Monash vs UNSW

UCAT-ANZ cut-offs. Monash — Domestic Direct Entry only (international applicants sit ISAT). Monash publishes its December-round interview cut-offs.

On the current three-subtest /2700 scale, 2026 entry cleared at 2380 (94th… 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. Monash — Not required and not accepted on any Monash pathway - both Graduate Entry pages state applicants are not required to sit the GAMSAT, and Direct Entry has never used it. Monash publishes no date for… 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.

Monash requires Direct Entry (domestic): school-leavers only - Year 12 completed no more than two years earlier and NO commenced tertiary study (Certificate IV and above disqualifies). Minimum ATAR 90 (2026-entry lowest offers: 96.10 standard, 95.05 ERC, 91.25 BMP); VCE English (study score 35 EAL or 30 non-EAL) and Chemistry (30) prerequisites, Biology not required; UCAT-ANZ; MMI.

Monash states the three components - ATAR aggregate (including adjustment factors), UCAT-ANZ total and MMI - are equally weighted. Direct Entry (international): ISAT (170 overall, 165 per section) instead of UCAT-ANZ, with published equivalents of VCE 97.50 / IB 39.

Graduate Entry (domestic): a nominated Monash degree (Bachelor of Biomedical Science, Pharmacy (Hons), Physiotherapy (Hons), or Bachelor of Science with five specified units) or Federation University's Bachelor of Biomedical Science (Gippsland Partnership Program), WAM ≥ 70, ranked on WAM 40% + MMI 60%; at least 70% of places are reserved for Monash Bachelor of Biomedical Science graduates.

Graduate Entry (international): any internationally recognised bachelor degree with significant, broad biomedical science content at GPA ≥ 6.0/7.0. No GAMSAT and no SJT on any pathway; Graduate Entry applicants can be considered only twice, and the MMI may be attended only once per course.

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. Monash — Direct Entry minimum eligibility ATAR 90. Monash publishes lowest-offer ATARs rather than a competitive cut-off: for 2026 entry the lowest ATAR to receive an offer was 96.10 (standard School Leaver… 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. Monash — Graduate Entry (domestic): minimum WAM 70 to be eligible, but Monash publishes the non-DRL WAM cut-off to be INVITED TO INTERVIEW - 82.313 for 2026 entry (81.179 for 2025, 80.313 for 2024, 82.386 for… 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.

Monash uses MMI (Multiple Mini Interview, online via Zoom (6 stations × 8 min interview + 2 min reading; 4 stations for international applicants)); 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, Monash is the better fit.

Interview windows: Monash interviews in Direct Entry December-January; Graduate Entry September (2027-entry cycle); 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: Both pathways award the same degree, Bachelor of Medical Science and Doctor of Medicine, and share the same four clinical schools. Direct Entry (5 yea 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: Monash — Direct Entry (Clayton): approximately 234 domestic places, inclusive of 30 Extended Rural Cohort and approximately 67 Bonded Medical Program places; 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.

Monash: Monash does not publish an interview-to-offer conversion rate. It does publish round volumes: for 2026 entry it made 192 December interview offers to Victorian-based non-DRL applicants and 193 to Dean's Rural List applicants, before two further interview rounds in January, against approximately 234 domestic places - so more applicants are interviewed than there are places.

January-round interview volumes are not published, so no conversion percentage can be stated. 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.

Monash: Monash says it is the only Victorian university offering both a direct-entry school-leaver pathway and a graduate-entry pathway to the SAME degree - Bachelor of Medical Science and Doctor of Medicine.

Direct Entry (M6011) is 5 years from Clayton on equally weighted ATAR + UCAT-ANZ + MMI; Graduate Entry (M6018) is 4 years with Year A at Monash Rural Health Churchill, selected on WAM 40% + MMI 60% with no admission test.

DOMESTIC graduate entry is closed to outside graduates - only nominated Monash degrees plus Federation University's Gippsland Partnership Bachelor of Biomedical Science qualify - but INTERNATIONAL graduate entry is open to any recognised bachelor degree with substantial biomedical content.

Direct Entry interviews run in three rounds: a first round in December ranked on UCAT-ANZ alone (Dean's Rural List applicants, then Victorian-based non-DRL applicants), a second round in January for Victorian and DRL applicants ranked on equally weighted UCAT-ANZ and ATAR aggregate, and a third January round for applicants who completed Year 12 interstate or overseas.

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.