UQ vs Wollongong

UCAT-ANZ cut-offs. 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… Wollongong — no published cut-off.

GAMSAT cut-offs. 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… Wollongong — Minimum 50 overall, no section below 50. Minimum 50 overall with no individual section score below 50.

For 2027 entry GAMSAT is a pure qualifying hurdle: "GAMSAT score will not be used in ranking for…

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.

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.

Wollongong requires Bachelor degree (AQF7+, at least 3 years FTE) with a weighted GPA of 5.5/7.0 or above at the time of interview selection — a minimum-eligibility hurdle, not a competitive score; UOW publishes no competitive GPA. GEMSAS weighting: final year x3, final-1 x2, final-2 x1.

GAMSAT minimum 50 overall with no section below 50 (international applicants may instead use MCAT 495 overall, no section below 123). Casper required. 8-station live online MMI. Rural Entry and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander pathways available.

ATAR. 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… Wollongong — no published cut-off.

Graduate-entry GPA. 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.

Wollongong — Offers to applicants finishing a degree in 2026 are "conditional on maintenance of the minimum required weighted GPA of 5.5", and qualifying degrees used in the GPA calculation "must be completed by…

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 UQ and Wollongong 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: UQ runs multi-mini interview (8 stations); Wollongong runs live online multiple mini interview (8 stations, live interviewers) — 2027 entry. Mock practice tailored to each school's exact format is the highest-leverage prep.

Interview windows: UQ interviews 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.; Wollongong in September — 2027 entry: the week commencing 17 September 2026, with interview offers released in early September.

(International and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander pathway applicants are interviewed in rolling rounds from late March to late September instead.).

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

Specifics: 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 4-year graduate MD. Four-year graduate MD, each academic year about 42 weeks. Phase 1 (18 months) is campus-based with some community placements, at W

Intake size: UQ — 2027 graduate intake: 107 CSP + 43 BMP + up to 190 international = up to 340 across the GEMSAS graduate route…; Wollongong — 2027 cycle: 37 Unbonded CSP + 30 CSP Rural End-to-End + 27 BMP + 15 International = ~109 total (GEMSAS UOW).

A larger cohort means more peer breadth; a smaller cohort means more tutor contact.

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. Wollongong: UOW does not publish interview-to-offer conversion, and no official source supports a numeric figure.

GEMSAS does record one qualitative pattern: "In the past, the majority of eligible Rural Entry Pathway applicants who selected the UOW MD program as their first preference in their GEMSAS application were successful in interviewing and receiving an offer to study medicine at UOW." That statement is specific to rural-origin first-preference applicants and is not a published conversion rate.

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.

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.

Wollongong: Wollongong was established with an explicit rural and regional workforce mission. A minimum of 55 of the 94 domestic places for 2027 entry are ring-fenced for the Rural Entry Pathway — 32 of the 54 Rural-Regional Combined Track places, 6 of the 10 Health Access Stream places and 17 of the 30 Rural End-to-End places.

UOW's bonus guide puts the realised figure higher: "generally 60-80% of students in each cohort come from a rural background."

UOW also runs a NSW Rural Resident Interview Guarantee: applicants with demonstrated rural origin in NSW who select UOW first in GEMSAS and meet all minimum admission requirements are guaranteed an interview — but only if they also apply for Bonus 1 and Bonus 8 on the UOW MD Admissions Bonus Form and nominate for the guarantee under Bonus 8.

Year 3 includes a longitudinal integrated clerkship in a regional/rural community.