← all questions · Getting onto training · General Surgery guide
RACS selects, not the hospital. Register college-wide in January, apply to the specialty in February, and clear the gates first: PR or citizenship, general registration, a GSSE pass, 26 weeks of general surgery and 8 weeks of critical care 12. Then rank top 50% to be interviewed 1. 2026 intake: 195 applications, 50 offers 3.
The gates, in order. Australian or NZ citizenship/PR at selection registration, and general unconditional AHPRA registration — provisional or limited is disqualifying 2. One RACS-wide registration opens around 6 January and closes about 30 January at 12 noon AEDT, A$655, no extensions, and you cannot add a specialty afterwards 2. For general surgery in the 2026 selection period (2027 intake), applications opened 18 February and closed 19 March, and the GSSE must be passed by application close 1. Rotations: 26 weeks of general surgery in blocks of at least 8 continuous weeks on one unit, plus 8 weeks of critical care, inside a roughly four-year window; a term counts as one or the other, never both 1.
How the score is built. Rurality 10%, structured CV 20%, professionalism referee reports 20% — and only the top 50% of that combined score are interviewed 1. The interview is then 50% of the final score: five panels of 10 minutes, two structured questions each plus a global score 1.
What the CV is worth. 19 points total 1. PhD 3, masters 2, grad dip 1 (max 4 for qualifications); publications 2 for first or senior author and 1 otherwise, capped at 5, case reports capped at 3; presentations max 3; teaching max 3; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander applicants 4, with 10% of first-round offers quarantined 1. Rurality is separate: six months at MM2–5 is 1 point, 12 months 3, 18 months 4; remote MM6–7 12 months is 4 1. Referees are not a normal reference — you nominate 15+ across five staff groups including nurses, allied health and junior doctors; RACS picks five, and fewer than five valid reports returned means you are out 1.
The community view. RACS' own report puts the 2026 intake at 668 applications to 230 offers across the nine specialties 3. Offer rates still flatter the process because applicants are self-selected 4, and an interview coach puts the real odds at 1 in 4 to 1 in 5 5. Note: never ask for past interview questions — it is against sub rules and the panels change them.
r/ausjdocs — community view, not policy; verbatim, cautionary beside positive where both exist, every quote linked to the comment.
The applicants are a self-selected group of candidates that have spent years moving between unaccredited registrar jobs and maxing out CV scoring criteria points, not a random sampling of RMOs throwing a hat into the ring like current consultants did 30 years ago.
You just need to know the game, get all your ducks in a row and just be a person who pleases the people around them - bosses, nurses etc. That is the art of it.
rise and grind every day, treat every day like a job interview, put all your eggs in the basket of your passion, but have some kind of exit plan.
Depending on what you are applying for and what year you have about a 1 in 4 to 1 in 5 chance.
Not a lot of brown nosing, but a lot of on-call and overnight trips to hospitals at the expense of my partner and friends
Asked 84 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 the r/ausjdocs dump (19,145 posts, 2022-09-13 to 2026-09-12) whose title matches /(?=.*(\bSET\b|surgical training|surgery|\bRACS\b|surgical))(?=.*(get(ting)? (on|onto|into)|\bapply\b|applic|applying|selection|score|points|pathway|how (do|to)|unaccredited))/i. Quotes are the highest-scoring comments in surgical-selection threads, chosen so the 'know the game and be pleasant' answer sits beside the self-selection critique and a coach's 1-in-4 estimate; no interview content is reproduced.