There are two 'pathways' for getting into Medicine. There is an Undergraduate pathway and a Postgraduate pathway. The Undergraduate pathway means that after High School you go straight into Medicine. The Postgraduate pathway means that you do a university degree first and then you transfer into Medicine. I think that some universities that offer Undergraduate pathways have different requirements. I'll talk about the UNSW undergraduate requirements since that's the one I know best.
Undergraduate Pathway into Medicine for UNSW:
- Requires a very competitive ATAR (Apparently the median ATAR for UNSW Medicine students in 2016 or 2015 was like 99.6 or something like that)
- Requires a competitive UMAT score. The UMAT is essentially a 3 hour test you need to take to be considered for Undergraduate Medicine. It occurs around school trials (July) and it focusses on your logical reasoning/problem solving, understanding people emotions and non-verbal reasoning (i.e. finding patterns in shapes).
- Requires a good interview. You'll be offered an interview once your UMAT and Estimated ATAR are released if they are high enough. Once you actual ATAR is released and it's good, you'll be offered a second interview.
Other undergraduate medicine universities I think include University of Newcastle, Western Sydney University, and James Cook University. I think they have different requirements to UNSW. For example, I think in University of Newcastle, you need a score of at least 50 in each section of the UMAT to even be considered.
Postgraduate
- You do a degree first
- You do the GAMSAT (6 hour test) and then you transfer to Medicine once you finish your other degree. Your average University mark must also be high as well.
Also, note that if you get an ATAR of 99.95, USyd may give you guaranteed entry into Postgraduate Medicine without doing the GAMSAT. You still have to do some other degree first though. And you also need to do well in their interview before being offered this 'special guaranteed entry' into their Postgraduate Medicine program.
Yeah I know, Medicine looks really demanding to get in but just believe that you can do it
Hopefully my information was correct lol.