The AMC exam is the two-stage assessment the Australian Medical Council (AMC) uses to decide whether a doctor who trained outside Australia is ready to work in an Australian hospital. It has two halves: the AMC CAT MCQ examination, a 3.5-hour computer-adaptive paper of 150 questions, and the AMC Clinical Examination, a station-based practical exam. Pass both and the AMC issues you an AMC certificate — the document the Medical Board of Australia expects on what it calls the standard pathway to general registration.
Written by the travel4med editorial team, who help medical and nursing students plan clinical placements abroad.
The AMC exam has two stages, and they test different things. Stage one is 150 computer-adaptive multiple choice questions in a single 3.5-hour session; stage two is a practical exam of 16 assessed stations plus four rest stations (Australian Medical Council, MCQ and Clinical Examination pages).
The clinical pass mark for the AMC exam is 9 out of 14. You sit 16 assessed stations, two of which are usually pilot stations, and your result is decided on 14 scored stations. Nine or more passed stations is a pass; eight or fewer is a fail.
Budget roughly AUD 6,562 for a first-time pass on the standard pathway: AUD 642 to open your portfolio, AUD 2,920 for the CAT MCQ authorisation and AUD 3,000 for the in-person clinical exam (AMC fees and charges, all GST-free).
The pass standard moved in 2026. The AMC has introduced a slightly higher cut score for the MCQ examination. Results are still reported on a 0–500 scale with the pass mark described as 250.
Demand is climbing fast. The AMC delivered 7,821 MCQ examinations in 2024–25, a 23% rise on the year before, of which 5,339 were sat outside Australia (AMC Annual Report 2024–25).
The AMC exam is a licensing assessment, not a university qualification. It does not hand you a job or a visa. It is the way the Australian Medical Council checks that your training abroad has prepared you for an Australian ward, so that the Medical Board of Australia can then decide on registration. Sitting the AMC exam is a step in that process, not the end of it.
You are on the AMC's standard pathway if you want general registration with the Medical Board, you hold an eligible primary medical degree in medicine and surgery, and you are not eligible for the Competent Authority Pathway. The AMC publishes a checker for your medical school, degree title and graduation year, so confirm your own eligibility before you pay anything — this is one of those steps where guessing is expensive.
One point that trips people up: English language proficiency is a Medical Board of Australia requirement, not an AMC one. The Board sets it in its English Language Skills Registration Standard and only the Board can grant exemptions. If you are also weighing up the UK route, our guide to the OET exam covers the healthcare-specific English test in detail.
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The AMC CAT MCQ examination is a computer-adaptive test of 150 multiple choice questions, delivered in one 3.5-hour session at Pearson VUE test centres worldwide. Each question has one correct answer out of five options, and the content spans disease process, clinical examination and diagnosis, and investigation, therapy and management.
"Computer-adaptive" simply means the software adjusts the difficulty of the next question to how you are doing. You still have to answer all 150 scored items, and there is no going back to change earlier answers in the way you might on a paper exam.
A few practical details worth knowing before you book:
Your MCQ authorisation is valid for 12 months, and you schedule the actual sitting directly with Pearson VUE.
Results appear in your AMC account at 4.00pm on the Friday three weeks after the examination event.
The AMC no longer offers verification of MCQ results, following a review and a recommendation from the National Health Practitioner Ombudsman.
If your primary residence is in a country sanctioned by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control, Pearson VUE may not be able to accept your scheduling request, because it is a US-registered company.
The AMC also runs a free MCQ Preparation App, built with eMedici, containing 210 practice questions with feedback for candidates scheduling into an MCQ exam. A refreshed question set was planned for April 2026.
To sit the clinical examination you must first have passed the AMC CAT MCQ examination. The exam is made up of 16 assessed stations and four rest stations. Each station lasts 10 minutes: two minutes of reading time, then eight minutes of assessment, using simulated patients, videotaped patient presentations, charts, digital images or photographs.
