Melbourne vs UQ

UCAT-ANZ cut-offs. Melbourne — 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. Melbourne — Minimum 50 in each of the three sections. Ranking formula uses GAMSAT at 25% post-interview (MMI 50%, GPA 25%, GAMSAT 25%). Pre-interview shortlisting weights GPA and GAMSAT equally (50/50). UoM does… 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.

Melbourne requires Bachelor degree normally completed within 10 years of commencing the MD (an older degree is acceptable if a graduate diploma, masters or PhD was completed within the last 10 years), minimum weighted GPA 5.0/7.0; GAMSAT minimum 50 in EACH of the three sections for standard-pathway domestic and onshore international applicants — UoM weights the three sections equally and explicitly does not use the GAMSAT 'overall score' — or MCAT 492+ for offshore international applicants; recorded online MMI.

No prerequisite subjects.

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. Melbourne — 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. Melbourne — Minimum weighted GPA 5.0/7.0. UoM weighting formula: (Final-2 × 1 + Final-1 × 2 + Final × 2) / 5. A completed PhD — not a Masters — can earn re-ranking in the applicant's favour: it must be in a… 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 Melbourne 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: Melbourne runs recorded online multi mini-interview (rommi) — 8 stations, ~5 minutes each, recorded and asynchronous with no live interviewer; rural and north western…; UQ runs multi-mini interview (8 stations). Mock practice tailored to each school's exact format is the highest-leverage prep.

Interview windows: Melbourne interviews in September (2027 intake: rural-pathway MMIs online in the week of 7 September 2026; standard domestic and international MMIs online in the week of 14 September 2026. Interview offers go out mid-August for international and rural applicants and late August for domestic applicants); 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. Year 1 is Foundations for Clinical Practice (81.25 points): small-group clinically focused cases taken body system by body system, 4-year MD (AQF level 9) redesigned from 2023 as four year-long 16-unit courses: MEDI7100 Foundations of Medicine, MEDI7200 Developing Skills in Medici

Intake size: Melbourne — 2027 cycle (indicative): 179 CSP + 71 BMP (39 via GEMSAS + 32 via MD Rural Pathway) + up to 105 full-fee…; 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.

Melbourne: UoM does not publish interview-to-offer conversion. What is published is the hurdle: an applicant must achieve a satisfactory standard in their overall MMI score AND be above the cut-score in 5 of 8 stations to be eligible for an offer, after which the MMI carries 50% of the final ranking (70% on the rural and North Western pathways).

UoM no longer publishes a numeric minimum percentage for the overall MMI score. 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.

Melbourne: Melbourne's 4-year graduate-entry MD is based at Parkville; the AMC's 2022 report records it as the first program in Australia to award the MD. Clinical training is based at a primary clinical school: one of six metropolitan clinical schools (Austin, Epworth, Northern, Royal Melbourne, St Vincent's, Western) or the Rural Clinical School (Shepparton, Ballarat, Echuca, Wangaratta).

Pre-interview ranking weights GPA and GAMSAT equally; the recorded online MMI then carries 50% of the final offer composite against GPA 25% and GAMSAT 25%. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander applicants can enter via the Indigenous MD Student Entry Pathway, applied for directly through UoM rather than GEMSAS.

UQ: UQ's Medical School says its 4-year MD now enrols over 400 students each year (the AMC's 2022 report recorded 435 commencing in 2022); the program is 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.