Introduction to the Australian Medical Council (AMC) Part 1 MCQ Exam

The AMC is a national independent working body which aims to assess International Medical Graduates (IMGs). As far as IMGs are concerned, the AMC is the body responsible for assessing an applicant’s eligibility to practice medicine in Australia. Granting registration to practice on the other hand is a function of the Medical Board of Australia.

So, what about those exams used to assess an applicant’s competence to practice in Australia?

There are 2 exams: an MCQ exam as well as a clinical exam. The article will focus on the MCQ exam, while the clinical exam is discussed here.

Format and Content:

The exam duration is 3.5 hours and is made up of a total of 150 questions (120 scored, 30 pilot), meaning you have 1.4 minutes or 84 seconds to answer each question. The exam deals with a broad range of specialties including Medicine (35 Qs), Surgery (25 Qs), Obstetrics and Gynaecology (15 Qs), Psychiatry (15 Qs), and Population Health (15 Qs) as described in the table below.

All MCQs are A-type format, aka, one correct response from five. Although scores are reported on a scale of 0-500, this exam operates on a pass/fail basis with the passing score set at 250/500. This has been calibrated and set at the level of knowledge required of a graduating Australian medical school student. Below is a sample score report.

How this exam is different to other MCQ exams you've taken in the past:

While most other exams IMGs sit for are made up of questions delivered in a standardized manner, this exam is a computer adaptive test (CAT) meaning questions will be chosen based on whether you have correctly or incorrectly answered the previous question. Correctly answering a question means the next question you get will be tougher and vice versa. So, while the first question is chosen at random from a pool, each question thereafter will be chosen based on your overall performance meaning each candidate takes a unique, customised examination. This has apparently been backed up by research over the past decades that has confirmed the comparability between CATs and fixed length tests, but with CATs requiring less than half the number of questions to obtain more precise results.

A downside to this examination format is that you cannot go back and review answers to previous questions until you have completed all 150 items and have enough time left-over since the computer uses all the current information to select the next question to administer. An important note here is that candidates are expected to complete all 150 items of which 120 items are scored items. Failure to complete all 120 scored items in the AMC MCQ examination may lead to insufficient information for a reliable ability to be determined and therefore a result on the AMC adaptive scale. The examination result is recorded as Fail – insufficient data to obtain result.

With regards to success rates, the latest reports from the AMC have 1559/2663 candidates passing for a pass rate of about 58%. Therefore, preparation for the exam should not be taken lightly, especially with the exam costing $2729 AUD.

Hopefully you are part of that 58%, good luck!