• Welcome to MSO!
    We are an online community for current and prospective medical, dental and allied health students and early career professionals from Australia and New Zealand.

    Please read: About MSO | Annual Welcome and Important Information | MSO Rules

    Quick Links To Forums
    Tests/Interviews: UCAT | GAMSAT | Interviews
    Entrance Discussion: Graduate Medicine | Undergraduate Medicine | Dentistry

  • Register with us

    Please consider registering on MSO. Benefits of registering are:
    • Able to post and participate in the forum
    • After 10 posts: Private Message Other Users
    • After 25 posts: Access to the Chatbox
    • After 100 posts: Custom user titles and Ad-free experience

    If you would like to get involved with MSO or have ideas, suggestions, comments, criticisms or other feedback please Contact Us

UNSW UNSW Medicine: General Entry Questions and Discussion

Desperatebaby said:
Ucat boy , that interesting ! can u explain what algorithm have changed for the non standards ?
What does ‘ best of algorithm’ mean and what criteria were used before this year ?
Click to expand...
I’m also interested in how the best of algorithm will be used given it seems like it could be impossible for non-standards to rely on uni marks in the ‘best of’ due to the conversion of this to a max 99.50 ATAR (if this is still correct).

ucatboy do we have a clearer understanding of this yet?
 
Desperatebaby said:
Ucat boy , that interesting ! can u explain what algorithm have changed for the non standards ?
What does ‘ best of algorithm’ mean and what criteria were used before this year ?
Click to expand...
LMG! said:
I’m also interested in how the best of algorithm will be used given it seems like it could be impossible for non-standards to rely on uni marks in the ‘best of’ due to the conversion of this to a max 99.50 ATAR (if this is still correct).

ucatboy do we have a clearer understanding of this yet?
Click to expand...
Sorry I didn't make it clear, but I was more explaining how the change in academic rank calculation (taking the best of GPA and ATAR rather than averaging them) preceded/caused the increase in competitiveness of applicants across the board, hence raising cutoffs from 99.25 to 99.60.

Looking at the interview invties thread, there's a fair few non-standard applicants with sub-99 ATARs but 6.5+ GPAs in university. In previous years, a 97 ATAR + 7 GPA (=99.50 ATAR) would average out to 98.25 ATAR, putting you way out of the running for an interview. It also meant that in 2019, any non-standard applicant with <99 ATAR would never be able to get an interview invite as <99 ATAR + any GPA would never average out to 99.25. This year, things changed, and UNSW started taking the best of either metric, meaning that people with 99.95 ATARs and 7 GPAs preserved their 99.95 ATAR rather than 99.725, and people with 95 ATARs and 7 GPAs got an interview chance with 99.50 ATAR. Ironically, this increase in eligible applicants seems to have caused non-standard admissions to implode anyway, making it impossible for the latter (95 ATAR + 7 GPA) to receive an offer as LMG! pointed out. That said, I've seen a fair few sub-99.60 offers supposedly without equity made so I don't even know who to believe anymore.
 
We could only hope that UNSW reflects on this and makes changes to their selection criteria, I.e. increases the weighting of the interview. To interview so many applicants when it’s literally impossible for them to land an offer is a huge waste of everyone’s time, not to mention getting applicants’ hopes up unnecessarily.
 
Desperatebaby said:
But they said cut off was 99.6
If gpa 7 is only 99.5
No non standards would have high enough atar to get in which doesn’t make sense ?
Click to expand...
We found this table published by a uni in NSW which is a member of the UAC Consortium. It's only our theory that UAC uses this conversion for other UAC-member unis too, although from a few Selection ranks UNSW revealed to MSO members they verified well.

What we still don't know is:
1) Has 6.5+ always been converted to a flat 99.50 as shown, or UAC actually pro-rata it to >99.50?
2) Has UNSW instructed UAC separately this year that for UNSW >6.5 is converted to >99.50?

> https://medstudentsonline.com.au/forum/attachments/1563351587784-png.2681/
 
Hey guys just called up unsw for my ranking and how i went for my interview. They said i had a very good interview. Is it best i give up on unsw and also i think the cut off thing they do is isnt what they do, prrtty sure they average it out and just tell us it is cut off
 
Last edited:
Mj232 said:
Hey guys just called up unsw for my ranking and how i went for my interview. They said i had a very good interview and i ranked 14th below the last offer (my 89th percentile ucat anchored). Is it best i give up on unsw and also i think the cut off thing they do is isnt what they do, prrtty sure they average it out and just tell us it is cut off
Click to expand...
Which number did you call? I called the meso office and they told me there’s no waiting list and that forums are filled with people reporting their waiting list numbers but they can’t give them out??
 
hazell said:
Which number did you call? I called the meso office and they told me there’s no waiting list and that forums are filled with people reporting their waiting list numbers but they can’t give them out??
Click to expand...
If u scroll up to the former posts it says which one to call, but she gave me the 'sick of so many students calling for ranks' tone. Just be poliet w her haha
 
Mj232 said:
If u scroll up to the former posts it says which one to call, but she gave me the 'sick of so many students calling for ranks' tone. Just be poliet w her haha
Click to expand...
Hahaha that’s the one i called but as soon as I said I interviewed and had an enquiry she’s like we can’t give ranks out to any students, or answer questions about where they’re ranked :oops:
 
I also called UNSW for my ranking. Strangely, the person at the other end seemed quite impatient and refused to tell me. They then said that my interview was 'slightly below average', my 'other scores were OK' and then that I was 'nowhere close below the last person', before hanging up on me. What gives?
 
Mj232 said:
Hey guys just called up unsw for my ranking and how i went for my interview. They said i had a very good interview and i ranked 14th below the last offer (my 89th percentile ucat anchored). Is it best i give up on unsw and also i think the cut off thing they do is isnt what they do, prrtty sure they average it out and just tell us it is cut off
Click to expand...
You were ranked 114th but they sent you a rejection letter? (you posted a screenshot of an email you received, saying "cannot consider you for further rounds"...) Does that mean anyone below your rank doesn't have a chance? I didn't receive an offer this round so I'm just hoping there's still a chance lol
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top