Although most Australian medical schools use MMIs, each one runs it slightly differently, station counts, timing, and question focus all vary between universities.
This guide walks through how each medical school in Australia typically runs its medical interview: station numbers, timing, the types of questions you can expect, and where interviews are held. Note that exact formats change from one intake to the next, so treat this as a general starting point rather than a fixed reference, and confirm current details with each university directly.
1. Medical Interview Timing
Timing varies station by station: how long you get to respond, how long you get to read the prompt, and how much gap there is between stations. A few things worth keeping in mind as you practise:
- Know exactly how much time you're allotted before you start preparing, this shapes everything else about how you structure an answer.
- Practise with real time limits and the number of follow-up questions you're likely to face in mind, not just the content of your answer.
- Use your own internal sense of time rather than relying on a visible stopwatch, which tends to be more distracting than helpful.
- Build your ability to self-evaluate how long your own answers run, this is a skill in itself, and it's what actually lets you self-correct in real time.
2. MMI (Multiple Mini Interview) Stations
An MMI station is typically a room with one interviewer working from a set of prepared questions on a specific topic. You can expect a range of different MMI station types, including:
- Personal/motivation stations — testing why you want to study medicine specifically. See our dedicated breakdown of the motivation question for more detail.
- Ethical stations — testing your understanding of medical ethics as a prospective student.
- Topic-based stations — covering areas like public health, rural health, Indigenous health, and others. The list is genuinely long, so make sure you've got a solid grasp of these topics well before your interview.
You'll find more detail on each of these station types across Fraser's free resources. As with any guide like this, formats and emphasis shift between intakes, so use this as a foundation for your prep, not the final word on what you'll actually face.
Related Articles
- How to Ace an MMI Interview — A deeper breakdown of MMI preparation strategies.
- Navigating UG & PG Medical School Interviews in Australia — A broader guide to interview formats across universities.
- "Why Medicine?" — MMI Station Guide — A full breakdown of the motivation question.
- Medical School Interview: Ethical Scenarios — How to work through open-ended ethics stations.
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