AMC Clinical Exam Pass Rate: What the Evidence Actually Shows

The Australian Medical Council does not publish a current AMC clinical exam pass rate. We checked the AMC's live clinical examination page, its fees page and its 2024-25 annual report in August 2026 — none state a pass percentage for any recent year. The only figure we could verify against a named, citable source is historical: a peer-reviewed study, co-authored by the AMC's own chief executive, put the per-attempt pass rate at just above 30 percent for the years leading up to 2019, under a pass standard that has since been replaced. That is the honest state of the evidence, and it is more useful to you than any of the round, unsourced percentages circulating on coaching websites. What actually determines your individual result is published, current, and entirely within your control: a pass score in 9 or more of the 14 scored stations, with no averaging.

This article sets out exactly what we looked for, exactly what we found, and — more usefully — what a pass-rate figure could and could not tell you even if a perfect one existed.

What We Looked For, and What We Actually Found

Before writing a single sentence about pass rates, we checked these sources directly, in this order: the AMC's clinical examination page, the AMC's news and updates archive, the AMC's most recent annual report, and published Australian academic literature on AMC assessment outcomes.

The AMC's 2024-25 annual report states that the AMC administered 2,401 clinical examinations that year, an 8 percent increase on the previous year, split across online and in-person sittings. It does not state how many candidates passed or what percentage that represents. The AMC's clinical examination page states the pass standard (9 of 14) but, like the annual report, does not state a pass rate. We found no AHPRA or Medical Board of Australia workforce publication that reports an AMC clinical pass rate either. If you see a specific current percentage quoted on a coaching site with no named source, it is not coming from any of these places.

The One Verified Figure That Exists — and Its Limits

The single rigorously documented data point we could locate is in "Demographics and performance of candidates in the examinations of the Australian Medical Council, 1978-2019", published in the Medical Journal of Australia (volume 214, issue 2) by Neville Yeomans, Jillian Sewell, Philip Pigou and Stuart Macintyre. Philip Pigou is the AMC's chief executive, and Jillian Sewell has held a senior assessment role at the AMC, so this is about as close to an AMC-sourced figure as exists in the public domain, published through independent peer review rather than a press release.

The study reports that the clinical examination pass rate rose from the 1980s through the 2000s, peaking at 64 percent in 2007, then fell by more than 10 percentage points between 2011 and 2012 and continued declining. For the five years before the study's 2019 cut-off (excepting 2019 itself, where data were incomplete), the pass rate sat just above 30 percent per attempt. The same study found that most candidates who kept attempting the exam eventually passed within one or two further sittings, though a small group — around 3 percent of candidates — made five or more attempts, and some of those remained unsuccessful.

Three things limit how far you should extend that 30 percent figure to today. First, it is per-attempt, not per-candidate — many people in that pool eventually passed on a later sitting. Second, it predates the change in the pass requirement that the AMC's Directors approved on 21 March 2024, moving the standard from 10 of 14 stations to the current 9 of 14 — an easier bar than the one that produced the historical figures above. Third, it is now several years old and the AMC has not published an update. We are stating this plainly rather than presenting a seven-year-old number as if it describes today's exam: confirm the current position with the AMC directly if a pass rate matters to your planning.

Why the AMC Clinical Exam Pass Rate Would Not Predict Your Result Anyway

Even a perfectly current, perfectly sourced pass rate is a cohort average, and you do not sit the exam as a cohort. The MJA study itself found that outcomes varied far more by factors specific to the individual candidate — attempt number and years since graduation among them — than the aggregate figure would suggest. A 30 percent, 50 percent or 70 percent headline rate tells you what happened to a large, mixed group of candidates on different dates with different examiners and different station sets; it tells you nothing about whether you, specifically, will clear 9 of 14 stations on your day.

What does predict your result is whether you are consistently competent across every station type, because how to pass the AMC clinical exam comes down to a structural fact about the marking, not a probability drawn from a historical average.

