Is the UMAT a good indicator?

[watto_22]

Instead, wouldn't subjects like Chemistry/Biology/Psych/Health&HD be more relevant.
Why not use scores for these subjects individually as a means of selecting entries into Med

Because you don't want people getting lower ATARs but beasting those few subjects, it's all about being all-round good. Whilst med doesn't need spesh or languages or commerce subs, that shouldn't restrict applicants form doing them if they have an interest in them.

As for the spesh/LOTE being unfair to ATAR, that is a different story. But they are scaled above 50 because they are the hardest conceptually for the vast majority of students.

I agree that you clearly want Med entrants to be people who do well in terms of ATAR, define that as you will.
But why not give those subjects special weighting as well, akin to the middle band for other courses.

And absolutely, doing LOTE(s!) or spesh shouldn't rule you out 

[pi]

Instead, wouldn't subjects like Chemistry/Biology/Psych/Health&HD be more relevant.
Why not use scores for these subjects individually as a means of selecting entries into Med

Because you don't want people getting lower ATARs but beasting those few subjects, it's all about being all-round good. Whilst med doesn't need spesh or languages or commerce subs, that shouldn't restrict applicants form doing them if they have an interest in them.

As for the spesh/LOTE being unfair to ATAR, that is a different story. But they are scaled above 50 because they are the hardest conceptually for the vast majority of students.

I agree that you clearly want Med entrants to be people who do well in terms of ATAR, define that as you will.
But why not give those subjects special weighting as well, akin to the middle band for other courses.

And absolutely, doing LOTE(s!) or spesh shouldn't rule you out 

In terms of a middle band, I *think* the logic is that there is no need for it as ATAR only counts for 33% of the criteria (Monash), so weighing those subjects for those in the the middle band would give the ATAR an indirect extra weighting.

[brenden]

I thought they were scaled above 50 because Spesh enrollments dropped to 4k and people going into Eng degrees were lacking Spesh knowledge, and the language scaling was to do with government initiatives to increase second language prevalence, pi?

Moderator action: removed real name, sorry for the inconvenience

[pi]

Afaik, then explanation we got at school was that they were just generally hard. But your explanation sounds a lot less bull-shit than mine.

[brenden]

Afaik, then explanation we got at school was that they were just generally hard. But your explanation sounds a lot less bull-shit than mine.

I think mine came from some AN thread discussing how unfair it was that you could only get 99.95 with Spesh/Lang lol. I thought it seemed legit. (someone god-tier please confirm)

[thushan]

I thought they were scaled above 50 because Spesh enrollments dropped to 4k and people going into Eng degrees were lacking Spesh knowledge, and the language scaling was to do with government initiatives to increase second language prevalence, pi?

Scaled above 50 because the scaled mean is so high and scaled standard deviation was quite high, so that means there would be too much crowding of scaled scores between 49-50. Scaling over 50 stretches that out.

Moderator action: removed real name, sorry for the inconvenience