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RACS publishes them annually in its Activities Report, Table SET.4. For the 2026 intake: cardiothoracic 16.7%, general surgery 25.6%, vascular 27.3%, urology 27.9%, ENT 31.6%, neurosurgery 34.7%, paediatric 36.8%, plastics 39.7%; 668 applications, 230 offers overall 1. Read them as offer rates among people already eligible, not as your odds.
The source is RACS's own Activities Report, Table SET.4, published yearly and free 1. For the 2026 intake: cardiothoracic 48 applications / 8 offers (16.7%), general surgery 195/50 (25.6%), vascular 33/9 (27.3%), urology 61/17 (27.9%), ENT 79/25 (31.6%), neurosurgery 49/17 (34.7%), paediatric surgery 19/7 (36.8%), plastics 68/27 (39.7%). Total 668 applications, 230 offers, 34.4% 1. The 2024 report circulates widely on the sub in an infographic with different figures — general surgery 49.8%, ortho 23.2%, cardiothoracic 22.5% 4 — because the underlying numbers move year to year, not because one is wrong.
Two structural changes sit under that. General surgery cut its intake from 121 in 2024 to 54 in 2025, and applications fell 279 to 195 in response 1. Total SET applications fell 955 to 668, down 30.1% year on year 1.
Ignore the orthopaedics row. RACS states that the 2025 ortho data includes successful applications only, which is why it shows 116 applications for 70 offers 1. It is not a 60% acceptance rate and is not comparable to the others.
What the rate is not. It is an offer rate among people who cleared the eligibility gates, paid the fee and applied — not among everyone who wanted to be a surgeon 1. The denominator excludes anyone still accumulating unaccredited years. And CVs differ by specialty, so a high percentage can mean an easy field or a heavily self-selected one 3.
The more honest number is attempt-level, and only ASPS publishes it: 31.45% of plastics applicants were selected cumulatively across 2020–2024 — 15.19% first attempt, 10.95% second, 4.24% third — against a three-attempt cap 2. That means roughly two-thirds of everyone who ever applies to plastics never gets on.
r/ausjdocs — community view, not policy; verbatim, cautionary beside positive where both exist, every quote linked to the comment.
The RACS publishes an annual activities report that is publicly accessible. I refer to the 2024 publication, which on Table Set 4 on Page 22 notes the breakdown of what percentage and number of applicants for each surgical specialty was accepted onto SET program:
This assumes all the trainees are equal at point of application. I don't think a gen surg trainee and a neurosurg trainee have the same CV. I think plenty have self selected out of applying for things such as neurosurg and redirected their applications elsewhere.
It would be interesting to see the breakdown of the ortho applicants. How many years unaccredited, CVs, etc.
Depending on what you are applying for and what year you have about a 1 in 4 to 1 in 5 chance.
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 r_ausjdocs_posts.jsonl (19,145 posts, 2022-09-13 to 2026-09-12) whose title matches /(RACS|\bSET\b|surg).{0,60}(acceptance|success|selection|offer).{0,15}rate|(acceptance|success|offer) rate|RACS.{0,40}(activities|report|statistic|data|number)|(how many|number of).{0,30}(SET|surgical training) (spot|place|position)/i. Only two posts match the title regex, so quotes were drawn from the highest-scoring comments in the threads where the RACS table is actually discussed, keeping the person who pasted the table beside the person explaining why it misleads.