Author: Emma Med Mentors Founder and President | Date: 17th of May 2021

What I learned about medical school applications after doing A LOT of them:

I have applied for medical school, for double as many years as it has taken me to actually complete medical school – scary I know. For the majority of my 20’s, my life revolved around sitting GAMSATs and filling in GEMSAS applications. 

 I thought I would share what I learned during this time, to hopefully  help somebody else work out the system faster than I did. 

Alternatively watch the YouTube video versions here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw8xwVNsbQI&lc=Ugw7CRhly7WuvpAlaQV4AaABAg

 The Med Mentors Medical School Application Checklist:

If you are in final year – remember the priority this year is maintaining a great GPA

Every other step in this checklist can be repeated year, after year, after year (trust me I know). But your GPA has taken you a lot of work by the time you get to final year and you NEED it to be competitive. If you let your GPA, drop in final year because you are prioritizing your GAMSAT score and medical school applications you may end up in the growing pool of student shaving to complete a second bachelor’s degree. This is becoming a common method to definitively improve GPA enough to be successful with medical school applications in future years. Some schools do not weight the GPA as highly as GAMSAT, but don’t put all your eggs in one basket, your GPA is a vital part of your application – make it your priority. 

Sit the GAMSAT 

Your GAMSAT score is usually valid for 2 years before expiring and evaporating into thin air forever (take screenshots if you want to keep them, for you in the future). Be sure to check the current and most up to date GEMSAS guide in case there are any changes to these time frames – never rely on rumours or “that’s what they did last year”. You are able to use any valid score from a GAMSAT taken in March or September prior to applications that year. 

E.g., if you are applying for medical school admission for 2022 your valid GAMSAT scores if you have sat across multiple years are:

 March 2021 – valid

September 2020 – valid

 March 2020 – valid

 September 2019 – valid

 March 2019 – expired 

Achieve a score of 50 in each GAMSAT section + a 50 overall – often need a higher score to be competitive 

Although for many years the requirements to be able to apply for medical school are stipulated in this paragraph’s heading, this is often quite misleading.

These are the MINIMUM scores required to be able to apply to medical school. If you score an 80 in both section 2 and 3 but only a 49 in section one, it is unlikely any medical schools will accept your application.

If you score an even 50 in each section, although you will be able to apply, you will likely be ranked so low in the pool of applicants that medical schools will never even see your application.

Anywhere between 10,000-15,000 students (and growing) sitting the GAMSAT and apply to medical school in Australia each year. These student are competing for only 1731 places (2022 estimate in GEMSAS guide) (+ roughly 300 places at the university of Sydney and under 100 places at both Flinders and Monash) across the country. Unfortunately, you cannot reply on the minimum scores to be successful in a competition this intense.

The way each university uses the GAMSAT scores, and GPAs differs, from school to school and from year to year. There are no hard guidelines on what scores you need because of this.

For example, Deakin combines the scores and then adds their bonus points to them as a percentage meaning if you have a lower GPA you can make up for it with e higher GPA and vice versa.

Some schools will weight section 3 of the GAMSAT more than section 1 and 2, Melbourne University for example weights each section of the GPA equally and combines this score with a weighted GPA.

Each school’s method for these calculations will be outlined in the current GEMSAS guide and will also be spoken about at their open day where you can ask more questions. 

 Do Something to celebrate surviving the GAMSAT regardless of score

 This is a great habit to start early in your medical career. 

There is ALWAYS a next step on our journey through medical training and if you keep putting off celebrating the process, you will blink and be 80 years old and wish you took the time to enjoy each phase. Do something to celebrate surviving the GAMSAT. It’s a hard test and a big deal to sit it. Regardless of your score, regardless of if you use it to apply this year, regardless of how many times you have sat it before – celebrate it. WELL DONE!

Read the GEMSAS admission Guidebook www.gemsas.edu.au

 The process of getting into medical school is both very convoluted and incredibly competitive, do not put yourself a year or two behind because you didn’t understand the game properly. You need to understand the rules to the game if you’re aiming to win it. You’re going to want to set aside a decent amount of time to read through this guide thoroughly and make sure you grasp everything in it. Every. Single. Year. 

 If you read it last year and are applying again this year, you need to read the most up to date version as things change year to year and often quite dramatically. Do not rely on rumours, the internet, a prep course, your mum or the classic “that how they did it last year”. You can bet at least 9,000-12,000 of your competitors have this guide memorised already, and if your outdated second-hand information lets you down in the long run, you’re only letting yourself down. 

Learning objectives from reading the GEMSAS Guide:

• Key dates
• The application processes and how to apply
• GEMSAS consortium schools and their quota’s 
• CSPs, BMPs and Full fee-paying places
• Applicants in special categories
• Entry requirements
• How to calculate GPA
• International applicants
• Each school’s prerequisites, unique entry requirements and calculations, plus bonuses and points of differences in their specific applications – every university is different, and you need to know what each of your preferences requires before applying to them, both before sending in your application and before your interview
• Supporting documentation required 

Look into all of the medical school’s I am able to apply to and what makes each program unique

This doesn’t only help you with your medical school applications, but it also gets you ahead for your future interviews as well. 

