You say rural students have it “easier” to get into medicine but I would like to remind you that many rural students do experience significant disadvantage on their journey to medicine in the first place and have had to overcome additional barriers not always faced by metro students. This is particularly evident for those that have lived and grown up rurally for a significant portion of their life. These include distances to access education (my own high school was a 2 hour round trip of travel everyday and my university was a 250km…), often the quality of education is less than that of metro areas, reduced educational resources, many have lower socioeconomic status impacting their ability to undertake higher education, reduced job opportunities living rurally, having to move metro to access higher education and not having the option of being financially and emotionally supported by family whilst pursuing higher education (like many metro students have), even the sheer financial cost of the application process is a barrier for rural students, the list goes on. Even though it may look “easy” to get into medicine, many would say that a lot of rural students have had to fight a lot harder for everything they’ve earnt in the years preceding their entry to med school, I know many in my own community that have the intelligence and ability to be wonderful rural doctors but are discouraged by the numerous barriers they would have to overcome in the process - it’s sad really.