What Actually Determines Your Result: 9 of 14, No Averaging

The exam runs 20 stations in total: 16 assessed and 4 rest stations. Of the 16 assessed, 14 are scored and 2 are unmarked pilot stations being trialled for future exams. You are never told which two are pilots, so every station must be treated as though it counts. To pass, the AMC's clinical examination page states you must "obtain a pass score of 9 or more of the 14 assessed stations" — fail is defined as a pass score in 8 or fewer. There is no averaging across stations: a brilliant history-taking station does not offset a failed examination station. Nine solid, unremarkable passes beat five outstanding stations and five failures.

⚠️ This standard changed on 21 March 2024, from 10 of 14 to 9 of 14, and does not apply retrospectively to results awarded before that date. Older documents, including the 2019 specifications PDF, still show the superseded 10-of-14 figure — do not rely on any source, including this one, without confirming the current standard on the AMC's clinical examination page.

Each of the 14 scored stations is marked on three layers: between 2 and 5 key steps marked observed or not observed, between 3 and 5 assessed domains rated on a seven-point scale, and a single global rating — also seven-point — that actually determines the station's pass or fail. Our AMC clinical marking domains article breaks this down in full, including how the four station task types (history taking, examination, diagnostic formulation, and management or counselling) map onto this marking structure without being the same thing as the marking domains themselves.

What a Fail Costs, and What Resitting Involves

Item	Figure (AUD, August 2026)
Online clinical examination	3,400 (3,000 + 400 levy)
In-person clinical examination	3,000
Result reissue	107
Appeals application (1 station)	910
Additional appeal stations	235 each

Fees change — confirm the current figures on the AMC fees page before budgeting, and see our AMC clinical fees, dates and booking guide for the full picture including the CAT MCQ prerequisite fee. The AMC does not publish a cap on how many times you can attempt the clinical exam. If you fail, you reapply through the same process as any other candidate: by email to clinical@amc.org.au with your full name and candidate ID, preferred dates, employment and residency documentation, with dates allocated on a first-applied, first-allocated basis.

You can also appeal a result, but the grounds are narrow. An appeal must be lodged within 28 days of your result being available, and it applies only to stations you failed, and only where "a change or changes to the scoring could change the overall result awarded to entitle the candidate to a Pass." Two independent examiners re-mark the recording; a fail only becomes a pass if both agree. You do not get access to the recording or the station information sheet, you cannot make oral or written submissions to argue your case, and neither the re-mark examiners nor the AMC are required to give reasons. The AMC's decision is final. If you withdraw an appeal within one week of paying, you receive a 75 percent refund; after that, none. Given the narrow grounds and the cost, an appeal is realistically for cases where you believe a specific, identifiable scoring error occurred — not a general sense that a station went badly.

How to Read Your Result Constructively

If you fail, the more useful question is not "what is the pass rate" but "which stations, and why". Your result identifies which of the 14 scored stations you passed and failed — the appeals process itself confirms this, since you can only appeal a station you are told you failed. That station-by-station breakdown is a far better guide to your next attempt than any aggregate statistic, because it points you toward missed key steps, weak domains, or an overall performance that reads as unsafe or disorganised to examiners regardless of content knowledge. Our AMC clinical common mistakes article catalogues the specific, recurring errors that cost candidates key steps and global rating points, and is a more actionable starting point than dwelling on where you sit relative to a historical average.

Resist the urge to try to identify the two pilot stations during the exam itself — you cannot reliably do this, and candidates who spend attention guessing tend to under-perform on stations that do count. Focus instead on consistency: timed, structured practice across all four station task types, using mock exams with grading against the actual key steps and domains, rather than passive revision. The AMC clinical hub brings this together with structured preparation built around the 9-of-14 standard rather than around a pass-rate number that, as this article has shown, nobody can currently give you with confidence.

This article is general exam-preparation guidance, not clinical advice. Always follow current Australian guidelines (eTG, RACGP) and confirm exam details with the Australian Medical Council.