Registered  members with 100+ posts do not see Ads

Adelaide UAdel Medicine: Interview and Offer Requirements

ucatboy

final year eek
Valued Member
I should make a correction here^, not just for Boi2369 but for general info.

True for UNSW, with 99.95 + 99th an average interview is more than enough in my estimation.

But not so for Adelaide because of 3 factors different to UNSW:
1) UNSW's offer ratio is 1 in 3 (top third overall), Adelaide's is like 1 in 5 (top 20% overall)
2) Adelaide weights UCAT only half of interview i.e. the interview has more potential to overcome a top UCAT
3) SATAC boosts so many applicants to 99.95, diluting the "power" of a raw 99.95

That was why myself I got UNSW+Monash but failed Adelaide haha.
Yeah you really gotta pop off in the interview, it basically makes or breaks your application and UCAT, especially being only 20%, can only do so much. That said, if you set your sights a little bit lower to a later round offer, it's much more achieveable as Adelaide is one of the unis that bear the brunt of declines, particularly first-round ones by interstate applicants who get a better offer within their own state in the same round.
 
Yeah you really gotta pop off in the interview, it basically makes or breaks your application and UCAT, especially being only 20%, can only do so much. That said, if you set your sights a little bit lower to a later round offer, it's much more achieveable as Adelaide is one of the unis that bear the brunt of declines, particularly first-round ones by interstate applicants who get a better offer within their own state in the same round.
The offers thread shows that the ucat scores for adelaide are all very high though! I guess a high ucat could be associated with better interview skills though??? Although I doubt it… it’s probably more to do with the fact these offers are just a snapshot of the many made
 

A1

Rookie Doc
Moderator
The offers thread shows that the ucat scores for adelaide are all very high though!
The UCATs were very high because last year non-SA applicants needed 96th%ile to get an interview, so we wouldn't see offers less than 96th.

In ucatboy's and my posts above we were talking about the UCAT advantage of a 99th. At UNSW a 96th would have to outscore by say 20 interview marks to be equal to a 99th, at Adelaide they only need to outscore by 10 marks due to UCAT's half weight.
 

Fannnnnnn666

USYD BSci/MD IV
But not so for Adelaide because of 3 factors different to UNSW:
1) UNSW's offer ratio is 1 in 3 (top third overall), Adelaide's is like 1 in 5 (top 20% overall)
2) Adelaide weights UCAT only half of interview i.e. the interview has more potential to overcome a top UCAT
3) SATAC boosts so many applicants to 99.95, diluting the "power" of a raw 99.95

That was why myself I got UNSW+Monash but failed Adelaide haha.
Considering Adelaide has a very high decline rate (as a lot of interstate applicants who gets an offer would probably get a home-state offer as well), wouldn't that mean the offer to interview ratio can potentially be around 1 in 3? (originally 130 places for 600 interviews is around 1:4.5). Assuming someone has a maximum ATAR (worth 40%) and top 0.1%ile UCAT(worth 20%), the combined score of 60% would be the maximum score (One of my friend's parent is involved in the admission team of Adelaide med and he said that Adelaide uses a Z-score distribution for each component score), which would mean that regardless of the number of people with "adjusted" 99.95, the applicant with a top UCAT score and ATAR would still be on the top of the list due to the Z-score. Overall to get an offer, wouldn't that mean ending up with a 250ish position out of the 600 applicants who received an interview would be sufficient? (also taking into consideration of the 50% SA interview sub-quota, meaning that the majority of the 300 SA applicants would have a significantly lower UCAT score, further pushing the advantage?). Thus, in the interview component, having an average score would be sufficient to not drag down the overall score to the bottom 50%? As the applicant would have a maximum ATAR + UCAT score? Sorry about lengthy post HAHAHA just some random thoughts! :p

EDIT: And also not everyone with a killer interview would also have a raw/adjusted 99.95 or/plus top UCAT, as everyone can have different strength and weaknesses. (It is def possible but this will not be the case for the majority of the offers from Adelaide med considering some people I know got in with a 99ish ATAR, ~2800 UCAT)

And considering your case A1 it could potentially be due to the fact that Adelaide has not yet introduced the interview sub-quota, hence it is harder to get a big advantage on the UCAT section over the SA applicants?
 
