Transcript: Non School Leaver Info Session

 

OK and thank you for coming today and I am a non recent school leaver like yourselves and I’m currently in my second year studying a Bachelor of Medical Science and prior to me coming to UTS I spent two years studying a bachelor of criminology and criminal justice at another institution so for general overview today will be giving you a general overview of UTS and what it’s like, along with some insights on how admission process as well we will then have a Q&A session with one of our students who is also aimed on recent school leavers. So on that note let’s introduce our fantastic guests Georgie.

Hi everyone my name is Georgie and as you can see on the screen I’m studying business and law and I’m in my final year and I was also a non recent school leaver. Brilliant thank you so much for coming today Georgie we look forward to hearing all about your experiences at UTS. So what makes us different from our competitors. So what actually separates us from our competitors and I think the greatest quality at UTS that separates us is that we are future focused and of course is really reflective by being both innovative and practical. Now innovation really is at the heart of UTS it’s constantly being our courses are being constantly redesigned and re evaluated with new degrees added as well to keep up with the change of work environment and industry demands and secondly practicality as well as a significant focus for courses we really do take pride in the practical nature of our degrees and time and time again we see the importance of being able to put theory into practice and so with most of our courses there will be you’ll be able to gain industry experience internships or by working on capstone projects and this gives you an opportunity to not only get that crucial industry experience but it’s a chance for you to network and get your foot in the door before you even graduate. So as you can see here we are the number one young university in Australia and as I said before majority of 85% of our undergrad students will take some sort of internship or similar experience throughout their degree and because of that. We do have we have come in 5th in Australia for graduate outcomes with 92.5 per cent of our students earning full time within three years of graduation and of course we do have a five star rating since several categories and in terms of employability are facilities inclusiveness and innovation as well. Now here in UTS we understand that academics isn’t everything that defines you as an individual we really wanted to create an environment where we can foster and develop your own personal passions as well and that’s why we have over 160 different student clubs and societies here at UTS. Again as I said these are student run clubs they range from range from the personal development such as UPASS or passions or hobbies other very specialty clubs as well as well as plenty of sporting clubs. Now you can also learn the language with the diploma of languages program or through our International Studies program or go in a global exchange as well we have various sources of global exchange programs such as the UTS global short or global build programs where you can travel overseas for as little as two weeks or up to a semester or if you do end up spending one about International Studies degrees then you can actually go on exchange for up to a year.

 

As well now for entrepreneurs out there for anyone who’s very business minded we do have something called UTS startups and so you just start student run program that’s been funded by the university and essentially what we’re trying to do is help business minded individuals to create the business projects so we’ll set you up with successful student mentors or with our industry partners as well and if the university really enjoys and really likes your project they may even find your project in the future. As well and of course there are plenty of extracurricular activities on offer here at UTS whether it be to join one of the academic boards or running a society by itself it’s a great way to harness your leadership potential and it’s a great way to network as well so myself personally I was part of the UTS medical and health society I was a treasurer there and not only did I learn the basics of governance and policy and procedure making I actually got to I actually used that opportunity to network with industry partners from various health industries and well. Finally we do have on campus accommodation so if you really want that for a university experience then definitely check that out.

 

So unfortunately yes we have gone virtual for today’s open day but if it wasn’t then as you can see here UTS is right in the heart of the city we’re only 10 minutes away from central section only 10 minutes away from Chinatown only 10 minutes away from Broadway and only about 20 minutes from darling harbour as well so really I think one of the biggest critiques that we get is that the university is that we don’t really have a campus but in actuality the entire city is our campus and there is no shortage of excitement in and around our campuses.

 

Secondly more importantly is the fact that 70% of the creative industries are located within in and around our campuses we do literally have one of the ABC buildings located across from our buildings so a lot of that communication students will actually do their internships there and so that’s a big big big point that we’d like to stress is the fact that with these internship opportunities it is right at outdoor steps.

 

So these are the different courses we have on offer from business, communication, design education engineering health information technology International Studies and the social sciences law science and transdisciplinary innovation with our bachelor of creative intelligence and innovations degree and of course we do provide plenty of support for our students ranging from the academic success ability and career support so for anyone who’s finding certain subjects difficult or if you have reading around difficulties UTS helps you pass in the end.

