UQ (lower preference) issue appears to be resolved + GEMSAS critique

On the paging dr forum, a member (naskies) posted that UQ has updated the cut off scores for domestic students for 2012 entry. Whereas it was previously 73 for CSP and 66* for BMP, it now displays as 72 for CSP and 64* for BMP.

From that, I think two things can explain this:

The first (less likely) reason is that maybe UQ reserved some places for offers in the offer round after the GEMSAS offers in case people were not successful in higher preferenced universities and got passed onto UQ by the computer.

The second (I think more likely) reason is that enough people who received places from both USyd (who pulled out of the GEMSAS consortium) and UQ declined their UQ offer for USyd, so this was more than enough to compensate for the number of people who got passed onto UQ from higher preferenced unis and above UQ's initial cutoff score.

Either way, the issue of not getting a place from UQ as a lower preference, even if your GAMSAT would have met the cutoff if you preferenced them first, now seems to have disappeared. This is a good outcome.


I feel that the GEMSAS system is a definite improvement over the old system. There are two possible improvements though, which I see some others have noted too.

One of them is if you can fine tune the preference list so you can put a CSP from a lower preferenced uni higher than a BMP for a higher preferenced university, for example; especially a CSP or BMP from one lower preferenced uni above a FFP from a higher up one on the preference list. I know someone who had the scores for a UQ CSP but got a FFP at Melbourne.

The second one is that if someone (person A) pulls out of their offer at a given university, someone else (person B) should be able to take it, regardless of whether or not they already have a place at a lower preferenced university. Although it would be more hassle for the unis, it's not really fair for an applicant who had a lower combined score (person C) to get a place at that particular university just because he didn't already have a place, ahead of someone (person B) who happened to be offered a place at another university lower on their preference list. People should be able to receive second round offers higher up than their initial one if they are eligible and competitive, like they do in VTAC, UAC, TISC etc.


There's also another argument about how interviews are not entirely the same everywhere, so perhaps the whole thing about standardizing interview scores might be frowned upon, although if we want to get around this, then we have to let everyone go and sit interviews at all unis they preference and have competitive scores before interviews for. So it depends on what people think the balance between inconvenience and cost, compared to having the "right interview format", should be.