New Zealand, meet your new doctors.

For this year’s intake, Otago had 202 places available for first year students entering from its intermediate year. (Otago does not take first year students from other universities). Of those, 120 were given to those entering under a raft of categories.
 
Of those, 58 were Māori, 20 were Pasifika, 1 Māori/Pasifika and 29 entered through the rural gate. Eleven students went in under the low socio-economic category and one under a new refugee category. That left only 82 general entry places (40 per cent).
 
As well as the 202 places for first year students, Otago medical school fills another 80 places with graduates. Overall for 2020, Māori and Pasifika make up 32 per cent of students starting at the school, while 14 per cent have rural backgrounds, 4 per cent low socioeconomic, and 1 per cent refugee.
 
Auckland medical school shows a similar pattern. For the 2020 year it had 185 places for first year health science or bio-medicine students. Māori and Pasifika took up 52 places, rural got 25, disabled 2, low socioeconomic 5 and refugee 1. That left 101 places (55 per cent) for general entry students.
 
Looking at percentages for the 2020 intake, Māori and Pasifika students took up nearly 40 per cent of the places at Otago for first year health science students and 28.1 per cent of the total places for first year students at Auckland.
 
At Otago that meant general entry students had to get, as one student put it, “ludicrously” high grades to be accepted. In fact candidates needed at least a 94 per cent average mark for their seven papers to get an offer. […]
 
The average mark for the sub-category entrants is not held by the university and it was not able to provide it before deadline.
 
However, sub-category entrants must get a 70 per cent minimum for each paper. Those who achieve an average of at least 70 per cent can be admitted with individual subject marks under 70 per cent so long as the admissions committee is satisfied about their academic ability to complete the programme.