GPA and WAM

[Henry Kocatekin]

Please no one take offence to this, but is GPA and WAM non-discriminatory of the course you do?

 By that, I mean, If you choose a 65 ATAR course (and I know that doesn't mean it's easy) so let's say you pick a course that everybody knows is a bludge, suuuuper easy. And someone else picks a really really hard course.

If you just breeze your course with HD's and maybe a D or two, and the other person gets Mostly Credits with some Ps and Ds. Do you just look better leaving uni because you have a higher average?

[strawberries]

well I mean most likely when you're competing for jobs, you'd be competing with people who did the same/similar degree as you, so you would be comparing against people who did the same/similar degrees for GPAs when entering jobs
because there's not much point to compare two people studying different degrees from like different faculties competing for different jobs

but yeah, when considering uni degrees, if you have any idea of what career you want, you could take a degree in that field
don't take a degree because "it's prestigious" without consideration for the career, and on the other hand, don't take a degree because "it's easy" despite not wanting to go into that field/career

[Henry Kocatekin]

I didn't even think of that first sentence ahaha, that's so obvious.

Thank you!

[zofromuxo]

I guess it depends.
To continue what strawberries mention about jobs.
Your GPA and WAM could be a factor when your applying for your first job in an industry as you don't have any experiences besides university for the technical skills, so they are your best measure.

However, if you have some experience under your belt, then the employer will use that to judge you. GPA and WAM isn't a major thing honestly, unless your doing a honours degree like me then they are somewhat on your mind if you want a 1st class honours and winning academic awards.

I'm currently getting the balance between Grades and Extracurricular experiences currently as Grades can only teach you so much, but at the same time, I didn't come to university and spend tons of money to party and have fun. So what you want with your degree matters as well.

[Aaron]

By that, I mean, If you choose a 65 ATAR course (and I know that doesn't mean it's easy) so let's say you pick a course that everybody knows is a bludge, suuuuper easy.

I chose an IT degree to begin with which required a 55 ATAR to get into. I managed an 80 WAM overall and was admitted into a masters at monash (a while ago now, lol). My uni didn't even use GPA, but i'm sure if I applied somewhere that did use it, they would convert my grades using their own process.

To add onto strawberries' comments, you really do need to pay attention especially to the GPA. I don't think many unis use GPA anymore (WAM/avg preferred), and if they do, they use different scales (e.g. 4-point vs. 7-point etc).

What you need to consider is that most degrees require specific content to be taught in order to be accredited (there are so many, depends on the discipline). So the idea is that at least at the Bachelor level, content will be similar. Of course there are differences in teaching/research etc depending on the uni you do decide.

To get a HD or even a D at uni level is a great accomplishment in itself. They are difficult to obtain (nothing like high school).

tl;dr not much difference in a general sense.