 

The math and science study subjects will provide tutoring or additional assistance should you need it accessibility as well if you have accessibility issues UTS is very understanding of that as well. And finally with careers again we do try to we should do try to promote that practical nature without degree so no need not only have we get that practical component then you’d agree we’re going to give you all their systems that you need believe it well.

 

So for a non-recent school leaver is anyone who is not completing yet 12 in 2021 or has completed year 12 in 2020 but did some further study that includes any TAFE courses, diplomas, bachelors etc and again if you have completed year 12 in 2019 or earlier or you did not finish your high school certificate and you are applying for any one of our undergraduate degrees so the admission criteria assuming that you are one of the non-recent school leavers then there are several, there are several things that we can assess you by. So the first things that we can assist you on is your completed Australia 12 or equivalent so your HSC. Secondly is your Australian university degree whether it be completed or uncompleted and I’ll probably go into that a little bit later. If you’re doing any preoperational foundational studies courses any TAFE private provider studies and the STAT test or the special tertiary admissions tests.

Just a little note about the STAT test is that we only do consider the multiple choice version of it.

 

Now with the Australian university degree programs whether it be complete or uncompleted with most of our degrees we require you to have done at least one one year of full time study but some of our courses may only require you to do half a year of full time study. Now the application is relatively simple it’s not a very stressful process. Anything to do with any of our undergraduate degrees for help to go through UAC. So the university admissions centre. So you make an account and your application through the university admissions centre. Your applications will be considered based on any of your assessable qualifications so anything you’ve done including work experience as well and I’ll touch on work experience a little bit later and but some courses may have some special entry requirements as well.

 

During the selection process will be able to be considered for each course starting from your first preference to your last preference so when you do like your application you are eligible to apply for five preferences so you should the recommendation is that you should always apply with the mindset of putting what you want first and then completing them in the number in the descending order rather than based on what you perceive is what you’re competitive with so again you should manage your preferences in the order that you actually like want to do the course in and then once the application has gone through and the offer runs start to come out you the offers will be released based on your first most eligible preference.

 

Now there are several methods to boost your applications through our admission schemes and I’ll talk more about admission schemes in the next slide but once you do receive an offer the recommendation is that you accept your offer and if you choose to decline the offer later on because you’ve received a better offer later on in the next round.

 

As well so as I said before there are plenty of ways to boost your admission and eligibility into any one of our undergraduate degrees and the first one I would like to mention is the design and architecture portfolio scheme. So if you do want to go into one of our design and architecture and building courses you are eligible you can show eligibility by providing a portfolio and then following that if the portfolio goes through then you’ll be asked to attend an interview and with a successful completion of the interview you would be given a non competitive offer into one of the design courses.

 

And of course we do have the women in stem initiative as well so if you’re a woman applying to selective engineering or construction project management courses here at UTS you’ll be given an automatic 10 adjustment factors so that is always very helpful.

 

If you’ve done a business cadetship prior to commencement and you want to get into a business degree here at UTS then you can submit your UTS business cadetship directly through to the UTS Business School. Work experience as well is very crucial and you may be eligible for up to five adjustment factors if it relates to the course is usually within the business and Engineering and IT and science faculties and this is done directly through the UAC portal as well so you have that option where you put in your tertiary qualifications and then you can also add in the option of putting in your work experience as well so that will be assessed.

 

If you are in elite athlete and performer so anyone who’s performed or competed on a national level you do have to apply directly through UTS but if you are eligible for it highly recommend applying you do get that adjustment 5 adjustment factors to your application as well and this is in conjunction with your application. And we also have the science aptitude assessment too the assessment so for example if you want to get into one of our science degrees and you feel that you might not be competitive enough you can sit aptitude assessment test. It just essentially looks at your critical thinking and analytical skills and even if you fall short by a few marks for your chosen course this can actually help boost your eligibility as well.

 

Finally we have the educational access scheme also known as inpUTS. So this is done via UAC and essentially this is if you face any sort of disadvantages whether it be financial physical or mental throughout your schooling or educational journey then you are eligible for an additional 10 adjustment factors to your admission process. Now for EAS there is a minimum of 69 for our courses and an 80 for law and this again is direct done directly through UAC.

