She may have included the 6th for "Physiotherapy and Radiography and Medical Imaging interviews for Victorian applicants".
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Interview offers & dates 2016-17
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She may have included the 6th for "Physiotherapy and Radiography and Medical Imaging interviews for Victorian applicants".
As stated before, Monash is rather secretive about its admissions process.
ImGreyt
Member
Hard to know until they actually come out but since there seems to be a lack of competitive vic students I'd say that they will be with the first round offers. But who knows
This is actually not a good thing.
There has been a whole lot of press in 2016 about how unis have "rorted the ATAR system". Perhaps some of the unis have offered places in a non-transparent way.... but many unis have been quite open. UWS gives bonus points for residents of western Sydney. UNSW gives bonus points for good HSC performance in relevant subjects and for leadership skills. It is all published. USYD seems to keep its cards closer to its chest....
If everything is in the open then people know exactly where they stand.
Why not publish interview scores? You can bet that the unis keep records of a quality that if someone challenged an outcome in court that they could defend themselves.
I personally don't think it is a good thing either to keep your admissions data this secret to the point where you purposely have conflicting data from your staff that interacts with the public (at least be consistent).
However, my experience with this from the other side is that if you do end up publishing your minimum scores for entry you will end up with the following for your admissions staff to deal with:
1. Students calling who missed out by one point in UMAT or ATAR asking for leniency trying to state that they are competitive because of whatever reason
2. Students (or parents) misinterpreting the cutoffs - for example, especially at a university which weights both ATAR and UMAT such as Monash, if you release the fact that the lowest non-rural standard UMAT was (say) 170 and the lowest non-rural standard ATAR was (say) 97, then you'll get a whole lot of people who call up who got above 170 and who got above 97 ATAR and who didn't receive an interview (and correctly so), because if you had a UMAT of 170 you needed an ATAR of 99.95, and if you had an ATAR of 97 you needed at UMAT of 250. Given that universities use models that rank these students on a continuum (see: combined z-scores from the UNSW system) it's not feasible for the university to publish each ATAR vs each UMAT required for that ATAR. Other simpler but still stupid things might happen, such as (in previous years) students calling up with 60%ile UMAT when the minimum required for their UMAT was 60 average raw mark. This simply creates more work for the faculty with literally no advantage for them.
3. Even if you are a university that goes by a threshold umat cutoff (at least until ATARs are released), if you publish the one from last year and your cutoff for this year goes up by ONE POINT you end up with a whole lot of people calling and complaining that it wasn't fair because they made last year's cutoff but not this year's.
4. Any of the above may lead to legal battles between disgruntled students (or rather those students' parents) and the university which takes a stupid amount of time and money as well, and (except in rather exceptional cases) always results in the university winning. Yes, the universities do make mistakes, but they would usually be corrected if the student calls up with their scores above the cutoff for interview, and these instances rarely if ever progress to legal battles.
Universities have very good reasons to keep their admissions data quite secret - it saves them lots of time and money and means they can use that time better for all the students involved. It also means that, especially for universities which have other non-numerical based admission requirements, such as the JCU application form, that they can stop students from knowing exactly what they are looking for and thus gaming the system (and actually get the students with the qualities they are actually looking for).
Typical Admissions office making up facts as they please 
there is actually another interview today for Bachelor of Radiography and Medical Imaging for IB students.. maybe that contributes to the 600 total
There is also the other factor that admissions staff that answer the phone aren't always 100% certain about information especially if they are not the statistician that was doing all the numbers work and/or if they were given an old document to give information from which is now out of date. The safest thing for these staff to do is generally to give as little information as possible while referring anything weird or suspicious to the people actually running the numbers and using the student data.
No she meant med, 600 including interstaters. 600 people competing for 242 places. 40% acceptance rate.
She could be misinformed.
She was saying Monash has one of the highest acceptance rates, 40% intakes from interviews is pretty good tho
Mana,
With some limited experience from both sides of the academic fence as well... I honestly think transparency can avoid all of the points above.
- I missed out by one point.... that's pretty clear.
- I don't understand how to sum z-scores.... a once off tutorial soon explains it.
- I am of a mind to mount a legal challenge because my parents want to spend the cash.... I will anyway seek access to the information.
The Federal government is requiring additional transparency along the lines of Admission to UNSW - Future Students - UNSW Australia...
It is better for the med schools to take the lead rather than be dragged kicking and screaming. For example, how would the Tasmanian public react to learning of the cutoffs that are applied for local students? Perhaps not well?
ah well.... a discussion for another day.
Do NOT even get me started on UTAS's lack of transparency!!
I personally am in favour of transparency as well - from our perspective at MSO it's much easier for us to help you all if we have hard numbers rather than having to collect data from students in the years previous. However, from the admissions staff perspective, it's a whole lot more trouble.
