Unis fight over young scholars

THEY were on top of the world yesterday and being fought over by two of the best universities in Australia.

THEY were on top of the world yesterday and being fought over by two of the best universities in Australia.

Thirty-two Victorian Year 12 students achieved a perfect tertiary entrance ranking of 99.95, and most were being flooded with scholarship offers from Monash University and the University of Melbourne.

It was the first real test of Melbourne's controversial new US-style model - where medicine, engineering and law are shifted to postgraduate level - so all eyes are on where the cream of the crop will choose to study next year.

Both universities were yesterday on the hard sell and throwing money at the state's top students, with Melbourne offering a $5000 annual living allowance while Monash gave 99.95-scoring students $6000 a year.

Monash University offered 25 out of the 32 top-scoring students a scholarship, while the University of Melbourne offered only 15, saying it received 28 applications but could not award them all as it was saving positions for interstate students.

Both universities rounded up their catches for the media yesterday, but some students were still to decide on where to start their academic career.

Top-scoring 18-year-old Sahil Shekhar was at both events, having been offered scholarships from Melbourne and Monash.

"I want to do arts/law at Monash or an arts degree and then post-graduate law degree at Melbourne but I am still deciding what to do," he said. "I am not complaining - it's a good choice to have to make."

The Haileybury College student said the new Melbourne model was part of his decision-making, as were the locations of both institutions.

Another top-scoring student, Peter Willis, was happy to take up a place in the new Melbourne arts degree and a scholarship to go with it.

"I probably would have done arts/law if it was available but it is not so I am doing arts and will probably do law afterwards," he said. "It is a little inconvenient."

The Xavier College student said while the new US-style degrees did not bother him, he knew of Year 12 students intent on studying law who would be heading to Monash. "I think the ENTER score will go up in that course (law) because of all the demand," he said.

Monash University scholarship winner Daniel Levy said a lot of students who wanted to study double degrees would turn their backs on Melbourne. "They are shooting themselves in the foot," he said of the university. "A lot of people who have high ENTER scores will go to Monash because Melbourne has disallowed double degrees."