The AMC CAT Exam

The Australian Medical Council Computer Adaptive Test (AMC CAT) is a 3.5 hour multiple choice exam for international medical graduates (IMGs) wishing to register and practice medicine in Australia. This forms the first part of the two exams required - the second being the Clinical Exam.

Nearly 6500 candidates sit the AMC exam per year, with nearly 50% failing. Our goal at Ace The Exam is to ensure that you are not one of them!

If you're sitting the exam, please give this a read. It contains loads of useful information, tips and links to exam resources to help get you through this exam.

The exam has numerous sittings per year; you're not limited by time of year, just when you want to register and sit it.

The Exam itself is delivered on a computer at a third party test centre, Pearson Vue. Once registered to sit the exam, you schedule a time, date and location to sit at one of their test centres. There are numerous test centres worldwide. Go here and type in your location to find your nearest AMC test centre.

Any qualified medical doctor from around the world is eligible to sit the AMC CAT. You will need to create an account with AMC in order to register. This costs AU$642 (US$420).

The AMC CAT exam costs a cool AU$2,920 to sit - this is around US$1900. So you don't want to have to sit this exam more than once!

The AMC CAT consists of 150 multiple choice (best-of five) questions, in 210 minutes (3.5 hours). This means 84 seconds per question Efficiency - synthesising the information in the stem, confidently identifying the best answer, and moving on - is absolutely key. This time-management is one essential skill that comes out of doing practice questions on a bank, such as Ace The Exam.

As per the AMC website, the exam covers essential medical knowledge including:

• the disease process
• clinical examination and diagnosis
• investigation, therapy and management

The questions are largely clinical. There's a minimum of basic science questions. Don't waste time learning the Kreb's cycle. And as per AMC, the questions in the MCQ examination are oriented towards the more common clinical applications, differential diagnosis and therapeutics. So don't get too bogged down in the weird and wonderful!

The AMC CAT is broken up into the following sections:

• Adult health: Medicine - 30%
• Adult health: Surgery - 20%
• Women's health (Obs and gynae) - 12.5%
• Child health - 12.5%
• Mental health - 12.5%
• Population health - 12.5%

The questions are multiple choice, best-of-five. There will be a stem, followed by five possible answers. Some questions will feature an image, including radiology, ECGs etc, followed by a stem and five choices.

Read the stem carefully, then choose the best answer. Make sure to read the stem fully! Sometimes it will ask for the first investigation; other times it may be the most useful or most discriminatory. Or even the least useful! So make sure to read it carefully, and don't get caught out.

The AMC CAT has a complex and possibly unique way of delivering questions. For each candidate the first question is randomly selected from the question pool. If the question is answered incorrectly, the next question chosen is a less difficult question; if correct, the next question is a more difficult.

This process is continued as the examination delivers questions based on the previous responses until the last question is reached. After each response, the computer calculates your score based on all the information obtained to that point.

You must answer a question to progress to the next one. You cannot go back and review your answers. Fortunately, there is no negative marking - i.e., you won't be deducted marks for getting a question wrong.

A pass/fail score is defined for the whole examination, and each candidate is measured against this point regardless of the group of candidates with whom they are examined, or the particular set of CAT questions they are administered as part of the examination, or when they take the test.

This is a pretty confusing way of doing things! Ultimately there is nothing you can do to change it. But if there's one positive you can take away, it's this: if the questions seem difficult, that probably means you are doing well!

Firstly, you are not alone! There are numerous support groups online sharing advice and tips, including on Reddit, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. We have picked out a few of our favourites here:

• Reddit - AMC for IMGs
• Youtube - Code You Australia Podcast - How to Study for the AMC
• Facebook - AMC Exam Preparation Group
• YouTube - Shahriar’s Medical Academy
• YouTube - Sumaiya Sayed

Read the Examination Specifications and Candidate Rules

As per AMC themselves, at least half the questions are taken from a pool of previously used questions. So the chances are that if you've used an up-to-date question bank, such as Ace The Exam, you will have seen many of these questions before.

As per the design of the Adaptive Exam, correctly answering a question will result in a more difficult question next. That's why you need to do as many practice questions as you can, easy and difficult, to get used to reading the question and confidently answering it quickly.

Ace The Exam has nearly 1700 practice questions of varying difficulty for your to practice, and new ones are added all the time. Use the explanations to reinforce your learning, and consult the Australasian Guidelines referenced to ensure that you are learning key practice points specific to medicine in Australia.

There are no specific textbooks the AMC currently recommends. They do note (as above) that the exam focuses on common conditions, so you should avoid getting too caught up in the minutiae of clinical medicine.

We recommend the following:

• Murtagh’s General Practice (8th ed.) — repeatedly named by successful candidates for GP-style diagnostic reasoning and Australian primary-care practice.
• Talley & O’Connor’s Clinical Examination — for approach to history/exam and tying findings to likely diagnoses
• Australian Immunisation Handbook — dosing/schedules, catch-ups and clinical advice (ATAGI/NHMRC).
• The National Prescribing Curriculum - a great resource with quizzes to help you prepare for Australian prescribing
• DermNet is a terrific (and FREE) dermatology resource from New Zealand
• Royal Australasian Colle of General Practitioners (RACGP) Guidelines
• Australian Medicines Handbook

Whatever you choose to look at, it should have an Australian focus. Have a look at Australian Family Physician, Therapeutic Guidelines, Australian Prescriber for review articles on common conditions. Again, keep it focused - you don't have to (and can't possibly) read absolutely everything!

We hope that this has provided you some useful information on the AMC structure and some tips on where to focus your study. Have any tips for us, or think we've missed something? Let us know! Best of luck in your exam!