What to Consider When Preferencing GEMSAS Medical Schools
To get the most out of your GEMSAS preference list, it helps to understand how GPA, GAMSAT, and personal statement or CASPer scores interact for your specific application. Every applicant's profile has different strengths and weaknesses, so it's worth preferencing universities that are genuinely likely to notice what makes your application strong.
Beyond the purely technical factors, it's also worth remembering that medical school is a genuinely demanding course. That makes things like your university's location and its course structure real, practical considerations, not just academic ones.
A quick note on portfolios: portfolios are no longer part of any Australian medical school's application process. The University of Wollongong was the last school to remove them, phasing them out from the 2025 intake onward, a genuinely significant shift in postgraduate medical admissions in Australia. For a full, current walkthrough of the GEMSAS process, it's worth reading our comprehensive applications guide alongside this one.
This guide walks through the key things worth weighing as you build your GEMSAS preference list.
Consider the Location of Your Future Medical School
This is arguably the most important factor on this list. Medical school is a genuinely demanding course, almost certainly more intellectually taxing and time-consuming than anything most candidates have attempted before. Because of that, having a real support network nearby matters enormously, whether that's a local sports team, family and friends, or a part-time job you already have. It's completely understandable to be excited about a GEMSAS offer, but don't take the decision to move interstate lightly.
The liveability and character of wherever you'll be training is worth genuine thought too. Sydney, for instance, offers a vibrant, dense city experience but comes with a high cost of living. Some rural placement options, like the University of Melbourne's rural program in Wangaratta, offer a quieter, more intimate experience that some students find genuinely peaceful and others find isolating. There's no universally right answer here, only what suits you.
It's also worth thinking ahead to where you'd eventually like to work after graduating. This matters less than the factors above, but medical internships (the first year of paid work after graduating) are allocated state by state, and most states prioritise applicants who completed their degree within that state. Interstate applicants are typically only considered once local applicants have been processed first. This applies broadly across GEMSAS schools and undergraduate courses alike. It doesn't make an interstate internship impossible, just more competitive.
Consider the Curriculum Structure
Once you've narrowed down a location, it's worth digging into how each university's course is actually structured. Medical training isn't standardised across Australia, and while the qualification you end up with is always equivalent, the journey to get there varies meaningfully and suits different learning styles differently.
One major difference is how clinical years are structured. Some universities, the University of Sydney and University of Queensland among them, split their courses evenly between preclinical and clinical training: roughly the first half spent largely in lectures with some placements, the second half spent entirely in a clinical, hospital-based setting. Other universities, the University of Melbourne among them, condense preclinical content into a single intensive year, with the remaining years spent entirely in clinical placement. Both models have genuine strengths, and it's worth talking through the trade-offs with a current medical student or a tutor who understands the differences well.
Research requirements are another point of real difference. To award an MD (as opposed to an undergraduate MBBS), universities generally require some form of structured medical research. Some universities set aside a dedicated block of time (often toward the end of the degree) purely for a research project; others integrate research more continuously throughout the whole course. Both approaches have their advocates, and which one suits you is genuinely a matter of personal learning preference.
Consider GAMSAT and GPA Weighting
Once you've thought through location and curriculum, it's time to get into the more technical side of things: GPA and GAMSAT weighting.
A common misconception is that Weighted Average Mark (WAM) and GEMSAS GPA are essentially the same thing. They're not. While the two are correlated, GEMSAS GPA is calculated differently, and generally rewards consistency across your degree rather than simply averaging your results.
Each university calculates GPA slightly differently depending on where your undergraduate degree was completed, and understanding your own GEMSAS GPA is a genuinely important step before finalising your preferences, since it directly affects how much weight your GAMSAT score will carry in each university's ranking. A strong GPA can meaningfully offset a weaker GAMSAT score, and the reverse holds true as well.
