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In several programs, demonstrably. General surgery cut its intake from 121 to 54 in one year 1; dermatology went from 39 entry places in 2023 to 18 full-time in 2026 2; RACGP cancelled its 2027 second round because the main round filled 3. Meanwhile Australian graduate output doubled between 2007 and 2020 6.
Stop arguing about vibes — three programs published the contraction. RACS: general surgery appointments fell from 121 in 2024 to 54 in 2025, and total SET applications across all nine specialties fell 955 to 668, down 30.1% year on year 1. ACD: entry positions went 39 plus one part-time in 2023, 35 in 2024, 26 in 2025, to 18 full-time plus 2 part-time in 2026, with WA taking zero two years running 2. RACGP filled every place in its 2027 main round and cancelled the second round entirely 3, after 1,110 eligible applicants missed out in 2026 7.
On the supply side, Australian medical graduate production doubled from 1,544 in 2007 to 3,066 in 2020 6, and there were roughly 1,100 unaccredited registrars in NSW public hospitals alone as of 2019, likely more now 6. More graduates, flat or falling training places: that is the bottleneck, and it is arithmetic rather than opinion.
But "harder" is not uniform. RANZCP intake fell and posts go unfilled 5. Psychiatry and parts of pathology remain attainable while surgery and dermatology tighten. The specialty-level answer matters more than the national one.
What is genuinely not published is the number everyone wants: how long the median person now waits, or what share of people who ever try never get on. No college publishes median PGY at acceptance. The only attempt-level data in the country is ASPS's, and it says 31.45% of plastics applicants were selected across 2020–2024 against a three-attempt cap 4.
Counter-argument. Consultants who trained in an easier era are unreliable narrators of the current one — and so are the people currently stuck in it. Both are visible in the threads, and neither has the data 8.
r/ausjdocs — community view, not policy; verbatim, cautionary beside positive where both exist, every quote linked to the comment.
I think this is the one positive aspect of 3 strikes rules for training programs, you know you need to move on after your 3 attempts are up.
Yes it is broken. The bottleneck is real and it's only growing. More medical students does not equal more specialists when you don't also increase the number of training places.
When I left uni I got a reg job 18 months out. This wasn't unheard of.
Yes it's harder to get into training.
Asked 5 times on r/ausjdocs (title-regex count) · encoded by hand from the numbered sources, retrieved 12 Sept 2026; no AI wrote any of it. how the count was made
asked_count = posts in r_ausjdocs_posts.jsonl (19,145 posts, 2022-09-13 to 2026-09-12) whose title matches /(harder|tougher|more difficult|worse).{0,60}(get on|training|competitiv)|training.{0,50}(harder|broken|gotten worse)|(is|has).{0,30}training.{0,30}(broken|harder)/i. Quotes are the top-scoring comments in the 'is training broken' and 'has it got harder' threads; an AI-generated comment quoting average-consultant-age figures was deliberately excluded as unsourced.