Well if you check with USyd, their minimum GPA for North Americans is a 2.7 and a 5.5 for those who studied in the Australian system. Its more complicated than using percentages, but a 5 is equivalent to a C in the US system which is a 2 when you use the 0.0-4.0 grading scale.

Actually the way it works is:
American GPA out of 4
Australian Medical School GPA out of 7

2.0 US is a high pass/low credit in Australia - this roughly translates to 4.5 Australian ie. insufficient for most (not all) Australian schools who set it at 5. They may have different published GPAs for US students though.

One other thing, Australian undergrad degrees don't give out credits and distinctions like they do in the US - ie. it's much harder here to get a D/HD grade and this is well known in academic world. The distribution of high grades in Australia is roughly the same as UK, not US ie. heavy distribution around the mean, lots of passes, very very few HD's (if any in many subjects at my old uni (Melb)).

Your mark in GAMSAT is the main determinant of your academic record as they can compare you with everyone else - that gives a good guide to the standard required, and you will need to be in at least top 25%ile to get a look in at a school. Your GPA is usually only a hurdle to apply then forgotten unless it's a tiebreaker.

Also, check postings on style of teaching in Australia or UK - very different to US and not for everyone.

In every Australian University i know of a pass is 50%. In the GAMSA table at gamsat.acer.edu.au - Home this corresponds to a 4.0/7.0.

In the US a 4.0/4.0 gpa is rare, but in Australia, a 7.0/7.0 gpa is almost unheard of.

2.0 in the US is a scaled score above, not equal to 50%.

Really, so do more US students score below 2.0 than australian students score below 50% (I'm not flaming, just trying to understand)

One physiology subject i sat at Melb many years ago had an average of 53. If a US 2.0 is greater than 53, it means that the average mark for his subject was a US fail. Are there really any US subjects where the average is a fail?

Or is <2.0 not a fail in the US?

Here is the chart for McGill University in Canada but I think it is pretty uniform in NA.

Therefore that class had a "D" average.

In reality, we need to compare means and standard deviations, not raw scores. If the average of one class is 79 and the average of another is 62 for example, it's not fair to compare raw scores (as a first approximation anyway)

- The US GPA does NOT correlate with the Australian GPA, because the distribution of marks is completely different in the two countries. There's plenty on google about this, but basically:

- A 'pass' (50-59) in the US is a pretty shocking mark, whereas in Australia it's the most commonly given grade in alot of subjects.

- In the US, higer scores (D/HD's) are given out like lollies compared to Australia. Same experience for me at uni, most subjects gave out NO HD's at all, with about 70% getting a pass only.

Overall, an Australian GPA of 5/7 represents a higher percentile ranking than the equivalent US GPA score (2.7ish). It's for this reason ACER tell you explicitly don't bother converting your overseas GPAs and also why overseas students have their applications assessed individually and the GAMSAT is much more important.

And to GeorgeMD2B - getting into an Australian university to do medicine is not easier than the US because of GPA comparisons - due above and because GPA is only used as an application hurdle and tiebreaker at most uni's. Lastly, there are few positions for overseas applicants vs. local residents, so the ones that do get in tend to have exceptional GAMSAT scores eg. 78 etc. and % successful is far lower than for the locals.

The admissions standards for international students and local Australian students is somewhat different. I am a US citizen but I have Australian PR, I can tell you that it is easier to get into medical school in Australia than in North America or Britain, I applied to two dozen American medical schools and was turned down flat. I applied to two Australian schools, Grad Entry at UQ and UNSW, I got into both.

A person's academic transcript grades don't always tell the whole story, sometimes people have other pursuits while in school, or distractions that keep them from being 100 percent focused. Most students I knew at top US universities tended to come from wealthy families and lived in upper middle class suburbs, I came from a relatively modest family, my dad was a police officer and my mother a teacher, by US standards a very modest family. I had to work my way through school and I served in the US Army to help pay for my education, so I had to juggle a lot more than my other classmates in my university.

I know two Canadians who entered UQ as internationals, got PR, then were kicked out, reapplied and could not get in, it is easier to get into medical school as an international.

The people you know would actually have gotten kicked out for breaching their international student visas by getting PR during the course. This is explicitly forbidden by the courses, and the schools are well onto this one.

They probably also broke immigration laws - student visa requires you to leave the country within a month if you are no longer studying ie. kicked out by the universities. You do hear of people getting away with this sometimes though.

You're right about Australian schools not being very interested in your background or your 'achievements' ie. the baloney Americans pad their resumes with. From this angle it is easier to get into an Australian medical school if you don't fit the ideal, have never done volunteer work or don't have a personality. Hell, we've even got really fat people doing med over here!