Get your TISC preferences right

Choosing your TISC preferences doesn’t have to be stressful. You’ve got until the end of September to lodge your TISC application if you want to avoid a late fee – and now is the perfect time to give some thought to what you’d really like to do!

There’s a lot you need to consider before choosing your preferences, so we’re here to help you make sense of it all and get one step closer to the course or career of your dreams.

Download 'Get your TISC Preferences Right" PDF (3Mb)

Here are our top tips to getting your TISC preferences in order:

1. Follow your passion

• Getting advice from your family and friends can be helpful, but YOU are the most important person to please. You’ll get much more out of the uni experience if you study something that excites you!
• If you’re still not quite sure what you’d most like to do, try our clever online tool first. It will help you to work out what kind of courses match your personality and career goals.
• You’ll find there are a lot of courses you can mix and match, based around the course you’re most passionate about. For example, you could apply to study Games Art & Design at Murdoch – and mix it with a Business major to broaden your career opportunities.

Put down what you’d most like to do as your first preference

• Don’t worry too much about the ATAR score for now. If you don’t put your first choice down now, you might get stuck with something you don’t really want to do just because you played it safe. Then you might have to change your preferences later and risk missing out in second round offers.
• Don’t leave your dream course out because you think it’s beyond you – your results may be a lot better than you expect, or if you’re not a school leaver, your background and experience may be just what the assessors are looking for!

2. Consider how your other preferences can still lead to the course of your dreams

For your second preference, put down either the course you’d most want to do if you didn’t get your first preference, or something that could eventually lead to your first preference course.

Let’s say that you really want to be a vet...

• Your first preference should be Veterinary Science at Murdoch.
• You know that there is a route into Vet after a year of science at Murdoch, and you like biology anyway so you put Murdoch’s Biological Science second, followed by Conservation and Wildlife Biology as you like the outdoors. Biomedical Science might come next, as it’s in a similar field, but without as much outdoor work.
• For your final preferences, you might put Marine and Freshwater Biology at ECU (the cut off score was 55 last year) and finally Environmental Science at ECU which also cut at 55. These last two are your safety net preferences, so even if things go wrong in the exams, you can still study at uni in a course related to what you’d really like to be doing and then apply to transfer to your dream course at the end of your first semester.

You can follow this kind of preference pathway for most courses at most universities. If you need help finding a pathway for any Murdoch courses, just ask our admissions team by calling The Student Centre on 1300 MURDOCH (1 300 687 3624).

3. Make sure you have all of your bases covered.

• Choose a safety net course as one of your lower preferences. This can be something that you’re pretty sure you can get into, even if it’s not your favourite choice of course or uni. It’s much easier to change courses and unis once you’ve started on your study route, especially if you do well in your first semester.
• Make sure that you have any prerequisites for the courses you choose, or you’ll be wasting that preference! At Murdoch we don’t have prerequisites for any courses, so you don’t have to worry about this.
• If you’re not a school leaver, always include a personal statement with your application. It will show the range of work and life experience you’ve had, to give you the best chance of getting into the course you most like.

4. Remember that uni is about much more than the course you choose

Going to uni is a whole life experience! It’s important you think about where you’d most like to study and which uni fits in with your goals for the future.
Check out our full range of courses at Murdoch.