How to prepare for the Auckland MMI without paying anyone

We sell MMI practice. So take the first half of this page as being written against our own interest, and check every claim in it, because all of it is one search away.

There is a real amount of genuinely good free preparation for the Auckland MMI. Most people never find it, because it is not being advertised at them. Here is all of it, and then an honest account of what paying anybody adds on top.

1. UoA publishes four PDFs and they are the most useful thing available

They are linked from the MMI page and effectively nowhere else, which is why almost nobody reads them. Between them they contain the mark scheme.

• The domain description PDF describes all seven domains and gives one example scenario for each. Two pages.
• The attributes PDF lists the eight attributes with UoA’s own descriptor for each, and states that three are assessed per scenario without telling you which three. One page.
• The tips PDF is the one with the advice that actually changes answers: use the full three minutes, you are not scored on your views, changing your mind mid-answer shows flexibility.
• The interviewee FAQ PDF has the second-by-second station timing, the ten second skippable transition, the seven-reviewers detail, and confirmation that AI does not mark you.

An hour with those four is worth more than a week with most paid material, and we would say that even if it were not obviously true. We wrote a readable version of the domains and attributes, but ours is a summary of theirs, not a substitute for it.

2. Kira gives you a free practice session on the real platform

UoA states that applicants who receive an invitation can register on Kira Talent the week before the MMI, check their device is set up well, and practise answering questions on the platform. It is the actual software you will sit it on, it costs nothing, and skipping it is difficult to justify.

3. The Free Mock MMI is free, real, and run by students

thefreemockmmi.org.nz is a student-run New Zealand organisation that has been doing this since 2017. It runs a seven station online mock with feedback from volunteer interviewers, and it has a question bank with a browser simulator using the correct 30 second read and three minute answer timing, which shows you a recording of yourself afterwards. Recordings stay on your own machine; they say they do not store any.

It is the closest free equivalent to what we sell, it predates us by the better part of a decade, and if money is a constraint it is the first thing you should use. We are not going to pretend it does not exist and we are not going to be vague about how good it is.

4. Practise out loud, on a laptop, with a stopwatch

The unglamorous one, and free. Open the domain PDF, take an example scenario, set a timer for 30 seconds and then three minutes, record yourself on your laptop camera, and watch it back. Once. No retakes, because retakes are not a thing on the day.

That single exercise, done ten times across different domains, gets you most of what a paid simulator gets you. What it does not get you is a supply of unseen scenarios, which is the thing that runs out fastest: after the seven published examples you are practising on questions you already wrote.

A laptop, not a phone. UoA says a tablet or mobile phone cannot be used on the day. The pacing side of this is its own problem and we wrote it up here.

So what does paying anyone actually buy?

Three things, honestly. Unseen scenarios, so you stop rehearsing your own. Someone or something telling you what a reviewer would mark you down for, which watching yourself back does not do. And availability, because a live volunteer mock is an event and it is not running at 11pm eleven days out.

That is the whole list. It is not nothing, and it is also not the difference between getting in and not, and anyone selling it as the latter is selling you something we cannot see any evidence for.

What everything costs

The order we would actually do it in

1. 1Read the four UoA PDFs. An hour, free, and it is the mark scheme.
2. 2Record yourself answering the seven published example scenarios, one take each, timed. Free.
3. 3Sign up for the Free Mock MMI. Free.
4. 4If you still want more unseen scenarios, verify your student email and unlock the full Cutline station bank free.
5. 5Take the Kira practice session the week before, whatever else you did. Free.

If you get to step four, verify an @aucklanduni.ac.nz or @student.otago.ac.nz email. That unlocks every station for the 2026 MMI season, with ten written AI reviews included and no card. Use it, or use somebody else’s. The exact access details are here.