How to Apply and Lodge your Application - Local Applicants

Important dates for entry in 2009

There are a number of steps that need to be completed by the dates specified below to fulfil the requirements of the UNSW Medicine admission process. For further information on the admission process, please see the section "Selection Criteria".

UNSW Medicine Application Form

Applicants are required to submit a UNSW Medicine Application Form, which includes questions on why they want to study medicine at UNSW, details of their relevant personal qualities and skills, their non-academic interests and activities and a brief description of their life experience. For students sitting their final high school exams in 2008 schools will be asked to comment on the school-related activities and achievements, and also be asked to submit predicted HSC (or equivalent) results.

Please note that the information in this form is not used to select applicants for interview (with the exception of the school’s prediction of exam results). The information is used to set the context of the applicant’s interview. For more information on the interview, please see the following section on Selection Criteria.

The UNSW Medicine Application Form became available on the Faculty’s website on 3 March 2008 and must be submitted to the Faculty before an interview can take place.

Special information for non-New South Wales applicants

Applicants who live outside of New South Wales are usually not interviewed until late January. The primary reason for this arrangement is to save almost all non-New South Wales applicants from the very significant time and expense of travellling interstate for an interview. The background and details of how the process of late interviews works are explained below.

Since implementing an interview as part of the selection process, UNSW Medicine's experience is that the preference for almost all interstate applicants is to enter a medical school in their home state. Most applicants apply to UNSW Medicine just in case they are not offered a place in a medical school closer to home. As a result, fewer than 5% of interstate applicants who attend an interview eventually enrol in our course.

The process we have developed allows an interstate applicant to have the opportunity to have UNSW Medicine as a preference, and yet not be required to attend an interview at UNSW unless they do not obtain a place in their home state medical school. This process means that almost all interstate applicants will be saved from attending an interview at UNSW Medicine.

The process works as follows:

1. Applicants are selected for the main round (late September) and late round (early January) for interviews at UNSW. Interstate applicants are selected along with all other applicants, but are not scheduled for either of these rounds of interviews.

2. The outcome of the first round of offers for places in interstate medical schools will be known about January 21, 2009.

3. For those applicants who were selected for an interview at UNSW in either the main or second round of interviews and have not been offered a place in a more preferred medical school, they will be offered an interview at UNSW in late January.

4. Applicants interviewed in late January will be subject to exactly the same interview and process as those interviewed early.

5. If the results of their interview, together with their academic and UMAT results, exceed the cutoff that was required for entry into UNSW Medicine in the main round of offers, they will be offered a place in the UNSW Medicine course in the late round of offers. (UNSW Medicine puts places aside for these late round offers.)

6. It must be stressed that applicants interviewed in late January will not be disadvantaged in any way in this process.