 

 

Now there are plenty of other admission pathways available so the first way you can do it is by choosing, assuming that you don’t get the course that you want to you applied for, the best way is to do a course of a similar nature or a similar degree with a lower rank and after one full year of studying reapply through UAC and then because you’ve done something similar in the past the university and UAC actually consider you more as you’ve done extra study.

 

You can also complete a UTS College diploma as well this way you can actually you can complete one of six diplomas and you can fast track your way into your second year of a chosen degree within the diplomas.

 

You can also reapply after the one year from another university, TAFE or private college. Again similar process where you apply through UAC. We do have the Jumbunna Unistart program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students as well.

 

So recognition of prior learning. We will talk more about this later on in the Q&A section but essentially with recognition prior learning if you’ve done subjects or if you’ve done a degree that is very similar to another degree that you want to transfer in there are certain subjects that maybe that you can actually transfer over and so you actually don’t waste too much time or money with the with your degree. So for example if you were to transfer from one science degree to another science degree a lot of the foundational courses will be relatively similar and so you can apply for credit if you wanted to transfer to another university and study science and that way you don’t have to retake those subjects again. But with the recognition of prior lending it is on a subject based level so it’s not degree based level so you do have to do your research and research the subject content look at the subject outlines and then you do have to compare what you’ve done and with the curriculum as well and then at the um at the completion of that you do have to complete the recognition of prior application form and then you have to attach your so your university transcripts from wherever you previously came from and that way we can assess you based on your eligibility for RPL and with this as well we do have to submit it directly to the UTS student center.

 

Now then we are actually at the student experience panel section of our presentation will be asking Georgie several questions that I’m sure you will all be dying to know and Georgie will do her best to answer them. So are you ready. Yeah I’m ready fire away. Easy and I think the biggest question that we have for you Georgie is what does UTS and more specifically what made you study at UTS. Yeah great question um so straight after high school I actually went to a different university and I just found that it kind of wasn’t a great fit for me for my first year. I spent the summer working with a team that was made up highly of primarily UTS students excluding myself. So for the next kind of three months they spoke to me about their experiences at UTS why its so flexible and so is that UTS and why I should transfer that and obviously they were very very compelling in their arguments so eventually I ended up applying to transfer and was thankfully accepted and also I had a bunch of friends from high school who went to UTS and they spoke extremely highly about the culture here yeah and the big draw cards well the opportunities for international learning experiences ’cause I really wanted to travel overseas there was a really big focus on entrepreneurship and innovation and not just within the business faculty but more broadly speaking for all the faculties and also just the culture of the university was why it decided to study at UTS.

 

And brilliant but I see someone has asked the question how was your transition from your previous uni study into UTS and that’s actually the next question as well I hope it answers your question. To the individual in our attendees but what was your application process like.

 

Yeah absolutely great question I feel like this is one that a lot of people get really stressed about but it’s actually really quite straightforward and that’s something that shocked me is that after I decided that I wanted to transfer all I had to do was lodge an application through UAC and then UTS just kind of considered my application and then I found out I got in and that was kind of weird uhm so there’s a lot of information available on new UTS website about how to do that application and what qualifications and results the university will consider as part of your application so definitely check that out.

 

Brilliant thank you so much. Now you talked previously about innovation and international opportunities would you mind expanding on that and sort of answering how your UTS studies and extracurricular activities has enhanced your career as well.

 

Yeah absolutely absolutely so the number one kind of priority for me once I transferred was I really wanted to travel overseas unfortunately with COVID that’s you know changed a little bit but you know hopefully it’ll change back shortly so UTS just has a bunch of different international programs on offer and they’re not just offered to the students who are the absolute top of their class you know they try and make them broadly available ’cause UTS wants their students to get that practical experience. So I was actually able to travel over to New York City and live and work there for two months completing an internship which was an awesome experience. I was also meant to go to the Netherlands for a six month exchange that unfortunately got cancelled because of COVID but in its place I completed a virtual internship with an intellectual property law firm which was awesome. There’s a lot of opportunities available for international experience and then I think also for extracurricular activities one thing that I would really highlight is that there’s so many clubs and societies available on campus and I know for non-recent school leavers or maybe just me what was daunting about transferring was feeling like I had to kind of start again with like building a social network at the new uni that I was going to attend so you’re getting involved in clubs and societies is just a great way to make friends and meet different people.

