The ANU Health Science pathway interview: 40 per cent of the score, format unpublished

ANU runs an internal route from its Bachelor of Health Science into the Doctor of Medicine and Surgery, and it is nothing like the graduate route that sits alongside it. There is no GEMSAS application, no admissions centre and no GAMSAT. You apply mid-degree, on a form ANU publishes itself, and the whole thing is decided on three components.

ANU states that "Offers to the MChD program will be based on a final weighted score derived from a student's weighted average mark (40%), interview score (40%) and selection criteria responses (20%)." The interview matches your marks for weight, and it also carries a hurdle: a pass is defined as a minimum raw interview score of 60 per cent.

Who is eligible, and when

Eligibility is measured in units rather than years, and it is measured at ANU. A student becomes eligible once they have successfully completed a minimum of 72 units, which is 12 courses, and are on track to complete a minimum of 96 units, or 16 courses, by 31 December in the year of application. Those courses must have been completed at ANU.

What ANU publishes about the interview

Very little, and it is better to say so than to fill the gap. ANU calls it the Admissions Interview, places it in early to mid-September, and publishes a scoring rule. It does not publish a format, a station count, a duration, an interviewer count, or whether the interview is held online or in Canberra.

The five written selection criteria

The remaining 20 per cent is written, and unusually, ANU publishes the actual questions. As part of the online application you submit a maximum 200-word response to each of five selection criteria, which ANU describes as the skills, knowledge and experience required for medical training that are not otherwise assessed in the admissions process.

1. Curiosity and an orientation to lifelong learning, because medical knowledge and practice are in a constant state of development.
2. Understanding the value of diverse healthcare professionals and the contributions colleagues across specialities and professions make to patient care.
3. Taking a collaborative and respectful approach to working with others, including proactively building relationships within and across teams.
4. Building or maintaining interests, relationships and activities outside medicine, as part of the self-care that makes caring for others possible.
5. A description of a time you made a mistake, the steps you took to understand what went wrong, and how you addressed it.

Those are paraphrased headings. The published wording sits in ANU's selection criteria document, updated July 2025, and it is worth reading in full before writing anything, because each criterion is framed as a statement about medical students rather than as a question.

Places, offers and what happens if you miss out

ANU publishes the size of the pathway, which is rare and useful. Up to 40 domestic students from the Bachelor of Health Science receive an MChD offer each year, and approximately 30 per cent of those places are preferentially offered to students from a rural background. International students are considered in addition to those 40, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students are considered in addition to the domestic places as well.

Preparing when the format is not published

Everything above is ANU's published information. This section is MedCoach's preparation advice, and it starts from the unusual position that the format is unknown.

Prepare for both shapes, because you cannot rule either out

An unpublished format means the honest preparation is format-agnostic. Rehearse short scenario answers of four to five minutes, which covers a station circuit, and longer conversational answers of eight to ten minutes with follow-up questions, which covers a panel. If you can do both, whichever it turns out to be is a variation rather than a surprise.

Treat the 60 per cent hurdle as the design constraint

Most interview advice optimises for the top of the range. Here the first job is clearing a floor, and floors are usually failed on basics rather than on brilliance: answers that do not address the question, answers that stop after 40 seconds, or an answer that contradicts something you wrote in your selection criteria. Get those right before working on polish.

Your written responses are live material

You submit five reflective responses months before you are interviewed, and they are part of the same assessment. Reread them the week before. The mistake you described in criterion five is exactly the sort of thing an interviewer may open with, and it should sound like the same person telling the same story.

If you are applying to ANU as a graduate instead, the ANU MChD interview guide covers the GEMSAS round and its two-part September interview. The national interview guide compares formats across Australia, and the interview offer and date guide sets out the wider 2027-entry timeline.