Confused with UAC Preference Order (1 Viewer)

[studded]

Fellow 2016 undergraduates-to-be and other members, I have two courses from two respective institutions in my list of preferences on the UAC website, but I'm not sure how to go about ordering them. My first preference is a course whose cutoff exceeds my Atar rank by a considerable margin, while my rank in turn excels the cutoff of the second course; my reasoning behind this arrangement is that I have a higher chance of receiving an offer with the first institution than I do the second. In saying that though, I know that my idealism could become detrimental if the institution isn't lenient, which would then hinder my chances of receiving an offer by the second one.

Should I just be more pragmatic and place the "lesser" institution higher, receive and accept their offer during the Main Round, and then revert the order of the courses and hope that I receive an offer during the February round(s)?

UPDATE: Thread's question has been answered:

You're not thinking of it the right way, it helps to know how they determine cut-offs in the first place. Generally this is what they do: if 200 spots are available for course X, and 300 people apply then they simply sort the students by their ATARs and send offers as such to the top 200. The cut-off for that given year then becomes the lowest ATAR accepted i.e. the 200th person who got in. If Course X is your first preference and that requires an ATAR of 69 (lawlz xd 111!1oenoenooneoneoneoneoneoneoneonen!111!!) but you got an ATAR of 68 then you would not get that offer. If course Y is your second preference and that requires an ATAR of 65, then you would get an offer for that course. You can see that the number of students or "popularity" is arbitrary without knowing the exact spots available.

Thus, you should not take into account the popularity of the course when preferencing.

 

[Queenroot]

Keep it in the exact order of preference. Which course do you want to be getting into the most? You're only going to get one offer so it doesn't matter about the ATAR cutoff.

 

[Dellrune]

Keep it in the exact order of preference. Which course do you want to be getting into the most? You're only going to get one offer so it doesn't matter about the ATAR cutoff.

is this true? because i did a similar thing as the OP. I put dentistry at griffith first although my atar is about 0.2 lower than last years cutoff, and put actl/commerce at unsw second because i scored well above their cutoff

 

[Queenroot]

is this true? because i did a similar thing as the OP. I put dentistry at griffith first although my atar is about 0.2 lower than last years cutoff, and put actl/commerce at unsw second because i scored well above their cutoff

put what you want to get into first
if you don't get an offer for the first it just goes down the list
so that's why it is in order of pref

 

[studded]

put what you want to get into first
if you don't get an offer for the first it just goes down the list
so that's why it is in order of pref

Right, but if a highly sought-after course is the first preference for many students, don't I run the chance of missing out on an offer by having it as my second preference because the course will be full?

 

[engineering]

Student A (atar 99.1) puts medicine first and dentistry second. Student B (atar 99) puts dentistry first.

Medicine is very popular so the cutoff is 99.5. Student A does not get offer for medicine.

Dentistry is not so popular and has a cutoff of 99.1.

Student A gets an offer for dentistry, student B does not. The fact that B had it has pref 1 does not give him or her any advantage over student A.

Both student A and B, dentistry is the highest preference for which they have made the cutoff. The fact that