 

So I’ve been part of the consulting club the business society women in business and Law Society there’s also social sports that you can do on campus which is another great way to meet people and it’s also a really great experience to talk about in interviews so when you’re with an employer they love hearing about stuff that you’ve done on top of your studies and then also I guess one thing that UTS offers is UTS careers which I feel is just such an underrated resource I absolutely love them a little bit obsessed with them because they really helped me nail my resume which is really hard to do so I literally went into that office sat down with one of the staff members there and she went line by line through my resume with me circled in red made comments notes and we worked it out together then I went back with my revised version and then went back again until I had a really strong resume.

 

They’ve also helped me with cover letters as well which I know can be a bit difficult and also they have an online job board available but you can source different jobs internships etc so there’s a lot on offer to enhance your career here’s what I would say definitely and with these job boards as well these are specifically for university students are you know very very industries located around the city will actually send their application directly to UTS and look for UTS graduates or undergraduates as well.

 

now Georgie how has COVID affected your university experience.

Yeah I think this is also a very common question at the moment it’s affected everyone unfortunately the first thing I would note is obviously with my plan my international experiences so with exchange that unfortunately got cancelled but UTS has done a really good job of offering more virtual experiences which has been really really great so whether that’s an internship with organization based overseas you can do kind of short like one subjects for other universities based overseas as well so I definitely bear that in mind but in regards to kind of like the day-to-day learning UTS has adapted really well so the transition online has been really smooth each time we’ve gone into lockdown so you know last year and this year so everything essentially just switches online so for me personally as a business and more student my lectures are prerecorded and then are available online by campus canvas sorry and I actually really like that because I work while I study so it’s a really good way for me to kind of balance I can do my lectures at the time that really suits me and then also tutorials and seminars and now just being run via zoom and we do breakout rooms and I feel like people have slowly become more used to the zoom breakout rooms set up so people are chatty a lot more this year than they were last year when we were just kind of getting used to it so I think overall UTS has done really good job.

 

Yeah I definitely agree with that I’m well except for unfortunately because of the severity of this particular variant but especially last to UTS did incredibly well with handling bringing back you know the more practical heavy subjects onto campus so for myself personally as a science student and I know engineering is the same as well what they did to adjust for this and to make sure they were adhering to the restriction regulations was to bring back a group at per week so one week you’ll be on campus doing all your practical work and then next week another group will be coming in and so this way you still get that experience that you need for you know you’re more practical heavy subjects.

 

So the next question we have is what a year of study at another institution be counted at UTS or would a student have to start from the beginning and this is again going back to our topic of the recognition of prior learning would you mind expanding a little bit more that.

 

Yeah absolutely I think this was like my number one concern when I was transferring over are so it’s a great question that kind of  address today so generally speaking yes like study from another year at university will count towards your studies here at UTS so UAC will consider both like your first year results and also your high school marks and the more competitive of the two will be used in your application when you’re applying to transfer or you just applying to yes in terms of that first year counting at UTS this is the process known as Recognition Prior Learning which we’ve touched on previously it can also be deemed credit recognition terminology that’s thrown around and generally RPL depends on how similar the degree you were previously study was so if you’re like going from a Bachelor of Science at one institution to a Bachelor of Science at another there may be some crossover but if you’re going from a Bachelor of Science to a bachelor of laws it’s unlikely that you’ll get that recognition of prior learning but also like any touched on before it is subject specific so you kinda need a match one subject to another for me it was really easy and I got quite a lot of credits when I transferred across which was great because then it just appeared on my own enrollment as I’m exempt from these subjects ’cause I’ve already done them and you don’t have to spend more money spend more time doing them again which is great.

 

Thank you for putting that to these now finally our last question for today is how does diploma, stat tests or year of community compared to those students who are applying within a diploma.

 

Yeah another great question it’s all pretty similar I think the important thing to remember though is that with diplomas ’cause I know there’s quite a few people who are not recent school leaders who have underline with this background is that graded diplomas are generally more competitive than competent competency based deployments and I would also add again the UTS website has awesome information for like a bunch of different individual circumstances that you can check out to see what the comparison is kind of like also we have our one to one advising chats available today where you can kind of talk to the admissions team or the future students team about like your individual circumstances.