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Three things are scored and can only be earned now: a full academic year at a rural clinical school (3 points at general surgery 1), coming first in a discipline (6 of 48 at RANZCOG 2), and a first-author paper 2. Societies, committees and electives score nothing anywhere. The rest of it is the job, later.
Work backwards from the rubrics. College selection is a structured CV, referee reports and an interview. Read the rubric for the specialty you think you want and ask which rows a medical student can still fill. There are three.
A rural clinical school year. General surgery defines rural education as "one academic year or more of attendance at a Rural Clinical School (during medical degree)" at one of the 21 universities in the Rural Health Multidisciplinary Training program, worth 3 points inside a rurality domain capped at 10 1. RANZCOG puts rurality and Indigenous identity at 15 of 48 — the largest single block in the whole rubric 2. This is the one that closes behind you. No amount of rural RMO work retro-fits a rural clinical school year.
A prize, specifically coming first. RANZCOG scores 6 points for first place overall in the medical course, first in O&G, or a RANZCOG Women's Health Award, and 4 for first in any other discipline 2. RANZCO scores Dux, top of year or a University Medal, and smaller prizes at 0.5 each 3. Note the shape: they pay for placings, not for a good average.
A first-author paper. RANZCOG requires first or first co-author and counts only publications from the previous five years 2; RANZCO pays 0.25 for secondary authorship, capped at 0.5 across the category 3; general surgery caps publications at 5 points 1. One paper you drove beats six you were added to.
What scores nothing. Societies, committee positions, being class rep, an overseas elective, your OSCE marks, and which medical school you attended. Nobody's rubric has a row for any of it 123.
And the honest caveat. Which specialty you end up wanting will probably change, and every one of these levers is specialty-specific except the rural year 4. The strongest thing in a registrar application is still a consultant who will vouch for you, and you cannot bank that as a student 5. Pass, do the rural year if you can stand it, finish one project, and go outside.
r/ausjdocs — community view, not policy; verbatim, cautionary beside positive where both exist, every quote linked to the comment.
Medical school research / committees / extra curricular count for absolute jack all.
university medal / academic prizes. I.e concentrate on studying. It's the one thing you'll never be able to add to your cv after graduating.
if an AT applicant in an interview said their medschool CV was bare because they'd rather have a life and get drunk every weekend and simply couldn't be fucked with this nonsense in medschool, I think I'd fundamentally respect them more as an applicant.
bosses mostly want someone who can handle the work and are decent people to be around
Depends what you want to do really. If it's cardiothoracic surgery start grinding and sucking up 2 years ago.
Asked 57 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 /(med(ical)? (school|student)|as a student|during med).{0,60}(do|help|prepar|chance|\bCV\b|useful|maximise|maximize|improve|boost|set (myself|yourself) up|get ahead)/i. Quotes are the highest-scoring non-satirical comments from the direct 'what should I do in med school' thread, with the 'prizes are the one thing you can never add later' advice balanced against a consultant saying he would respect an empty student CV more; the joke top comment was excluded.