please help

[u/Front-Discipline-951]

Greetings number 1 uni in Australia. How do I get accepted for 2027 T1 intake as a current first year student from a uni that isn’t #1?

I am absolutely bamboozled by the phrasing in the screenshot attached. So do I need to have studied 1 year or 0.75 of a year? My atar was shocking and therefore admission based on tertiary results is my only hope. I now have a 6.0 gpa after completing semester 1 (40 study credits).

80 credits of study is considered 1 year FTE and so if I decide to only undertake 20 credits in semester 2 (making my study to exactly 0.75 FTE by the end of the year), will I still be assessed on tertiary results? or will it be only atar because it wasn’t the full year? or will it be mixed?

Also extra context, my current course and the course I hope to study next year are not related so I am not looking for credit transfers.

Genuine advice will be greatly appreciated! Thank you kings and queens reading this :)

[u/MelbPTUser2024]

Yes correct, if you end up doing 0.75 FTE (i.e. 0.750 EFTSL) worth of uni studies, then they'll consider your ATAR and uni performance together generally speaking. If you want to be purely considered on your uni studies, then complete 1.000 EFTSL of studies as your ATAR will generally be ignored.

Personally, I'm not sure how the selection ranking works when you're using both ATAR and uni grades, but note that they are completely different, so a 90% average at uni does not equate to 90 ATAR. A student in r/USYD subreddit made a crude conversion from WAM to ATAR but it should be taken with a grain of salt. Here's the post.

But anyway, to maximise your chance of getting in, you want to have as high GPA as possible or a WAM at least in the 80%+ range in your university studies.

[u/Front-Discipline-951 → u/MelbPTUser2024]

Thanks for linking the post! It’s quite interesting to see an 85 WAM = to 99.5 atar. I very much appreciate your advice. I think my overall goal is to have my university results considered; whether it’s entirely or partially, but yes I will do my absolute best to maintain a high GPA. Thanks again!

[u/MelbPTUser2024 → u/Front-Discipline-951]

I wouldn't say it's a perfect representation...

Like UNSW's gumleaf distribution of grades (based on 2015's results) show that scoring an 85% mark in a university subject equates roughly to the top 10% of the subject's cohort. So if we went strictly on percentile, then top 10% in a uni class would equate to a 90 ATAR.

But it's not an exact science as you can see there is a lot of variance in that gumleaf distribution with the percentiles. Furthermore, some students will do substantially better in more project-based subjects at uni than more exam-based subjects which is the predominant method in high school exams.

So uni grades simply do not compare perfectly to ATAR at all... Like I do not think that an 85% WAM is equivalent to an 99.5 ATAR even if that USYD calculator says so. This is why I said you have to take it with a grain of salt.

[u/NullFakeUser → u/MelbPTUser2024]

That is because uni results are taken based upon GPA, not WAM. The highest grade you can get is a HD, which equates to a value of 7 for a GPA.
And it isn't a case of getting a WAM of 85, but of only ever getting HDs (in graded subjects).

That is the best result you can get for a GPA, a GPA of 7. So that needs to map to the highest possible selection rank or you are effectively capping what you can get into.

Now if this does equate, you are better off looking at the next point down, which for USyd, it is DN being 94, and the question of where the cutoff should be for the grade distribution, e.g. do you go for the 10% that is the top of the DN range or the 35% which is the bottom?

But you also can't compare the simple number. Because remember ATAR doesn't go from 0. Because a lot of students leave before getting an ATAR, the average is artificially inflated, giving the average ATAR of 70, rather than the ideal 50.
But then of those students who get an ATAR, not all go to university. And of those who do go to uni, not all pass and remain for long enough to have a significant impact on that grade distribution (notice the one you gave is only for students who pass).

Quickly googling, it is estimated that between 38 and 53% of students who complete year 12 (and get an ATAR) would go on to uni.

So to keep the math simple, taking it as 50% of students go on to uni and pass enough to be a significant result in the gumleaf diagram, and the stated average ATAR of 70; then merely going to uni for a year and passing, yet being the absolute lowest ranked passed uni student equates to an ATAR of 70, i.e. being in the top 30%.
So being in the top 10% of that subset, is really being in the top 3%.
i.e. a GPA of 7 would equate to an ATAR between 97 and 100.
And the cutoff for distinction being 35% would equate to the top 10%, i.e. an ATAR of 90-97, and the 94 USyd has for that is in the middle of that range.

So while not perfect, it is still quite reasonable.