Originally Posted by ezzie

The 3 A*'s story was a bit disturbing to say the least...anyone know roughly the grades of A levels at which point you generally wouldn't get a place at a uni?

I don't like Australia's system of uni entry. Our HSC results are amalgamated and ranked from 99.5 down. This means that the top marks (ATAR's of 85 and above) tend to go to our massive Chinese & Indian population (Australian-Chinese & also overseas students from China or India). They have private tuition on an almost daily basis and as a result have few social skills or ability to perform as a team once they leave university.

Because of their HSC success, they inevitably get places on the most sought after degrees. There's a lot of anger here amongst academics about this ...as most of the overseas Chinese stds hardly speak English. Their complaints are stiffled though as education of overseas students is the 3rd highest GDP for Australia....that's a lot of overseas students!

The ranking system forces Australian students, who've worked hard but not been coached, down the ATAR scores. A non ranked banding system such as in the UK would be much fairer. Our uni's place on ATAR score alone - no interviews, no page telling them about your qualities and other activities - just the score. It's a very one-eyed system.

Originally Posted by quoll

My boys went to Australia's number 1 university (according to the ranking tables) and it was definitely a case of "spot the whitey". They were both very angry with the process - not of getting in, but of the assessments they were subject to while they were there. There were so many "group" assessments which meant that if they were in a group where half of them couldnt speak English and half of the remainder were off their faces on some sort of self medication then the group fared badly. One of the boys was so incensed with the score his group got that he appealed the decision and his personal grades were lifted. Neither of them spoke really glowingly about the experience.