There are 30 medical schools across Australia and New Zealand. You can apply to as many as you like. In Western Australia Curtin, UWA and Notre Dame universities all offer medical degree courses and UWA also offers dentistry.
- Curtin is the only WA university that accepts students straight from high school.
- UWA wants you to have a degree first, but you can apply for an assured place directly from school. Successful applicants who gain an Assured Pathway place will commence UWA undergraduate studies and progress to their postgraduate medical degree without the need to sit a graduate admissions test or undergo further interviews.
- Notre Dame requires students to do a degree, and get great results first, and they have a Graduate Admissions Test and interview as part of their application.
What can you do now?
- Make sure you are doing physics and chemistry for your ATAR and that you achieve a great English score.
- Study hard: You will need an ATAR of 99 to get into the UWA Assured Pathway and you will need an outstanding ATAR for Curtin.
All universities have career counsellors to provide information and support to students. This is a free service and you don’t have to enrol at the university after you have met with the counsellor.
- Contact the universities to find:
- If you qualify for bonus ATAR points: Step Up Curtin, Broadway UWA
- About pre-medicine at Notre Dame and think about if you will enrol in that as an undergraduate subject.
- About Curtin’s high school support for rural medicine candidates
- About Curtin’s Indigenous Pre Medicine
- Alternative courses to medicine. You may be interested in pure medical research or medical engineering for example.
How you can build your chances of being offered a place
Thousands of students apply for medicine each year. They all have good scores on ATAR or the equivalent test in whatever State or country they are from. Most don’t get in.
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- UWA has published the Inherent Requirements they are looking for in medical students. Curtin also has Inherent Requirements.
- Get a job or volunteer in a health-related field. You will be able to use your experiences in the Multiple Mini Interviews and in the folio that Notre Dame requires of applicants.
Next year
- Go to the medicine information sessions that the universities run in April/May. If you can’t attend in person, look for them online.
- Enrol in March to do the University Clinical Admissions Test UCAT which is run in July and start working on the practice tests on the site.
- Check different universities for how they rank students. Generally, you will be shortlisted for an interview based on your ATAR worth 60% of your application and your UCAT will be worth 40%. (Find more about Multiple Mini Interviews in this post.)
- Apply for medicine through the normal TISC process.
- Submit your predicted ATAR to Curtin in October.
Find more information at Getting Into Medicine WA for 2023 AND So you want to be a doctor.