In 2011, final-year University of Adelaide medical students Rachel Jones and Ben Rogers were looking forward to gaining rural practice experience. Now their uni is doubling the number of interviews with rural candidates. Picture: Calum Robertson Source: The Advertiser

THE University of Adelaide's medical school aims to double the number of rural students it interviews for places with changes to its entry process.

From this year the university will consider rural applicants' Undergraduate Medicine and Health Sciences Admission Test scores separately from metropolitan applicants in a bid to ensure more get through to the interview stage.

The university hopes to interview about 120 rural students, up from the 61 it saw for this year's cohort.

Faculty of Health Sciences executive dean Professor Justin Beilby acknowledged rural students were under-represented but hoped the changes would see growth.

University of Adelaide second-year medicine student Matt Watson, from Tooligie on the Eyre Peninsula, said: "Where I'm from, the only person I could talk to who'd got into medicine was the GP."

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Uni targets rural medical students