Argh... I'm sure I was informed during the HSC. The shit UAC terminology makes it bad, though.
ooohyoko: As asylum pretty much said, UAI cutoffs work like this:
The university says 'we want x amount of students in y degree'. Students who apply for it are ranked, highest to lowest UAI. Assuming the course fills up (most do), the student with the lowest UAI who gets into y degree essentially sets the 'cutoff' for that year.
eg,
Macquarie says 'we want 100 students in 2008's BIntStud degree.'. The students who apply for it might have a UAI range of 100-3 points. The 98th, 99th,
100th, 101st ranked students might have 84.55, 84.55, 84.50,
84.50, 83.45 UAIs, respectively. That means the cutoff for that year will be 84.50, simply because that's the lowest UAI which got a student in - ie the last student through the door.
However, the UAI is not actually a cutoff -
it never cuts anyone off. Rather, the
ranking cuts people off, and most universities currently rank high school leavers according to UAI. In reality, you are also competing against non-recent school leavers and transferees, in some cases - these people are also ranked like you.
It is a really shit way of entry because a lot of students say 'well the uai cutoff is 80, I'll get in'. This is crap; the ranking for
previous years may have been one mark, but it may not be the same.
That is why the 'cutoffs' are not actually cutoffs, and why previous 'UAI entry cutoffs' are just general indicators.
edited for spellings.