Interview offers & dates 2016-17

[biom]

At the moment they only say...
As we have now set the cut-off for places for the Main Round of offers, we can calculate what you will require in your interview in order to be offered a place. When considering your results to date (academic rank and UMAT), your chance of being offered a place in the program after your interview - assuming you will have achieved the maximum interview score – is around X%.Please think strongly about this when considering the time, effort and money you will need to invest in order to attend the UNSW interview.

But I'm not sure if they will send out a more detailed one closer to the timr

That is actually very reasonable of them.

Would you like to push your luck and ask what the mean interview score is to date? this would be very interesting information.

I suspect a grad student has written some code that works this all out. I hope they have the confidence intervals correct

 

[Wendy]

That is

That is actually very reasonable of them.

Would you like to push your luck and ask what the mean interview score is to date? this would be very interesting information.

I don't think they'd give it to us actually...

 

[biom]

I don't think they'd give it to us actually...

only one way to find out!

 

[Wendy]

only one way to find out!

I'm not that curious about it, if you got an email you can ask, but I'd much prefer going into the interview and doing my best rather than aiming for a certain score. But ask them if you want, I'm sure others on mso would want to know

 

[pills]

your chance of being offered a place in the program after your interview - assuming you will have achieved the maximum interview score – is around X%

Does this mean that even if you achieve the maximum interview score you still are not guaranteed a place? I was under the impression that you are only invited to second round interviews if getting the maximum interview score brings you above the first round cutoffs. Or am I misreading it?

 

[Karima]

Nope, nothing of the sort. I'm waiting for a1 and mana to explain

I can't understand this. The second round interviews are already finished.

 

[Karima]

Does this mean that even if you achieve the maximum interview score you still are not guaranteed a place? I was under the impression that you are only invited to second round interviews if getting the maximum interview score brings you above the first round cutoffs. Or am I misreading it?

Yes that's true

 

[phosphene]

Received the email from UNSW this morning. It gave me a >50% chance, so I suppose that's decent (?), though it's provided the maximum interview score is achieved. I'm curious as to if anyone else received a higher estimate? Or whether they just tell you whether you have >50%, or <50% chance.

 

[Karima]

Is this mean if you haven’t receive an email, you have no chance to get into UNSW? OMG so disappointing.

 

[lad]

Received the email from UNSW this morning. It gave me a >50% chance, so I suppose that's decent (?), though it's provided the maximum interview score is achieved. I'm curious as to if anyone else received a higher estimate? Or whether they just tell you whether you have >50%, or <50% chance.

Congratulations!! hope you smash it. Can I ask what your ATAR and UMAT was?

 

[shadowduke]

I can't understand this. The second round interviews are already finished.

You are right. Technically, this is actually the third round of interviews.

 

[Wendy]

I can't understand this. The second round interviews are already finished.

Sorry third round...the interstate round

 

[Wendy]

Mana and A1 we need you. Where are you when we need it the most?

 

[biom]

Does this mean that even if you achieve the maximum interview score you still are not guaranteed a place? I was under the impression that you are only invited to second round interviews if getting the maximum interview score brings you above the first round cutoffs. Or am I misreading it?

Let me have go.... this answer is based on maths not experience but perhaps is anyway helpful....

Assume
1. the max possible for UMAT, ATAR and Interview is 100 each.
2. After the interviews so far they have determined a cutoff mark of 250 (just as an example)...

If your combined UMAT+ATAR scores are greater or equal to 150 then it is possible that you will reach the cutoff.

But....

If person A has a combined UMAT+ATAR of 180 and person B has a combined UMAT+ATAR of 150.... then it is (much) more likely that Person A will achieve a higher aggregate mark. Put another way person B will need to score very well in the interview and rely on person A scoring poorly.

By looking at mean interview scores and confidence intervals it is possible (for the uni) to estimate the likelihood of person B achieving the required mark in the interview.

Does this make sense?

Someone with experience can confirm but the above makes sense mathematically.

 

[phosphene]

Congratulations!! hope you smash it. Can I ask what your ATAR and UMAT was?

Haha thanks lad! (Though hopefully I won't need it if I get a first round offer in my home state!) My ATAR was 99.65 and my UMAT 95%tile. Nothing particularly spectacular d:

 

[Karima]

Are these emails in regards to the 3rd round interviews or get a place offer? Confusing?

 

[phosphene]

Are these emails in regards to the 3rd round interviews or get a place offer? Confusing?

I think you should have received previous correspondence notifying you of a 3rd round interview offer. I think these new emails are just confirmation, and also provide prospective interviewees with more information to use to evaluate whether it will be worth their time and money to fly interstate for the interview.

 

[Isiyara]

Are these emails in regards to the 3rd round interviews or get a place offer? Confusing?

They are confirming the 3rd round provisional interviews people were sent earlier as they now know the cut-offs. They are also estimating your chance so you can figure out if it's worth making the trip since most 3rd rounders are interstate applicants.

 

[A1]

Thank you. Do you happen to know if interviews are percentages or percentile ranks? For example, are you told you need to score at the 95th %ile, or that you need a score of 95%. Just curious

We don't know how Unsw marks interviews, whether by percentages out of 10 or 100 or whatever. But if true to the words they wrote to us the scores will be standardised (same as ATAR & UMAT) so doesn't really matter.

The estimated percentage given in the email is chance of getting a place not interview score. However see my explanation below I think we can *roughly* relate it to the percentile of one's interview score.

Does this mean that even if you achieve the maximum interview score you still are not guaranteed a place? I was under the impression that you are only invited to second round interviews if getting the maximum interview score brings you above the first round cutoffs. Or am I misreading it?

IMO you are absolutely spot on. Since Unsw already knows the place cutoff and your ATAR & UMAT, if coupled with max intv score they already can tell whether that would or would not get you a place. It doesn't make sense to say getting the maximum interview score gives you >X% chance.

I kinda think Unsw wrote like that to avoid any legal challenges. The real meaning of that is more like: If Unsw were to put 100 typical from low to high intv scores into a bag and draw one out for you, you have >X% chance it combines with your ATAR/UMAT to above the cutoff. Make sense? Thus I approximate it to the percentile of your interview score (i.e. >70% chance means 30%ile+ score).

(Writing this in a hurry, will edit if I can think of better ways to describe).

 

[B2]

I think you should have received previous correspondence notifying you of a 3rd round interview offer. I think these new emails are just confirmation, and also provide prospectful interviewees with more information to use to evaluate whether it will be worth their time and money to fly interstate for the interview.

Phosphene is correct as i had received previous correspondence of not having enough scores to meet the interview cut offs for the interstate round.

Therefore, these emails are just trying to provide you your approximate chance of being successful with the interview as they dont want applicants which have a very low chance, say 10 percent to waste money on the interstate travel especially if they may not be able to afford it financially.

Realistically, if they have written a chance of, lets say 50 percent, your chances are more around the 30-40 percent region given that the interview goes decently well as it is not easy to get a full score in the interview.