Last edited:

ucatboy

final year eek
Valued Member
Considering Adelaide has a very high decline rate (as a lot of interstate applicants who gets an offer would probably get a home-state offer as well), wouldn't that mean the offer to interview ratio can potentially be around 1 in 3? (originally 130 places for 600 interviews is around 1:4.5). Assuming someone has a maximum ATAR (worth 40%) and top 0.1%ile UCAT(worth 20%), the combined score of 60% would be the maximum score (One of my friend's parent is involved in the admission team of Adelaide med and he said that Adelaide uses a Z-score distribution for each component score), which would mean that regardless of the number of people with "adjusted" 99.95, the applicant with a top UCAT score and ATAR would still be on the top of the list due to the Z-score. Overall to get an offer, wouldn't that mean ending up with a 250ish position out of the 600 applicants who received an interview would be sufficient? (also taking into consideration of the 50% SA interview sub-quota, meaning that the majority of the 300 SA applicants would have a significantly lower UCAT score, further pushing the advantage?). Thus, in the interview component, having an average score would be sufficient to not drag down the overall score to the bottom 50%? As the applicant would have a maximum ATAR + UCAT score? Sorry about lengthy post HAHAHA just some random thoughts! :p

EDIT: And also not everyone with a killer interview would also have a raw/adjusted 99.95 or/plus top UCAT, as everyone can have different strength and weaknesses. (It is def possible but this will not be the case for the majority of the offers from Adelaide med considering some people I know got in with a 99ish ATAR, ~2800 UCAT)

And considering your case A1 it could potentially be due to the fact that Adelaide has not yet introduced the interview sub-quota, hence it is harder to get a big advantage on the UCAT section over the SA applicants?
Adelaide *used* to have a high decline rate as you said due to literally 80% of the interviewees being from interstate, in my year I remember knowing like 5 people on the list of people who got a first-round offer, but following subsequent offer rounds, basically everyone I knew who interviewed ended up getting a top-up offer. As a result, the Adelaide cohort still predominantly consists of SA students.

You can tell how lopsided the interview demographic was by looking at what happened to the interview cutoffs after Adelaide introduced a 50% subquota for SA students last year:

2019: 91%ile for everyone
2020: 71%ile for SA students, 96%ile for interstate students.

The decline rate might've gone down last year after Adelaide started interviewing more SA students.


With reference to z-scores, that's not how z-scores work. Z-scores are not out of 1 and aren't like percentiles either. They refer to standard deviations above and below the mean. What it means is that if your UCAT score is astronomically high, you're basically leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else. Take this scenario of 16 students for example:

Students 1-5: 2900 UCAT
Students 6-10: 3000 UCAT
Students 11-15: 3100 UCAT
Student 16: 3500 UCAT

Mean: 3031.25
Standard deviation: 144.56

Students 1-5: -0.98 z-score (i.e. 0.98 standard deviations below the mean)
Students 6-10: -0.22 z-score
Students 11-15: 0.48 z-score
Student 16: 3.24 z-score (WTF)

As you can see, student 16, by virtue of getting a 3500 UCAT score, has basically eliminated the competition in the z-score department. There is literally no way for the other students to catch up, with students 1-5 literally falling over 4 standard deviations behind student 16. Z-scores are scary for components like the UCAT where there is a lot of potential to open up the lead between yourself and the person in second place - 3300 and 3600 are both technically considered 99%ile, but the latter basically doubles your competitiveness. The same is not true for ATAR, where everyone clusters around the 99 mark and so even if you did get a 99.95 ATAR, so did tens of other people and if not 99.95, then 99.90.

