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UNSW UNSW Medicine: General Entry Questions and Discussion

A1 or LMG! Would anyone be able to calculate the rank score required to have received a UNSW interview invite?
I think there is a minimum rank score and UNSW has given an example stating for a UCAT score of 3090 a 99.5 ATAR was required to meet the minimum rank.

Interested to know! Thanks guys!
 
yeezyboy said:
Would anyone be able to calculate the rank score required to have received a UNSW interview invite?
Click to expand...
I wouldn't be able to calculate the rank score, I can try guesstimate the "pivot point" (will explain).

Back in my year the scraping-an-interview line was 99.0+90%ile. Two years ago it crept up to 99.2+92%ile. I call this the pivot point i.e. you can be a little higher in one + a little lower in the other, at the approx rate of 0.1 ATAR = 1%ile. For example 99.0+94%ile or 99.4+90%ile (remember this is to scrape an interview placing you at bottom of the pack & need a near top interview to reach the offer cutoff).

This year due to UNSW giving out so much more EAS it appears to be around 99.5+95%ile. The collated data confirm with the below invites around this combo:
98th%ile/99.35
96th%ile/99.45
96th%ile/6.60 (~99.5 equivalent)
94th%ile/99.75

Large deviated from this are two scores 99th%ile/98.55 & 76th%ile/99.95(EAS boosted). Either UNSW has a special invite category for 99.95 or 99%ile, or these are way out of scale higher being in the top rung (like you know how a 99%ile can be 3,300 or 3,500).
 
A1 random thing I may be confused about... I thought, for 2020 entry, UNSW published 99.20 as a hard general entry cut off for ATAR and for anything lower, even 99.15, no UCAT could compensate. Have I misunderstood that?
 
LMG! said:
A1 random thing I may be confused about... I thought, for 2020 entry, UNSW published 99.20 as a hard general entry cut off for ATAR and for anything lower, even 99.15, no UCAT could compensate. Have I misunderstood that?
Click to expand...
That was for last year with a hard ATAR cutoff never seen used before. The 99.20+92%ile pivot was two years ago.
(I didn't want to mention last year in the post above to avoid making it more confusing).
 
A1 said:
That was for last year with a hard ATAR cutoff never seen used before. The 99.20+92%ile pivot was two years ago.
(I didn't want to mention last year in the post above to avoid making it more confusing).
Click to expand...

So they’ve gone back to no hard cut off?
 
A1 said:
I wouldn't be able to calculate the rank score, I can try guesstimate the "pivot point" (will explain).

Back in my year the scraping-an-interview line was 99.0+90%ile. Two years ago it crept up to 99.2+92%ile. I call this the pivot point i.e. you can be a little higher in one + a little lower in the other, at the approx rate of 0.1 ATAR = 1%ile. For example 99.0+94%ile or 99.4+90%ile (remember this is to scrape an interview placing you at bottom of the pack & need a near top interview to reach the offer cutoff).

This year due to UNSW giving out so much more EAS it appears to be around 99.5+95%ile. The collated data confirm with the below invites around this combo:
98th%ile/99.35
96th%ile/99.45
96th%ile/6.60 (~99.5 equivalent)
94th%ile/99.75

Large deviated from this are two scores 99th%ile/98.55 & 76th%ile/99.95(EAS boosted). Either UNSW has a special invite category for 99.95 or 99%ile, or these are way out of scale higher being in the top rung (like you know how a 99%ile can be 3,300 or 3,500).
Click to expand...
I am pretty much the 98th%ile/99.35, so would that mean I'm pretty much screwed unless I have a killer interview?
 
LMG! said:
So they’ve gone back to no hard cut off?
Click to expand...
It'd appear so if the 99th%ile/98.55 invite had no EAS.

worldno9 said:
I am pretty much the 98th%ile/99.35, so would that mean I'm pretty much screwed unless I have a killer interview?
Click to expand...
Want me to tell you the bad news or not to tell you :(

But don't lose heart, UNSW is implementing new selection ways all the time so who knows. Just do the best you can.
 
A1 said:
It's why I speculated yesterday UNSW may now have three categories for interview selection:
- 99.95 (incl. EAS boost) with relatively low UCAT
- UCAT 98/99 provided meeting ATAR 96+ or WAM 70+
- The rest are by ATAR+UCAT combo.
Click to expand...
Are all EAS/SCATS applicants given the same boost (e.g. atar raised by 2 points) or are they all boosted up to 99.95?
 
My UCAT was 92. Scats must have been in play (even though I got no confirmation) and it must’ve been used to boost ucat this year?
 
A1 said:
It'd appear so if the 99th%ile/98.55 invite had no EAS.


Want me to tell you the bad news or not to tell you :(

But don't lose heart, UNSW is implementing new selection ways all the time so who knows. Just do the best you can.
Click to expand...
Are you telling me 99th/98.55 is basically equivalent to 98th/99.35? Surely not?
 
Crow said:
Are you telling me 99th/98.55 is basically equivalent to 98th/99.35? Surely not?
Click to expand...
There are three possible explanations for this^, although I don't know which if any is correct.

1) UNSW may have given an invite to all 99th provided they meet the 96 ATAR / 70 WAM threshold.
2) The 99th could be 150 UCAT marks higher than the 98th (vs 20-30 marks for 1%ile differentials in the lower range), so in linear terms the 99th is worth like 105th %ile.

3) UNSW may have combined the two components by rank position (not rank score). 99th is say 50 positions higher than 98th, and 98.55 is 50 positions lower than 99.35 among the applicants, making the two equivalent.
 
Interesting....
A1 said:
1) UNSW may have given an invite to all 99th provided they meet the 96 ATAR / 70 WAM threshold.
Click to expand...
I’m thinking they wouldn’t do this because how do they then decide place offers? Put them as an “average” applicant? Make them need to score in the top third of interview scores?
A1 said:
2) The 99th could be 150 UCAT marks higher than the 98th (vs 20-30 marks for 1% differentials in the lower range), so in linear terms the 99th is worth like 105th %ile.
Click to expand...
Sounds more likely although isn’t consistent with our theory of UNSW changing to rank position rather than score (as per 3) below).
A1 said:
3) UNSW may have combined the two components by rank position (not rank score). 99th is say 50 positions higher than 98th, and 98.55 is 50 positions lower than 99.35 among the applicants, making the two equivalent.
Click to expand...
I think this is most plausible but surely there’s wayyyy more than 50 applicants over those 16 ATAR “brackets” between 98.55 and 99.35, right? Just doesn’t seem to add up to me.

Might need to submit a FOI request ;)
 
What'll be interesting is seeing how the entrance requirements/thresholds change for next year, assuming a far less number of EAS applications.
 
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