Stations cover medical, surgical, women's health, paediatric and mental health presentations, across both community and hospital settings. Each one focuses on one of four assessment areas: history taking, examination, diagnostic formulation, or management, counselling and education.
The scoring rule is the part most candidates misquote, so here it is exactly as the AMC states it. Of the 16 assessed stations, two are normally pilot stations — new stations being trialled, which carry no statistics from previous exams. Your result is decided on 14 scored stations. A pass means passing 9 or more of those 14; 8 or fewer is a fail. If something goes wrong with a non-pilot station, the Clinical Results Panel may substitute a pilot station, but the result is still calculated over 14 stations.
Clinical results are released the same way as MCQ results: 4.00pm on the Friday three weeks after your exam. Fees for the clinical exam are payable only by Mastercard or Visa.
Every fee for the AMC exam is quoted in Australian dollars and is free of GST. A credit or debit card payment adds a 0.96% bank surcharge. Here is the current schedule for the standard pathway.
Item | Fee (AUD) |
|---|---|
Establish an initial portfolio (including 1 qualification) | 642 |
Add each additional qualification | 107 |
CAT MCQ examination authorisation | 2,920 |
Clinical examination — in person | 3,000 |
Clinical examination — online (3,000 + 400 levy) | 3,400 |
Workplace based assessment (AMC fee) | 1,070 |
Reissue of results (MCQ or clinical) | 107 |
Clinical appeal application (including 1 station) | 910 |
Each additional appeal station | 235 |
A first-time pass through portfolio, MCQ and in-person clinical exam therefore comes to AUD 6,562 in AMC fees alone. That excludes flights, accommodation, your English test and anything you spend on preparation.
The good news is that the direction of travel has been downward. The AMC cut the MCQ authorisation fee from AUD 3,124 to AUD 2,920 in July 2024, and from 1 July 2025 it reduced the in-person clinical exam from AUD 3,991 to AUD 3,000 and the online clinical exam from AUD 4,391 to AUD 3,400. The AMC refunded the difference to approximately 821 candidates who had already paid the higher fee for July–September 2025 sittings.
Source: Australian Medical Council, Annual Report 2024–25 and "Fees and charges" (Australia, figures in AUD, GST-free).
More than you might think, and the number is rising. In the 2024–25 financial year the Australian Medical Council delivered 7,821 CAT MCQ examinations, a 23% increase on the previous year. Of those, 2,482 were sat in Australia and 5,339 at international venues. Over the same year the AMC ran 2,401 clinical examinations (1,113 online and 1,288 in person), an 8% rise, and 400 workplace based assessments, up 40%.
Source: Australian Medical Council, Annual Report 2024–25 (Australia, 2024–25 financial year).
Two things follow from those numbers. First, most AMC candidates now sit stage one outside Australia, so the exam is genuinely designed to be taken from wherever you are. Second, clinical exam places are the bottleneck: only about one clinical sitting exists for every three MCQ sittings, and in 2025 the AMC introduced priority scheduling for online clinical exams for international medical graduates already working in rural and remote Australia.
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You do not have to sit the clinical examination at all. The second half of the AMC exam comes in two forms. On the standard pathway you must pass the AMC CAT MCQ examination and either the AMC Clinical Examination or a workplace based assessment (WBA). A WBA assesses your knowledge and performance in a real Australian workplace over a 6 to 12 month period, at an AMC-accredited provider.
AMC Clinical Examination | Workplace based assessment | |
|---|---|---|
Format | 16 assessed stations, 10 minutes each | Supervised assessment in a real job |
Duration | One examination day | 6 to 12 months |
AMC fee | AUD 3,000 in person / AUD 3,400 online | AUD 1,070 |
Needs a job in Australia first? | No | Yes, at an accredited provider |
In plain terms: the clinical exam is faster and available from outside Australia, but it is a single high-stakes day. A WBA is cheaper in AMC fees and spreads the judgement over months, but you need a post at an accredited health service before you can start.