CSP vs. BMP vs. FFP
Choosing a fee structure is one of the more technical parts of preferencing. Broadly, there are three fee types across GEMSAS schools:
CSP (Commonwealth Supported Place). If you're an Australian citizen who completed an undergraduate degree domestically, this is likely the fee type you're already familiar with. A CSP is subsidised by the government, deferrable through HECS-HELP, and generally the most competitive of the three fee types to secure.
BMP (Bonded Medical Place). Financially identical to a CSP, but conditional: you commit, before starting your degree, to spend a period of your early career working in a designated rural or remote "area of need." The specific regions covered and the length of this commitment are reviewed periodically and vary depending on government policy at the time you're admitted. BMP places are generally less competitive than CSP, since the additional obligation puts some applicants off. It's worth knowing that almost every doctor in Australia ends up spending meaningful time in a rural or regional posting at some point regardless, and that buying out of a BMP obligation entirely is possible, but tends to cost a genuinely significant sum.
FFP (Full-Fee Place). Not subsidised by the government at all, and substantially more expensive as a result, expensive enough that roughly half the total cost typically needs to be paid upfront, since it exceeds the maximum available through HECS-HELP. Where GEMSAS allows you to rank CSP, BMP, and FFP by preference, it's worth being cautious about ranking FFP highly unless you're genuinely prepared for that financial commitment.
Medical School Interview Styles
The final major factor worth considering is interview format, broadly split into MMI and traditional panel interviews.
The MMI format runs candidates through a series of short, rapid-fire stations testing communication, reasoning, and empathy under real time pressure, sometimes including questions on the Australian healthcare system specifically. It's not designed to build a long, nuanced rapport with a single interviewer, if anything, it's closer to a live cognitive test than a conversation. That structure is a genuine advantage for candidates without a particularly dramatic personal story to tell, since it rewards how you think and respond in the moment rather than the narrative arc of your life story.
That said, the MMI format is undeniably stressful for a lot of candidates. Some universities, Flinders among them, instead run a more traditional, structured panel interview: a single, longer conversation with an entire panel rather than multiple short stations. This format leans more on personality, life story, and values, with more open-ended questions, quite different from the tightly structured scenarios of an MMI. Because of that open-endedness, some candidates find panel interviews genuinely harder to prepare for systematically.
Which Universities Offer Bonuses?
A number of universities apply adjustment bonuses to GPA and GAMSAT scores under certain circumstances, most notably Deakin and ANU, with others (Griffith among them) applying bonuses tied to postgraduate qualifications specifically. These have historically included bonuses for things like financial disadvantage, a background in healthcare, general full-time work experience, rural or regional residency, being a current student or graduate of the university itself, or holding a postgraduate research qualification or PhD.
If you're eligible for bonuses like these, it's a genuine advantage in an already competitive pool. If you're not eligible, it's worth knowing you're up against applicants who are, which is all the more reason to make sure the rest of your application is as strong as it can be.
Debunking a Common Preferencing Myth
You may have heard that your preference order somehow gets shared with universities and influences whether they offer you an interview. This isn't true, and isn't really plausible either. If universities had visibility into where they sat on your preference list, it would fundamentally break the integrity of the whole system. Universities rank and select students based on their own criteria, independent of where they sit on your list.
With that in mind, when deciding your preference order, really only two things matter: whether you have a realistic shot at getting in, and whether you'd genuinely be happy attending. That's it. Avoid wasting spots on your list, and trust the process to work in your favour.
Related Articles
- Medical School Applications Process: A Comprehensive Guide — A full, current walkthrough of the GEMSAS system and recent changes across Australian medical schools.
- Types of Medical School Places in Australia — A closer look at CSP, BMP and FFP and how each affects your costs and eligibility.
- The CASPer Test Explained — What to expect from CASPer, now part of some universities' application process.
- How to Ace an MMI Interview — A deeper breakdown of MMI station types and preparation strategies.
- What Is a Panel Interview? — How panel formats work and what they assess differently from the MMI.
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