Originally posted by ohne
UAI cutoffs are not useless, they imply the lowest UAI which gained entry to the course. Obviously if a course has a cutoff of 78 it is possible that 100 people in the course got a UAI of over 99 and one person got 78 which detirmines the cutoff. But cutoffs do generally indicate the quality of candidates who gained entry to a particular course.
Taken from UNSW "SENG" website (
www.cse.unsw.edu.au/seng):
Why is the UAI important?
The UAI clearly is not necessarily a good indicator of whether a student will be a good Software Engineer, or a good doctor, but it is a reasonably good measure of general academic ability.
A high UAI for a program with a significant number of students is an indicator of the quality of your fellow students. Highly capable, inquisitive fellow students will provide challenges for you, and help to raise the level of courses.
But, the UAI cutoff can be confusing and misleading
The UAI cutoff is not meaningful without knowing the number of students that were admitted above that UAI.
A program cutoff of 99 could be achieved by taking only 1 or 2 students.
When enquiring about the UAI cutoff of a program, always ask how many students were taken above that UAI.
Consider the following 2003 cutoffs:
University | cutoff
UTS | 93.35
Sydney | 94.9
UNSW | 91.7
Doesn't look too good for UNSW does it?
But now consider this:
the median UAI for SE students at UNSW was 96.1
above that median UAI UNSW took 46 students
this was only 2 less than the total number of students taken by both UTS and Sydney combined!
So UNSW took as many students as the total of Sydney and UTS at a higher UAI than either of them.
Puts a different complexion on the above table, doesn't it!
Beware!