative date or online option). International: three videoconference rounds in June, August and October 2026 (Macquarie's 2027 international guide timeline graphic says July, August and October, inconsistently with its own requirements table).

Indigenous Australian Pathway: July, August or October, in person or online.; UNSW in November (Rural Entry Admission Pathway), mid-December (Lateral Entry, one interview day), and December-January (General and Gateway), with a final mid-January round for NZ applicants with late results.

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

Specifics: 4-year MD taught within Macquarie University Health; foundations and systems-based units in years 1-2, core clinical placements in year 3 and advanced 6-year Bachelor of Medical Studies / Doctor of Medicine, 288 units of credit, taught in three vertically integrated phases. Phase 1 (years 1-2): scena

Intake size: Macquarie — 2027: ~60 full-fee domestic + ~20 international; UNSW — The AMC's February 2024 UNSW accreditation report records a government-set quota of 198 domestic commencing students and a Faculty-agreed quota of 100…. A larger cohort means more peer breadth; a smaller cohort means more tutor contact.

Macquarie: Not published — Macquarie releases no interview-to-offer conversion data, and no admissions centre or accredited body publishes one for this programme. UNSW: Not published by UNSW.

For scale only: UNSW offers approximately 350 General Entry interview places a year, plus about 60 Gateway and 30 Lateral, against the domestic commencing quota of 198 recorded by the AMC in 2024 - shared across all entry schemes.

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.

Macquarie: Every place in the Macquarie MD is full-fee — for 2027 entry it is the only GEMSAS graduate-entry medical school whose quota table shows no Commonwealth Supported Places and no Bonded Medical Places at all (indicative 2027 domestic fee AUD $90,200 for a standard full-time year, reviewed annually, FEE-HELP eligible) and is co-located with Macquarie University Hospital; core clinical placements begin in year 3, with earlier years built on foundations and systems-based units.

Small cohort (~60) gives a high-touch teaching model. Selection is purely academic until interview: on the standard pathway, 50% weighted GPA + 50% GAMSAT/MCAT for the shortlist, then 50% weighted GPA + 50% MMI for offers.

There is no portfolio, CV, Casper or work-experience score at any stage — the only non-academic document is a supplementary form acknowledging the programme's requirements, which is not scored. Rural applicants, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander applicants and Macquarie Bachelor of Clinical Science graduates each receive an automatic 3% bonus on the weighted GPA (5% maximum in combination).

The Indigenous Australian Pathway works differently: GAMSAT is optional and both interview and offer decisions are made case by case with Walanga Muru.

UNSW: UNSW runs a 6-year direct-entry Bachelor of Medical Studies / Doctor of Medicine (BMed MD): two foundation years, a clinical third year, a dedicated research fourth year (Independent Learning Project or Medicine Honours) and two final clinical years.

Four schemes sit alongside general entry - the Rural Entry Admission Pathway (ATAR 91.00, UCAT ANZ 40th percentile, end-to-end study at Port Macquarie or Wagga Wagga), the Gateway Entry Scheme for low-SES applicants (~20 offers), the Lateral Entry Scheme from the UNSW BMedSc (up to 10 offers) and the Indigenous Entry Scheme via Nura Gili.

Interview shortlisting uses selection rank and UCAT ANZ total score only; the final rank then adds a structured two-interviewer interview score. UNSW states it does not disclose the ranking algorithm and does not average the three components.