Should the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) be the only measure for selecting university students?
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Many letter writers to The Age have recently said the ATAR is only a rough guide to selecting the "best" students into courses such as education. Some wrote that students who get high ATARs don't necessarily make great teachers.
Although the ATAR is quite good at predicting university success for high-achieving students, it is less able to identify the potential of students who receive ATAR scores in the 60s and 50s. It also can't identify students with promise who come from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Some vice-chancellors, however, are keen on the ATAR and want cutoff scores lifted for courses – such as education – to ensure entry standards are maintained.
Monash University vice-chancellor Ed Byrne wrote in The Age last week that education faculties accept students with low ATARS, something medical departments would never do. Third Degree made the same point last year.
But medical faculties also use supplementary tests and interviews to select students.
Potential medical students and also dentistry and physiotherapy students have to sit the Undergraduate Medicine and Health Sciences Admission Test (UMAT), which the Australian Council for Educational Research developed.
It's a three-hour test that assesses students' understanding of people, logical reasoning and non-verbal reasoning. Students sat the test last Wednesday and will receive their results in late September. It costs $210 to do the test.
Even those wanting to do graduate medicine and other health sciences have to sit ACER's Graduate Australian Medical School Admission Test. It measures skills and knowledge acquired over a long period of time, along with the ability to reason, make logical deductions and form judgments.
The UMAT was introduced to help identify "well-rounded" medical students. The swots who get impressive ATAR scores are not necessarily the ones who should be working in a field that demands strong communication skills.
Should there be an aptitude test for budding teachers to identify those who understand people?
What about engineering students? They could be tested on how well they work in teams and on projects.
Supplementary tests may sound like a good idea, but there are problems with them. Some students could get an unfair advantage.
Businesses have sprung up offering students training on how to do the UMAT and GMAT. One company, MedEntry, reckons it "gets more students into medicine than all other UMAT prep courses combined".
A MedEntry diamond package costs $1970, which includes a two-day UMAT workshop, interview techniques and 12 practice exams with solutions.
There are even online education forums that discuss the best UMAT and GMAT preparation courses. ACER and the universities do not endorse these training programs, although ACER will provide practice tests for $35 each.
Third Degree couldn't find evidence to suggest that supplementary tests help to identify students from low socio-economic backgrounds.
Should interviews be part of the selection process for university entry?
Some courses do conduct interviews but they only work if the selection panels ask the same questions and are clear about what they are looking for in students.
Also, interviews only really work if there is a small intake of students. You can't interview the thousands of students who want to do arts degrees – it would take months.
Even in courses with smaller enrolments it can be tough to find academics who have the time to do interviews, because many are already stretched doing teaching and research.
But perhaps the ATAR is becoming less important. Greg Craven, vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, pointed out last year that less than half of undergraduates entering universities rely purely on an ATAR.
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