As a junior in high school, I've got some questions for you guys in higher education.
How did you decide where you wanted to go? Was it based on what you wanted to study, your parents, or something else?
How do you determine a "reach" school? Someone like me thinks that they can get into any school, but I know that isn't true. Do you have to talk to someone?
What did you do to enhance your chances of getting into college? Did you do them for fun and then find out or was there a plan all along? For example, when I went on a foreign exchange last semester, I didn't care what colleges thought. But now I do.
Thanks in advance.
Given that my current course (at USyd) typically had a cutoff grade of 99.55 (i.e. you need to be in the top 0.45% of the candidature), I was originally intending to do Combined Science/Law at another university, still quite a good school, which had a cutoff of 96.00 typically (which I believed I could get, and as it happened, I did). However, we visited the campus to talk to people for an information day, and their physics seemed overwhelmingly biased towards optoelectronics (lasers and holography) whereas my interests were more in quantum mechanics. Their campus was also very grey, mostly concrete buildings.
After the HSC, I subsequently visited University of Sydney, which was/is generally considered to be the best law school in the country, and was rated very highly for science too (I read somewhere that we're currently ahead of ANU for the best Physics school in the country). Furthermore, their campus was exquisite, more convenient to get to from the train station, given I was commuting, and it convinced me to put USyd at the top of my list, even though I wasn't likely to get it. In the late round offers, I was offered a place in the full-fee (i.e. unsubsidised) version of my course, and after discussing it with my Dad, we decided I should accept it and hope to transfer into the subsidised one with good enough marks. So I did, and it was an excellent decision, even though I only managed to transfer after my Honours in Science, meaning I had three years of full-fee payment. Ultimately, if I had just done Science and Honours, I probably would have got into the graduate entry program and been in roughly the same place I am now, but I'm pleased it happened the way it did since it means I share classes with friends and get into the work force a year early.
EDIT: One thing that I got extremely lucky with was the level of student union services at USyd. When I first joined, student unionism was compulsory and you had to pay a further $600 to join it. The federal government then passed a law bringing student unionism into line with conventional unionism (i.e. no closed-shop, unionism has to be voluntary). This was madly protested by huge numbers of student unionists because they felt that noone would pay the cost, despite all the benefits it afforded. Ultimately, their protests did nothing (they convinced the university to pay to support them since having a good union brings students to the school, however). Our student union restructured and came up with a $90-100 "Members Card" system called "ACCESS" which gives you the ability to join Clubs/Socs, discounts on food outlets on campus, etc. (Interestingly, despite having LESS poeple join the union, the costs dropped dramatically; the allegations under compulsory unionism was that the union was ripping everybody off and spending the money on themsevles, which appears to have been true; VSU simply forced them into transparency) The union also owned some real estate on campus which allowed them to make more secure motions.
Most other universities did not handle the VSU change well. Now, we still have our three-day O-Week, where new students can come and join clubs, see events/concerts/dances run by the union, etc. Most other universities have substantially reduced or entirely cut their Club/Soc program, and the best Orientation I'm aware of besides ours is a one day thing at UNSW.
The point of my little ramble is that one of the things I did not consider at the time of application was the quality of student services. Having been here for 4 years and counting, I can say with complete surety that if you go to college purely for an education, you will come out feeling disappointed. I cannot stress enough that part of attending college is engaging with a lifestyle (not necessarily frat houses and getting hammered, if that's not your thing). You should look at what kind of extra-curricular activities like Clubs/Socs are available. You should check what sort of local nightlife there is on and nearby the campus. You should check the availability and quality of sporting facilities. And last but not least, you should check what sort of student support services (in the vein of healthcare, legal advice, travel aid, even academic or financial advice, etc.) are provided.
It's very easy for a lot of people to overlook these things, thinking only in terms of what degree they want from where. And certainly that's important too. But it's incredibly important to make sure that the 3-6 years of your life spent at university will be enjoyable, otherwise there is really no point in going. Luckily, most of the big academic universities/colleges will have good student facilities too, but if you're applying to mid-tier colleges, these things probably become more important.
EDIT 2: Also, there wasn't much I could do to better apply to university; for most courses here, the university only receives your final UAI ranking, they don't receive any raw marks or extracurricular information. And the ranking thing is done automatically. Essentially, each student lists up to nine courses (specifying the institution for each one), e.g. BSc (USyd), BSc. (UNSW), BEng (UTS), etc., ranking them in the order of preference.
The UAC collates everyone's final marks and ranks them from 99.95 to 50 (below that, you don't get your rank, you just get a "*" which is basically a fail, I believe. They may have changed this). The universities then say to the UAC: "For this course, we are taking 200 students. For this course, we are taking 100 students." and so on, specifying their allocation of places for each course they offer.
The UAC then automatically sort the offers as follows. Starting with the 99.95 students, they give them an offer from their first-preference course. Then they do the 99.90 students, 99.85, 99.80, and so on. If a student (say, a 94.55 student) has a first preference course that has already had it's allocation filled by the time UAC's system gets to them, then they drop down to the next preference. If that is full already too, they drop down to the next preference, until they actually find one for them.
The lowest ranked student that gets into a given course is then marked as the "cutoff" (a bit of a misnomer), and that number is listed publicly for the information of the applicants next year. Generally, the numbers don't change much (Combined Law at USyd has been, over the past 6 years: 99.60, 99.55, 99.55, 99.65, 99.55, 99.60), but a lot of people are misled and think that "If I get a rank above this number, I am guaranteed a place" or "If I don't get that number, I won't be allowed in". It's really a reflection of how many spots are available, and how many people want them. The higher the demand for the course, the higher the cutoff is.
