Melbourne vs. Monash Medicine: Should I Study Medicine at Monash or Melbourne University?

Melbourne or Monash for medicine? That is the question.

It's a question often asked by aspiring med students: 'should I study medicine at Melbourne or Monash?' To help you make up your own mind, we've compiled a clear, concise and simple breakdown of each of the available medicine pathways at Melbourne and Monash. For a comparison of UCAT against the GAMSAT please see the following article: 'UCAT or GAMSAT? which is harder? which is easier?'.

In summary, Medicine via UCAT at Monash is far better for the students and their parents, but GAMSAT route at Melbourne is better for the university.

Monash University Doctor of Medicine

duration: 5 years

full time fees: CSP approx. $11,000 AUD p/a total

min. course cost: approx $ 55,000 AUD

• total places available: approx. 240 for domestic students
• CSP (Commonwealth supported place): approx. 140
• ERC (Extended Rural Cohort): approx. 30
• BMP (Bonded Medical Places): approx. 60
• Full fee places: none.

The University of Melbourne Medicine

duration: 4 years graduate full time + 3 years undergraduate full time = Minimum of 7 years full time total

cost: see outline below. 

Most students do an honours or Masters or other advanced degrees before entering med, so the cost is higher.

Bio-medicine or Science undergrad

Duration: 3 years full time fees: CSP approx. $11,000 AUD p/a

total min. course cost: approx. $33,000 AUD

• satisfactory completion of necessary subjects.
• you will also be required to complete 'breadth subjects' many of these are not specifically relevant to a career in medicine , but they are fees that you will nonetheless be required to pay.

Entry into science/ biomed is based on your ATAR only.

• biomed. science: 95
• science: 85

other important things to note:

• Completion Biomedicine degree does NOT offer automatic entry into medicine: in fact less than 20% get in (even Careers Advisers are unaware of this)
• The Federal Government prevents Australian universities from charging full fee for undergraduate university places. Thus, in order to make greater profits from full-fee paying students, universities must do so by creating a graduate pathway entry system.
• Monash won't let you transfer once you have commenced an undergraduate degree elsewhere. So should you choose to re-sit the UCAT a second time, because regardless of your score, you will be ineligible for Monash medicine if you have commenced an undergraduate degree elsewhere.
• Only the first 2 years of medicine at Monash are at the Clayton campus. The rest consist of clinical programs conducted at a variety of hospitals and other health service clinics.
• To be eligible for medicine at Melbourne, there are no pre-requisite courses from 2022, so you can do any first degree. Their Bio-med degree popularity has been waning and the relative demand into med at UniMelb has been waning too, so they have taken this step of opening up entry to all (most students/parents far prefer the direct entry at Monash).

The above is an interpretive table of the Melbourne and Monash models' for medicine by MedEntry. For more detailed, accurate and official information please see the respective Monash and Melbourne university websites. The information above is relevant to and intended for Australian domestic students only.

This issue is explored further in the following blog: (essential reading!)

https://www.medentry.edu.au/blog/medicine-at-monash-or-melbourne

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