Medical schools love to attract TWO groups of students: they pull out the red carpet for (a) Rural students and (b) Very high ATAR students. Why? The real reason (not the one stated on their websites) is that the universities benefit directly and indirectly. If they recruit rural students, universities get significantly more funding from the government than they would if they recruit city students. If they recruit very high ATAR students, they benefit in many ways. First, their university ranking will go up: and universities will do anything to improve their ranking. There is tremendous competition between universities to attract...

No, in fact, it is far lower. People assume that because the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne have a certain limited number of places for their “guaranteed entry” scheme (for which the minimum ATAR required is 99.90 or 99.95) the median ATAR of medical students at such universities must be very high. This is a myth and is completely untrue. The University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne have about 300+ places each in their graduate entry programs and only about 10% of places are from the guaranteed entry stream. The rest of the places are generally...

A brief comparison of studying medicine at UNSW or Usyd for 2014 onwards.   Whilst the release of final ATAR results may still be a while away, it is important for high achieving students to consider now whether they would choose to study medicine at UNSW or Usyd. Below is a simple and concise outline of what each of the UNSW medicine and Usyd medicine pathways, respectively, entail.   What has changed? Usyd will change from awarding MBBS to MD or Doctor of Medicine. The change to MD has not yet been finalised – it requires approval from the University of...