Releasing cutoffs such as the ones that apply to local students in Tasmania (or even Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cutoffs for some universities) would result in quite a lot of backlash from members of the public who didn't get in with their higher ATAR/UMAT (or more commonly their parents). Unfortunately the reason that there would be a lot of backlash is mostly because these students/parents are rather narrow sighted in the sense that they think medical school admission is something that is earned. It's not though - as stated elsewhere, the point of (Australian) medical schools is to train people to meet the healthcare demands for people within Australia, and that includes specifically addressing areas of workforce shortage - such as in Tasmania or in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population. In that sense, a university is really well within its rights to accept any student over any other, even with lower scores across the board, because it believes that that student is better placed for whatever reason to serve the needs of the Australian public. As is such, for scores such as these, I am well in favour of keeping this out of the public eye, for the good of Australian healthcare.
but this is the point.... Tassie needs some doctors and the approach taken is to give, what seems like an enormous, leg-up to local students. If the general public learned that students with UMATs almost double that of some locals were turned away would they be happy about the quality of their docs? Maybe.
Perhaps the availability of a local internship provides more than enough motivation for new grads to stay in Tas. Perhaps more bonded places....
If you would not be happy reading about it on the front page of the Mercury.... then maybe it is not the right system.
Having started this discussion... perhaps time for me to exit:yes:
The problem with having these students with scores more than double of the locals being turned away is that the community wouldn't care one iota about "missing out" on those higher scoring students going through their university if they aren't going to be around to meet that community's needs. It's vastly preferable for that community to have a doctor rather than train someone else as a doctor who isn't going to serve them at all and is going to go back to their major metropolitan hospital in Sydney or Melbourne instead.
It's also not as simple as "providing more local internships". There are already more students graduating from Tasmania than intern spots within Tasmania, but the availability of an internship is highly contingent on the availability of senior staff to supervise such interns, which Tasmania also has quite the shortage of.
Mana,
I understand and agree that the policies must be about having doctors in Tassie (and other communities)....
....but you make the argument yourself. The UTAS approach, which I think would cause a stir in the Mercury, isn't solving the problem.
The public in Tasmania is big enough and ugly enough to have a debate about what they need to do to assure a satisfactory supply of local medical skills. This can't happen when it is only (somewhat strange) people like us that are having the discussion.
They already had this discussion - which is why the Tasmanian state government had to implement such a policy in the first place that ~90% of the places for year 12s at UTas's medical degree had to go to Tasmanian school leavers. It just so happened that because there aren't that many Tasmanian school leavers that the corresponding cutoffs dropped so far, which is why we even have the current situation.
How to train doctors that specifically meet the needs of the Australian public (especially areas of shortage) is a rather complex issue that many aspects of government have been trying to tackle for many years now - and there does seem to be some benefit to some of the policies (such as the 25% rural minimum). You have to be careful not to undo this progress by undermining the ability of a university such as UTas to select students for the benefit of the communities in need, and this is why you should absolutely not headline the issue of low scoring Tasmanians (who are more likely to stay in Tasmania) on the front of the Mercury, at least, not in a negative light.
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In these situations, Tas should go for long term bonded offers for all (say 5 years). Then No one can complain.
The thing is, though, and I'm specifically referring to the situation in Tasmania, however it no doubt applies elsewhere, regardless of whether the student is a Tassie local with an ATAR of 95.01 and a UMAT of 30, or an interstate student with an ATAR of 99.95 and a UMAT of 100, by the time they graduate at the end of 5th year, both students have (largely) undergone the same training, and had to pass the same exams, at the same, nationally accredited University.
If there was evidence that students with 100%ile UMATs make better doctors, then fine, but if there is, I'm not aware of it.
I'm not, at all, questioning the Tasmanian approach. Not even close. I'm just agreeing that there is an incredible lack of transparency. And that hypothetical Mercury newspaper article that's been thrown around above, I think, if written accurately rather than sensationalistically, would be just fine.
ETA: maybe it would also open discussions regarding WHY, per head of population, we have fewer kids achieving the kinds of scores seen in other capital cities and finally kick start some education reform, too!
If there was evidence that students with 100%ile UMATs make better doctors, then fine, but if there is, I'm not aware of it.
I'm not, at all, questioning the Tasmanian approach. Not even close. I'm just agreeing that there is an incredible lack of transparency. And that hypothetical Mercury newspaper article that's been thrown around above, I think, if written accurately rather than sensationalistically, would be just fine.
ETA: maybe it would also open discussions regarding WHY, per head of population, we have fewer kids achieving the kinds of scores seen in other capital cities and finally kick start some education reform, too!
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