Back before COVID and the era of zoom, you needed to travel to each school in person to attend their open day. I flew all over Australia and went to almost every schools open day across the many years I was applying. This was AWESOME. I got to meet so many members of staff and current students. I found out far more information this way then through what is offered on their websites. I got to speak to people about their first-hand experiences at their school and get a feel of the campuses. Nowadays on zoom at east you have access to all of the important information that might not be explicitly advertised anywhere else which will give you an advantage over those who didn’t bother to attend. Dates and links to these events are in the – you guessed it – GEMSAS guide!

We are lucky in Australia that we don’t have any bad medial schools. The Australian Medical Council is very strict with the standards it makes each school uphold to remain a viable medical program. We do not have two teared system like in America or the UK, every medical school is a Harvard or a Princeton here. Every school has the ability to make you into the best possible doctor you can be.

Each school will have lists of pros and cons about them. Try to take peoples advice on the internet or in person about each school with a grain of salt. Most pros and cons of a school relate to people’s personalities and preferences. Make sure you choose the school that fits YOU best and don’t worry what anybody else says or thinks. 

Note that each school has different requirements, student preferences, curriculums, cohort size, location of study, teaching styles, focuses, ethos and cultures. No matter what specialty or area of the world you want to practice in the future, every medical school in Australia will be able to set you up for success, ready to take on everything you want to achieve in medicine. 

I would like to note that many students take the location of a medical school into account. This is of course an important component of your school selection, but you should be aware that in medicine you are required to do a LOT of moving. If you are not prepared to move for medical school, reconsidering medicine might be wise as none of us escape being relocated during our training programs and in the future. There will only be increasing requirements for all of us to do part of our specialty training in rural areas, as the rural doctor’s crisis continues to worsen. Be prepared for this. Often the more moving around you do the more varied and wonderful your experiences and teaching will evolve to be.  

What to look into: you might decide the only medical school you want to apply to is Melbourne university as you prefer to live in the in Melbourne or the inner suburbs and not move to Deakin, Monash or interstate universities as they are too far away. Only to be successful in your admission to Melbourne and end up in Ballarat for your clinical training with the Deakin and University of Notre Dame students anyway. Look into the full program, not just where your first year of medical school will be. Our next article will be looking at ‘Moving for Medicine’, keep an eye out!

 Make a short list of 6 GEMSAS schools +/- University of Sydney, Flinders and Monash – based on the medical school program, location, culture, curriculum and prerequisites

At this stage, just make a rough list of the top schools you’d be interested in attending. Maybe attach a pros and cons list for each school to help you rank them when you are ready. 

Email or call each of the universities on your shortlist and ask them for this years or last year’s cut-off marks for GAMSAT and GPA – share this information with friends

This step is optional. You don’t NEED to know all of the GAMSAT, and GPA cut offs to apply to the schools you have your heart set on. We don’t want you to decide against applying to one of your favourite schools because you’re scared you won’t meet their cut offs. But if knowing each school’s cut offs is important to you and will help you rank schools that you have an equal preference or give you some sort of peace of mind during this stressful process – just reach out to each school and ask them. I emailed and called every school I was applying to and popped all the info into a spread sheet each year. The cut offs really fluctuate from year to year so don’t rely on outdated resources. Share the load with your peers or study group and split up the task and assign different people to contact specific schools and make a joint google doc with all the information for this year. 

Order your shortlist based on the preference of schools you hope to be accepted at

All of the schools you have in your GEMSAS application (and any schools you apply to directly – Flinders, Sydney and Monash) create a possibility for you studying medicine at them. If you really don’t want to move interstate, don’t apply interstate. Only apply to the schools you genuinely would be ecstatic to receive an acceptance letter from. 

Once you have done your research and have come to a pretty good idea of where you think you will fit in best and which school caters to your type of learning style and interests you need to rank your preferences accordingly. Each year students try to play the system and work out ways to get ahead and outsmart the algorithms. And each year strange things occur that you could have never predicted that throw a screw in the works. 

For example, my first preference the year I got into medical school was Deakin. I received an offer for interview at my third preference, Notre Dame University, which I was THRILLED about.  A few days before my Notre Dame interview, I was called by GEMSAS and told there was an error with about 15 applications and many of us were meant to be interviewing at Deakin but had missed the interview by mistake. We were able to interview for Deakin at our lower preference schools or sit a new interview that would be help in 2 weeks time for those who experienced the error. I did my Deakin Interview at Notre Dame. Then finally got accepted to my dream medical school. Things like this happen every year and you can never predict it.

The best thing you can do is apply in the order of preference you genuinely want. 

I put Deakin first despite being SURE I would never have high enough grades to be accepted there. I was CONVINCED I would never get into Deakin, and here I am. Whereas one of my peers put Deakin as their last preference and had much higher score than I did, and she has been loving every minute of her Deakin experience as well. So PLEASE, just order them in your genuine preference and trust the system will work out the way it is supposed to. 

