The RACP's confirmed results for the February 2026 Adult Medicine Divisional Written Examination show 925 candidates sitting overall, with 683 passing, a pass rate of 73.8%. Among Australian Adult Medicine candidates specifically, 835 sat and 619 passed, a pass rate of 74.1%. These figures are worth reporting accurately and interpreting carefully, since a cohort-level pass rate answers a genuinely different question than the one most individual candidates are actually asking when they look at it.
Reading cohort figures cautiously against previous sittings
Comparing this sitting's pass rate against previous February and October results can be informative, but it deserves caution rather than confident conclusions. Cohort size, composition, the proportion of first-time versus repeat candidates, and the specific difficulty profile of that sitting's paper can all shift from cycle to cycle, and a change in the headline pass rate could reflect any combination of these factors rather than a single, clear cause. Comparing this sitting's figure against a longer run of previous results, rather than against just one prior sitting, gives a more stable sense of typical variation than a single side-by-side comparison can.
Pass rate is not the pass mark
It is worth restating a distinction that is easy to blur when reading a results announcement: the pass rate, 73.8% in this sitting, describes the proportion of the cohort that cleared the threshold. It does not describe what that threshold actually was, in terms of marks or percentage score required. These are genuinely separate pieces of information, and a candidate preparing for a future sitting needs to think about the pass mark specifically, not the pass rate, when judging their own readiness.
Why cohort composition matters, without speculating about specific causes
Differences between sittings, including the modest gap between the overall and Australian-candidate-specific figures in this release, likely reflect a combination of factors related to cohort composition and preparation circumstances that are not fully knowable from the published figures alone. It is more honest to acknowledge this uncertainty directly than to speculate confidently about specific, unstated causes behind a particular gap or trend.
Why an individual candidate cannot derive their own probability from this figure
A 73.8% cohort pass rate does not mean any individual candidate preparing for a future sitting has a 73.8% chance of passing. Individual readiness depends on that specific candidate's own preparation, knowledge and performance on the day, not on the historical performance of a different cohort under different conditions. Treating a cohort statistic as a personal probability is a common but genuinely mistaken way to read this kind of published result.
Translating the data into a practical safety margin
The most useful thing this kind of report can do for an individual candidate's preparation is inform how much margin to build into mock and practice performance, rather than functioning as a direct predictor of their own outcome. Aiming for consistent, fresh-question performance meaningfully above whatever the most recently published cut score turns out to be, rather than aiming to just clear it, remains the more defensible strategy regardless of how the cohort pass rate happens to move from sitting to sitting.
Keeping this article current
Because the RACP releases new results after each sitting, this kind of analysis is most useful when treated as a living reference, updated as new figures become available, rather than a single fixed snapshot that becomes progressively less relevant with each subsequent cycle.
What the near-identical overall and Australian-specific figures suggest
It is worth noting, without overstating the point, that the overall pass rate of 73.8% and the Australian-candidate-specific pass rate of 74.1% in this sitting are close enough to each other that no strong conclusion should be drawn from the small gap between them. Where a genuinely large gap exists between an overall figure and a specific subgroup's figure, that pattern can be worth investigating further, since it may point towards a systematic difference in preparation resources, guideline familiarity, or exam-taking conditions between subgroups. A gap this small, roughly three-tenths of a percentage point, is well within the range that ordinary sitting-to-sitting variation would be expected to produce, and reading a specific narrative into it would be overinterpreting a figure that is not, on the evidence available, telling a clear story either way.
How to use this report alongside the pass-mark article in this series
This results report and the separate discussion of the historical pass-mark range elsewhere in this series are complementary rather than duplicative, and are worth reading together rather than in isolation. The pass rate discussed here describes how one specific cohort performed against whatever threshold was set for their sitting; the historical pass-mark range describes where that threshold itself has tended to fall across past sittings. A candidate building a genuine picture of what readiness requires needs both pieces of information, since neither alone tells the complete story of what a future sitting is likely to demand.