This is why I doubt that Adelaide uses z-scores because it disproportionately benefits UCAT, and as we've seen before, a stellar UCAT can't compensate for a less-than-stellar interview. They more likely use a ranking system, where the highest UCAT score is attributed a rank of 1, the second highest a rank of 2 etc. Then, your rankings in each of the components are multiplied by the weightings and added together (e.g. (50th x 0.2) + (100th x 0.4) + (150th x 0.4)). Everyone's combined score is once again rearranged from lowest to highest, with the lower the better. Adelaide then gives the top 150 people place offers. The quirk of using a ranking system is that it eliminates the gross advantage of a 3500 UCAT score over a 3300 - it would give the 3500 a rank of "1" and 3300, say, a rank of "5". Not much advantage to be had there. Drop 2 places in your interview ranking (worth double) and you've lost your lead.
 
Last edited:

ucatboy

final year eek
Valued Member
The previous post was a little too long so I thought I'd make a new one but a combined ranking system explains why it would be possible for a 99.95 ATAR and 99.9th percentile UCAT (14th/14000) to miss out on a first-round place offer:

99.95 + 3320 (~13th in ANZ in 2019)
800 interviewees, 150 place offers

ATAR: shared 1st/800
UCAT: ~14th/800
Interview: 500th/800

Combined ranking: (0.4 x 1st) + (0.2 x 13th) + (0.4 x 500th) = 203

A lot of other variables are at play here (203 combined ranking does not necessarily mean 203rd place) but as you can see, it doesn't seem like a shoo-in like one would have originally thought, considering their ATAR and UCAT scores.
 
Last edited:

Fannnnnnn666

USYD BSci/MD IV
Adelaide *used* to have a high decline rate as you said due to literally 80% of the interviewees being from interstate, in my year I remember knowing like 5 people on the list of people who got a first-round offer, but following subsequent offer rounds, basically everyone I knew who interviewed ended up getting a top-up offer. As a result, the Adelaide cohort still predominantly consists of SA students.

You can tell how lopsided the interview demographic was by looking at what happened to the interview cutoffs after Adelaide introduced a 50% subquota for SA students last year:

2019: 91%ile for everyone
2020: 71%ile for SA students, 96%ile for interstate students.

The decline rate might've gone down last year after Adelaide started interviewing more SA students.


With reference to z-scores, that's not how z-scores work. Z-scores are not out of 1 and aren't like percentiles either. They refer to standard deviations above and below the mean. What it means is that if your UCAT score is astronomically high, you're basically leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else. Take this scenario of 16 students for example:

Students 1-5: 2900 UCAT
Students 6-10: 3000 UCAT
Students 11-15: 3100 UCAT
Student 16: 3500 UCAT

Mean: 3031.25
Standard deviation: 144.56

Students 1-5: -0.98 z-score (i.e. 0.98 standard deviations below the mean)
Students 6-10: -0.22 z-score
Students 11-15: 0.48 z-score
Student 16: 3.24 z-score (WTF)

As you can see, student 16, by virtue of getting a 3500 UCAT score, has basically eliminated the competition in the z-score department. There is literally no way for the other students to catch up, with students 1-5 literally falling over 4 standard deviations behind student 16. Z-scores are scary for components like the UCAT where there is a lot of potential to open up the lead between yourself and the person in second place - 3300 and 3600 are both technically considered 99%ile, but the latter basically doubles your competitiveness. The same is not true for ATAR, where everyone clusters around the 99 mark and so even if you did get a 99.95 ATAR, so did tens of other people and if not 99.95, then 99.90.