The order matters, because each step unlocks the next one, and you cannot book the AMC exam until the paperwork ahead of it is done. This is the sequence the AMC sets out:
Use the AMC's pathway checker to confirm you are on the standard pathway and that your medical school, degree title and graduation year are eligible.
Create an AMC account and establish your AMC portfolio, paying the AUD 642 initial portfolio fee for your first qualification.
Have your primary medical qualification verified through primary source verification, and meet the AMC's identification requirements.
Arrange your evidence of English language proficiency for the Medical Board of Australia — do this early, not last.
Apply through your AMC account for a CAT MCQ authorisation, valid for 12 months, then schedule your sitting directly with Pearson VUE.
Sit the CAT MCQ, then, once you have passed, schedule either the AMC Clinical Examination or apply to a WBA program.
Receive your AMC certificate, and apply to the Medical Board of Australia for registration.
Planning a clinical placement while you prepare? travel4med organises supervised hospital placements in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bali and Zanzibar for medical, nursing and physician assistant students — including for the final-year practical year. Book a free consultation and we will talk through what fits your stage of training.
Three changes to the AMC exam are worth knowing about if you are planning a sitting this cycle.
The first is the pass standard. From 2026 the AMC has introduced a slightly higher cut score for the MCQ examination. Feedback still comes on a 0–500 scale with the pass mark described as 250, and the AMC sets that standard at the level expected of a graduating medical student in Australia, reviewed periodically by benchmarking with Australian medical schools.
The second is preparation support. The free MCQ Preparation App launched in 2025 and continues in 2026, with a refreshed set of questions planned for April 2026. It is not a substitute for clinical experience, but 210 practice questions with feedback is a better starting point than guessing at the format.
The third is money. The clinical examination fee reductions took effect on 1 July 2025 and are now the published rate. If you budgeted from an older guide, your numbers are too high — which is a rare and pleasant direction for exam costs to move.
Be careful here, because this is where a lot of online advice overreaches. A clinical placement abroad does not count toward any part of the AMC exam, and no elective substitutes for the CAT MCQ or the clinical examination. Nobody outside the AMC and the Medical Board of Australia decides what counts.
What a supervised placement can do is give you hands-on time with the kind of presentations the clinical exam is built around — history taking, examination, diagnostic reasoning and explaining a plan to a patient in English, under supervision, on a real ward. If your own training has been light on unscripted patient contact, that is a real gap, and stations are unforgiving of it.
travel4med places medical, nursing and physician assistant students in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bali and Zanzibar, across nursing internships, clinical clerkships, the final-year practical year, physician assistant practical phases and physician observerships. You can compare the four locations on our destinations page, and our medical electives abroad guide explains how the placement formats differ. If you are still deciding between watching and doing, our comparison of observership versus a clinical elective is the place to start.
Weighing Australia against other systems? Our guides to the PLAB exam for the UK and USMLE Step 1 for the United States lay out the equivalent routes so you can compare them side by side before you commit money to one.
Reviewed by the travel4med Editorial Team, who check every fee, station count and date in this article against the Australian Medical Council's own published pages before each update. Last checked 1 September 2026.
Australian Medical Council, "Standard pathway" — amc.org.au (accessed 1 September 2026)
Australian Medical Council, "AMC Computer Adaptive Test (CAT) Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) Examination" — amc.org.au (accessed 1 September 2026)
Australian Medical Council, "Clinical examination" (structure, pass requirements, results) — amc.org.au (accessed 1 September 2026)
Australian Medical Council, "Fees and charges" (fees in AUD, GST-free) — amc.org.au (accessed 1 September 2026)
Australian Medical Council, "English language proficiency" — amc.org.au (accessed 1 September 2026)
Australian Medical Council, "Workplace based assessment" — amc.org.au (accessed 1 September 2026)
Australian Medical Council, Annual Report 2024–25 (examination volumes, fee reductions) — amc.org.au (accessed 1 September 2026)
Medical Board of Australia, "International medical graduates" — medicalboard.gov.au (accessed 1 September 2026)
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