Are the courses at latrobe/rmit easier?

[Russ]

There is a current problem with higher education in Aus (the government was attempting to address it with the recent budget) where universities aren't strictly monitored on their courses. A lot of universities want to introduce a wider range of degrees in order to get their slice of the government funding pie. This has resulted in courses of a lower quality being introduced and this is traditionally at lower ranked universities (since they weren't teaching those courses before).

Whether those courses are /easier/ is very hard to demonstrate, but if you were to contend they were less academically challenging and had lower standards then I would tend to agree. This doesn't apply to every degree at a non Go8 university of course, since many are run to a similar standard as UoM/Monash etc.

An ATAR score is a reflection of supply and demand and rank, with a lot of factors outside intellectual ability playing into it (very often English ability and need for employment). The average student with a score of 60 is probably less 'intelligent' than the average student with a 90 but whether that actually results in a difference in the quality of university education is unclear. I would tend to doubt it, since the university doesn't care about your marks unless you're forced to unenrol. They don't mind if you scrape by on 50s since your employment prospects after university aren't their concern.

[ninwa]

My ATAR was 99+ and I got absolutely demolished in law school by someone who got an ATAR in the 60s or 70s (can't remember exactly) and transferred over to Monash from VU

A current justice of the High Court dropped out in year 10

I don't understand how you can think ATAR is an indication of academic ability especially as you got a high enough ATAR to get into UoM yet are struggling with the course content?

[Special At Specialist]

From what you're saying, would it be advantageous to go to a lower ranked university as RMIT, Latrobe, deakin, victoria uni etc, to easily maintain a high GPA, for applying into a postgraduate course such as medicine, dentistry  in a G8 university such as Melbourne and Monash. I don't know if the university you went gets taken into account for postgrad applications. I'm a biomed student at melbourne and have always wondered if I was better off doing biomedical science at RMIT or  Vic uni, since you said, has easier assessment and easily to get higher score .

No because the lower unis get scaled down. For example, RMIT subjects get scaled down by a factor of 1.08 when compared to Melbourne Uni subjects.

I can't speak specifically for medicine or dentistry though because I don't know that much about them. I'm sure other people on this site could answer your questions regarding that.

My ATAR was 99+ and I got absolutely demolished in law school by someone who got an ATAR in the 60s or 70s (can't remember exactly) and transferred over to Monash from VU

A current justice of the High Court dropped out in year 10

I don't understand how you can think ATAR is an indication of academic ability especially as you got a high enough ATAR to get into UoM yet are struggling with the course content?

It's certainly possible to do well at uni even if your ATAR was low. I don't want to discourage anyone by saying this, but I do think that there is at least some level of correlation between ATAR and uni grades. If you averaged out the uni grades of everyone whose ATAR was in the 60's, then you averaged out the uni grades of everyone whose ATAR was 99+, I am almost certain that the latter group would beat the former.

[nerdgasm]

If I recall correctly, back when we were discussing whether lifting the ATAR cut-off for all courses to 80 was a good thing, someone posted a nice graph which showed people's first-year average scores plotted against their ATAR. It had lots of nice, pretty colours (yes, that's what attracts me to graphs), and I think it showed that while the average marks of the 99+ were definitely higher than that of the 60's people, there actually wasn't all that significant an increase until you got a bit into the 90's. I would imagine there to be a positive correlation between ATARs and uni scores to an extent - but I personally think the variability in uni scores for a given ATAR 'band' weakens this a fair bit.

[spectroscopy]

If I recall correctly, back when we were discussing whether lifting the ATAR cut-off for all courses to 80 was a good thing, someone posted a nice graph which showed people's first-year average scores plotted against their ATAR. It had lots of nice, pretty colours (yes, that's what attracts me to graphs), and I think it showed that while the average marks of the 99+ were definitely higher than that of the 60's people, there actually wasn't all that significant an increase until you got a bit into the 90's. I would imagine there to be a positive correlation between ATARs and uni scores to an extent - but I personally think the variability in uni scores for a given ATAR 'band' weakens this a fair bit.

yep i remember this and saved the link for when this debate inevitably resurfaces (which is now)

go down to page 6 http://www.monash.edu.au/access/assets/pdf/high-quality-high-access.pdf

basically it shows that atar BARELY correlates with GPA until you get into the 90s, and even then only around the 97 ATAR mark does the correlation get really visible

[Starlight]

basically it shows that atar BARELY correlates with GPA until you get into the 90s, and even then only around the 97 ATAR mark does the correlation get really visible

case closed.

