You totally lost it man aha. That article I posted is not criticism of itself as I pointed out.
Besides just dont get how these Universities other than GO8 keep getting dogged out and its students keep getting the label of being dumb. These universities are all equavilent in terms of Undergrad in Australia. This is not America or Europe here!
I don't want to go Macquarie as their courses don't interest me at this point of time. But I don't accept how that how going to Macquarie or UTS is any different than going to UNSW or USYD. If you think prestige matters than shove it up your ass.
Now for my more serious response.
You'd be surprised at just how much cut-offs influence the cohort of courses. People who get into courses with higher cutoffs generally are more determined and ambitious about their studies, and this not only has a positive effect on the student, but also on the cohort as a whole. Conversely, people who get into courses with lower cutoffs generally are less determined and ambitious. Let's generalise this statement further: anything that is harder to get into will generally attract more ambitious individuals.
Not sure about you, but I went to a public comprehensive school. And while the cohort of our school isn't the worst out there (we're actually one of the highest ranking public comprehensive schools), compared to selective schools, our cohort is
significantly less ambitious and studious.
Similarly, workplaces which are difficult to get into tend also to attract more ambitious individuals. The tutoring centre I currently work at is very easy to gain employment in, and hence compared to more notable tutoring centres with far more strict and exhaustive employment processes, our workplace tend to attract more bludge-y tutors and not too impressive.
And hence, as you can imagine (and will experience in a couple of years) just how different the cohorts are between courses with significantly differing cutoffs. The advanced mathematics courses at USYD tend to be populated with students with ATARs over 95, while people who get into the first year economics courses only need an ATAR of around 85 (or lower, considering flexible entry), and there is a very large gap in the attitudes between the two cohorts. Lecture and tutorial attendance for economics dropped pathetically (the last economics tutorial had less than half attendance, despite being the final tutorial before the midsemester exam
on the same day), whereas the advanced maths cohort still has a very high attendance rate and far more studious. And while this is only one example, you can expect the same between any two courses with a significant gap in entry difficulty.
So while the quality of teaching and facilities and whatnot may be similar across all universities, the student bodies and environments vary
very significantly and consistently across different courses, and this variation is very much nontrivial (as you have seen this already with phenomenon outside tertiary education).