This is why I doubt that Adelaide uses z-scores because it disproportionately benefits UCAT, and as we've seen before, a stellar UCAT can't compensate for a less-than-stellar interview. They more likely use a ranking system, where the highest UCAT score is attributed a rank of 1, the second highest a rank of 2 etc. Then, your rankings in each of the components are multiplied by the weightings and added together (e.g. (50th x 0.2) + (100th x 0.4) + (150th x 0.4)). Everyone's combined score is once again rearranged from lowest to highest, with the lower the better. Adelaide then gives the top 150 people place offers. The quirk of using a ranking system is that it eliminates the gross advantage of a 3500 UCAT score over a 3300 - it would give the 3500 a rank of "1" and 3300, say, a rank of "5". Not much advantage to be had there. Drop 2 places in your interview ranking (worth double) and you've lost your lead.
That does make sense, maybe the information he had was "flawed" HAHA. But back to the point I was trying to show, assuming that a ranking system is being used, do you think a Top ATAR (99.95) and top 0.5% UCAT(3400+) would compensate for an average interview component worth 40% for Adelaide med?

UPDATE: I also checked with my friend regarding the Monash med, he confirmed that his 99.95+3280 combo did not receive an offer (not even bonded), he suspects that he potentially said something that got "red-flagged" by the interviewers, but he doesn't know for sure.
 

DrDrLMG!

Resident Medical Officer
Administrator
Bit off topic for here, I’ll probably move all this soon, but re. UAdel’s decline rate.

Despite moving to a SA preference system last year, of the 27 offers reported here, 16 were declined and 2 didn’t say if they were accepting or declining… for 2020 entry (pre-change) we had 29 offers reported, 16 declined and again a few didn’t state one way or another.

I know MSO is only a snap shot, but the change didn’t do much to our figures…
 

A1

Rookie Doc
Moderator
Considering Adelaide has a very high decline rate (as a lot of interstate applicants who gets an offer would probably get a home-state offer as well), wouldn't that mean the offer to interview ratio can potentially be around 1 in 3? (originally 130 places for 600 interviews is around 1:4.5).
I'm an oldie who keeps thinking Adelaide interviews ~800 applicants for 140 places, didn't know they had cut to 600. But fair enough if you're assessing an average interview is enough for a top-up offer haha. (Essentially Adelaide's round2/subsequent offers are top-ups since they don't hold a 2nd interview round to reserve places for).

The rest of your points I leave to ucatboy to go to bat for me. Jeez he's pretty convincing huh :)
 

Registered  members with 100+ posts do not see Ads

ucatboy

final year eek
Valued Member
That does make sense, maybe the information he had was "flawed" HAHA. But back to the point I was trying to show, assuming that a ranking system is being used, do you think a Top ATAR (99.95) and top 0.5% UCAT(3400+) would compensate for an average interview component worth 40% for Adelaide med?

UPDATE: I also checked with my friend regarding the Monash med, he confirmed that his 99.95+3280 combo did not receive an offer (not even bonded), he suspects that he potentially said something that got "red-flagged" by the interviewers, but he doesn't know for sure.
Theoretically it should, although the offer might come in one of the later rounds. There's also a possibility of being "blacklisted" in your interview, it's not unheard of particularly for Adelaide, every year you'd hear of someone who got a max ATAR and UMAT being denied any offer, not even a top-up, making the rounds in Asian circles. UNSW explicitly states that a poor interview cannot be compensated by stellar scores in the other two components and it's possible Monash has done the same. I've been perusing MSO for long enough to remember one year where a concerned parent made an account to ask why their son didn't get a Monash offer despite having near-top scores in the ATAR and UMAT department. He was a Victorian applicant, mind you. The same happening to an interstate applicant sounds even more plausible.
 

ucatboy

final year eek
Valued Member
Bit off topic for here, I’ll probably move all this soon, but re. UAdel’s decline rate.

Despite moving to a SA preference system last year, of the 27 offers reported here, 16 were declined and 2 didn’t say if they were accepting or declining… for 2020 entry (pre-change) we had 29 offers reported, 16 declined and again a few didn’t state one way or another.