[keltingmeith]

yep i remember this and saved the link for when this debate inevitably resurfaces (which is now)

go down to page 6 http://www.monash.edu.au/access/assets/pdf/high-quality-high-access.pdf

basically it shows that atar BARELY correlates with GPA until you get into the 90s, and even then only around the 97 ATAR mark does the correlation get really visible

You are my new favourite mod. <3

(curiously, what was this booklet used for? Because it looks like it was for some super-impressive talk given by Access Monash...)

[pi]

yep i remember this and saved the link for when this debate inevitably resurfaces (which is now)

go down to page 6 http://www.monash.edu.au/access/assets/pdf/high-quality-high-access.pdf

basically it shows that atar BARELY correlates with GPA until you get into the 90s, and even then only around the 97 ATAR mark does the correlation get really visible

I dunno, if you go to page 10 there is definitely a trend there. And that doesn't surprise me.

It'd be interesting if they broke it down by course, given that it's the "general belief" that getting an 80 WAM in say LLB/MBBS/BEng is harder than an 80 WAM in BSci/BA. Given that the former courses have high ATAR cut-offs, might explain why the graph doesn't have as big an upwards trend as one might expect.

There is definitely a correlation.

[keltingmeith]

I dunno, if you go to page 10 there is definitely a trend there. And that doesn't surprise me.

It'd be interesting if they broke it down by course, given that it's the "general belief" that getting an 80 WAM in say LLB/MBBS/BEng is harder than an 80 WAM in BSci/BA. Given that the former courses have high ATAR cut-offs, might explain why the graph doesn't have as big an upwards trend as one might expect.

There is definitely a correlation.

However, that correlation isn't by much - hell, from the line AFTER that graph:

There is not a deterministic relationship between ATAR and first year results

Sure - if there was absolutely no correlation, then the ATAR would've been scrapped years ago. However, from the data, we can see that it is still very possible to do well in a course despite one's ATAR - to say that people with a low ATAR can't perform well (as Inside Out was saying) is completely ludicrous.

[pi]

Oh definitely, with VCE and Uni being separate ball games, of course it is possible to do well in one and not the other. Apologies if I implied that at all!

[sparked]

I wonder if just a general, subconscious grade inflation/deflation exists amongst assessors? I know in the U.S. Harvard professors, knowing the relative strength of the cohort, rarely give less than a 'B' for a piece of work. To the extent that maybe they are the ultra 0.1 percentile, comparative to the less competitive Australian university network (generally - the ultra-top end is probably just as competitive) maybe it doesn't exist as much. But maybe, on a subconscious level, assessor's alter their marking based on institution.

But this 'subconscious' phenomenon would likely be negligible anyway.

[Mellyboo]

yep i remember this and saved the link for when this debate inevitably resurfaces (which is now)

go down to page 6 http://www.monash.edu.au/access/assets/pdf/high-quality-high-access.pdf

basically it shows that atar BARELY correlates with GPA until you get into the 90s, and even then only around the 97 ATAR mark does the correlation get really visible

Thank you SO much for this link. Now my conceited friends can go dig a hole.

[sluu001]

I'd be more interested in the graph if they could also include the average amount of hours study these students undertook in relation to the scores achieved. I reckon the correlation would also be fairly high....

[sparked]

I'd be more interested in the graph if they could also include the average amount of hours study these students undertook in relation to the scores achieved. I reckon the correlation would also be fairly high....

But also probably wouldn't account for the 'natural' intelligence of students in different institutions. For example, it might turn out that students in the disproportional Melbourne Uni sample population study less and get relatively better marks than students would if they studied the same.