← all questions · Is it worth it
Only if you set an exit criterion before you start. RACS made 230 offers from 668 applications across nine specialties for the 2026 intake, and general surgery appointments were cut from 121 to 54 in one year 12. There is no attempt cap 1, which is exactly how people reach PGY8 still unaccredited.
The denominator is the whole argument. RACS Table SET.4 shows 668 applications and 230 offers across the nine surgical specialties for the 2026 intake — 34.4% 2. General surgery alone ran 195 applications to 50 offers after appointments were cut from 121 in 2024 to 54 in 2025 12. But those rates count only people who already cleared eligibility and paid to apply. Everybody who spent years unaccredited and never became eligible is missing from the denominator 3.
There is no attempt cap in general surgery 1. That sounds generous and is the single most dangerous feature of the system: nothing stops you re-applying forever, so the decision to stop has to be yours and has to be made in advance. Set a PGY, or a number of attempts, and write it down while you still feel fine.
What the grind actually buys. An unaccredited year is worth something concrete: 26 weeks of general surgery rotation and 8 weeks of critical care are hard prerequisites 1, and rural posts are the cheapest points in the rubric — six months at MM2–5 is 1 point, twelve is 3, and remote 12 months is 4, inside a 10% rurality tool 1. If your unaccredited year is not delivering logbook, rurality or referees, it is not buying anything.
Both sides, verbatim. People who got on describe a defined end: a few bad years, then certainty 4. People who got on quickly still say they wouldn't repeat it 4. The structural critique the sub upvotes hardest is that the process selects for the people least able to see what it costs 5.
The reframe worth keeping: leave medicine's culture for a few weeks and check whether the goal is still yours 4. Sunk cost is the mechanism that keeps people in.
Not published: no college reports how many unaccredited registrars never get on. The widely-quoted 30–35% is community lore, not data 3.
r/ausjdocs — community view, not policy; verbatim, cautionary beside positive where both exist, every quote linked to the comment.
Yeah nah. Wouldnt do it again. I got on relatively quick w 3 unaccred years as well.
I without doubt had a few very shitty years but now I am essentially certain to finish and make $1mil plus a year.
I think it's worth stepping outside of medicine for awhile and re-evaluate what your priorities are.
The worst part about surgical selection in Australia is that all the best candidates are scared off.
I work 140-170 hours a fortnight routinely (depending on weekends on call). I hate the political game, but I LOVE plastic surgery and operating and talking to patients and showing up to work in general.
Asked 2 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 /(grind|unaccredited).{0,40}worth|worth.{0,30}(grind|unaccredited)/i. Quotes are the top-scoring comments in the two 'is the grind worth it' threads, chosen so someone who got on and would not repeat it sits beside someone who got on and would, with the currently-unaccredited voice and the structural critique alongside.