Decide if you would be happy to apply for a BMP

Bonded Medical School schemes are not new, they have been around for over a decade and have seen many revisions to them over the years. 

Basically, there are a number of offers you can receive from different medical schools. All medical school offer a certain quote of CSPs, BMPs and selected schools also offer full fee-paying places. 

CSPs: Commonwealth Supported Places – the same as any other university degree, goes on your HECS and nothing else to worry about. Some schools let you preference CSPs most highly, other universities reserve them for students with the highest scores. 

BMPs: Bonded Medical Places – also goes on your HECS but you must sign a contract when you begin medical school to promise you will complete a return of service (RoS) once you are a doctor in a rural area.

There are many different versions of these contracts going around. Every few years the government shuffles around and the person in charge of fixing the rural doctor crisis always walks in and thinks that these schemes are the answer. When, historically, we have seen that they are a huge flop.

Most students end up paying out the thousands of dollars behind this contract, so they don’t have to fulfil their rural service obligation as they have set up their lives and career in a metropolitan area.

So far, the government has tried changing the number of years you are required to serve from 1-6 years. I have friends with a 6-year return of service contract, I myself have a 1-year contract and for those applying for medical school this year currently the contract requires a 3-year return of service. 

I personally LOVE my BMP. I was always hoping to go rural in my career, so it doesn’t bother me at all. It also gains me a preference for the prestigious John Flynn placements, scholarships, conference places and discounts, extra points in some training program application positions in the future and then even more points after completing the rural year, if I wanted to come back to a metro area for my training. 

For those of us with only 1-year BMP’s it will be almost impossible for any of us not to pay this back without even trying as all training programs three days require time training in rural areas as mandated by the government to help with the rural doctor crisis. 

For those of you considering if the 3-year contract will be too much for you, as the crisis is getting worse the requirements throughout your training to do rural stints are only going to increase. It will not be as hard as it sounds to tick these 3 years off and they may very well be the best time you have in your training as well. But you need to consider how this will effect your personal life and your career very carefully. 

Some contracts give you 18 years after completing medical school or from the time you become a consultant to complete these RoS years. Most of the contracts allow you to pay them back in rotation blocks instead of a solid year at a time. For example, if you do 8 weeks per year in a rural area (which is very common in most training pathways) this will be contributing to this return of service. 

Every contract is different from year to year and there is a new “opt in” contract floating around with updates to existing contracts as well. So please read the updated agreement carefully (current link found in the GEMSAS guidebook) to help guide your decision.

Another perk to rural training for those who are still keen on staying metro, many rural training posts give you a grater hands on and one-on-one teaching experience with top consultants for metropolitan area’s which could land you better references for your following year or for your training program applications than your metro-counter parts. We will have more articles this year about the perks of rural placements in medicinal school and rural career pathways. 

For me I love the culture in rural areas. Outer urban training hubs are endlessly supportive and encouraging no matter what type of doctor you are aiming to become, rural medicine will help you be the best you can be. It is more flexible, more hands on and more dedicated to creating an environment that works for you, to encourage you stay. You also get paid more, there are a lot of bonuses and scholarships to help you relocate and buy your first house. Not to mention how rewarding it is to be able to serve our most underserved patients and provide the healthcare every Australian deserves. I highly recommend falling in love and planning to make the most of the BMP option!

Full fee-paying places: you need to pay the entire contribution to your medical school program, no HECS, and often you need to make big payments upfront. You can look into Military scholarships if you are willing to accept one of these places but are not in the financial situation to do so. A Military scholarship will pay for all of your fee’s, no debt to pay back in the future and give you thousands of dollars a year during med school to support you financially. You just need to complete a return of service for the amount of years they paid for your course +1 as an Military, Navy or Air Force doctor in the future. Universities who offer these places often fill thee spots first so don’t put down you will take one of these places if you can’t realistically pay for it, as you will not be given another offer in this cycle otherwise. 

Apply before the closing deadline – do something to celebrate this amazing step 

Get your application ready to submit early. 

Have time to proofread everything in it, particularly if you are applying to portfolio schools. Send a copy to your parents, your friends, your mentors and get them to proofread everything for you if you can. This often makes a big difference. 

Make sure you set up your application with an email address you check regularly. There was a year that a lot of the applications had a glitch and all the font within them somehow became illegible. They emailed those affected weeks later, asking them to re-submit their entire application. I of course was one of these lucky individuals, but it occurred while I was very burnt out running my honours experiments and starting my thesis and I had set it up with an email I didn’t check regularly and didn’t expect to be contacted outside the key dates. SO sadly, I missed the deadline to re-submit completely. I was devastated to find out after sitting the GAMSAT, spending the time and money on my application, I had been kicked out of the pool of applicants for that year, and was not offered even offered a refund. Pro tip: Make a copy of your application and check you emails regularly. 

Once it is submitted do something for yourself to celebrate regardless of the outcome. 

This is a HUGE and momentous occasion sending in your medical school applications. Celebration time!

Congratulations

AND GOOD LUCK!!!

Emma + The Med Mentors Team