I know MSO is only a snap shot, but the change didn’t do much to our figures…
I think Adelaide might've messed up (it'd be a pretty major oversight though) by not maintaining the subquota to the offers stage. Meaning that, place offers for the 50% interstate applicants that did make the cut were basically guaranteed since they came in with such strong required scores. That also means that while 71%ile SA applicants were invited to attend an interview, they never stood a chance anyway :(

I noticed that even though the minimum interview percentile dropped to 71st last year, basically no-one with a UCAT percentile below 90th ended up reporting an actual offer. If this is what Adelaide did last year, then that's dumb.

They made special emphasis on a subquota for INTERVIEWS last year, but no mention about place offers, so what they ended up doing is anybody's guess.
 
Last edited:

Fannnnnnn666

USYD BSci/MD IV
That also means that while 71%ile SA applicants were invited to attend an interview, they never stood a chance anyway :(
That was definitely quite rough as a lot of people from my school proceeded to the interview stage with 80ish percentile (As I'm also from SA) but never ended up with an offer:(. Having said that, one of my mates did "miracle-ly" end up with a top-up bonded offer with 2740ish UCAT. But at the same time he also had 99.90 ATAR and probs a killer interview, but that was def one of the very few offers made to people with UCAT below 80 percentile.
 
Last edited:

jinjja21

Member
I noticed that even though the minimum interview percentile dropped to 71st last year, basically no-one with a UCAT percentile below 90th ended up reporting an actual offer. If this is what Adelaide did last year, then that's dumb.

Does this essentially mean that SA applicants who received an interview with ~70% have no hope to land a place offer regardless of how spot on their interview was?
 

DrDrLMG!

Resident Medical Officer
Administrator
Does this essentially mean that SA applicants who received an interview with ~70% have no hope to land a place offer regardless of how spot on their interview was?
This seemed to be the case last year. We have no idea if they have improved the process for this year yet.
 

Fannnnnnn666

USYD BSci/MD IV
Does this essentially mean that SA applicants who received an interview with ~70% have no hope to land a place offer regardless of how spot on their interview was?
You do if you can absolutely smash the interview and get a perfect ATAR,

As one applicant last year got a bonded offer with 73%ile UCAT and 99.90 ATAR (Non-rural)

However this year theres only 600 interviews (300 SA applicants) instead of 800 (400 SA applicants) last year, which could potentially lead to an increase in percentile from 71%ile for SA students.
 
That was definitely quite rough as a lot of people from my school proceeded to the interview stage with 80ish percentile (As I'm also from SA) but never ended up with an offer:(. Having said that, one of my mates did "miracle-ly" end up with a top-up bonded offer with 2740ish UCAT. But at the same time he also had 99.90 ATAR and probs a killer interview (State team debater+school captain+prefect+all range of Extra-curricular activities so I guess it kinda makes sense), but that was def one of the very few offers made to people with UCAT below 80 percentile.
:(
 
Last edited:

Registered  members with 100+ posts do not see Ads

Qwerty124

Member
Put this in another thread but this seemed more fitting. For transfer applicants for adelaide med what is considered a competitive score? Couldnt find much info about it besides a couple reports. Does the importance of atar over ucat also apply similarly to gpa and ucat?

Lets say i get max gpa and maybe a 90% ucat. Is that considered a good score for a transfer or are the gpas for transfers basically all 7 making that category moot.
 
Put this in another thread but this seemed more fitting. For transfer applicants for adelaide med what is considered a competitive score? Couldnt find much info about it besides a couple reports. Does the importance of atar over ucat also apply similarly to gpa and ucat?

Lets say i get max gpa and maybe a 90% ucat. Is that considered a good score for a transfer or are the gpas for transfers basically all 7 making that category moot.
I think they do it 40/40/20 interview/gpa/ucat. What’s your ucat and gpa?
 

Registered  members with 100+ posts do not see Ads

Top