All about the UAI and Scaling

Scaling provides universities with the ability to compare and rank students for selection into university, even if they have taken different HSC subjects.

It might help to think of scaling as being like a currency exchange rate. Pretend you have two one hundred dollar bills. One is an Australian $100 dollar note and the other is from the US. These two notes, even though they both have “$100” written on them actually have two different values (you can buy more with one than another). To compare them and determine how much each is really worth you need to know the exchange rate.

Now think about two students who both get the same mark in different courses. In order to assess their eligibility for entry we need to compare them. To fairly compare these students we need to establish an “exchange rate” between courses. Scaling provides us with this rate by comparing the quality of students that take different courses.

The scaled mark represents the mark that a student would have obtained in that course if all HSC candidates sat the same courses. Without scaling, universities wouldn’t be able to properly and fairly compare students who have studied different courses.

Scaling takes raw HSC marks for courses and changes the average and maximum marks of those courses, using an “exchange rate” which has been developed according to the strength of candidates taking that course.

The base information for the UAI is your raw HSC marks. These are then scaled, so we can compare candidates and individual marks (more specifically the marks in your best 10 units including 2 units of English and only including 2 units of category B courses). These are turned into a rank from 100-0. This rank is your overall place in that year’s HSC.

All the research we have shows that your performance at school is the best predictor of how well you will succeed in most university courses.

The scaling of a course differs in each year according to the quality of candidature in that course. However, there are some courses (such as Maths Extension 2) that, as you would expect, traditionally have higher quality candidates in them and so have higher scaled marks. Remember not to make this a deciding factor in the courses you choose. If you don’t like a course, or are not able to cope with the level it is taught at, you won’t do well, no matter how it is scaled. The extra effort you have to put into this course may also effect how well you do in other courses.

Choose your courses without consideration to scaling. Remember that, because each cohort of students is different, the scaling each year is also different. The most important things to consider when you are choosing your courses are:

• what you are interested in (if you choose something you enjoy you are more likely to work harder and maximise your results);
• which subjects will prepare you for the university course you want to take or career you want to pursue?
• the rules for calculating the UAI mean that, if you are looking towards university entry, you need to study ten units of UAI courses including two units of English and only two units of category B courses will be taken into account.

More detailed information is available from UAC. (Beware! This information can get quite technical). The most user-friendly document on this website is called You and your UAI PDF.