The reasons for an entrance exam

In January, students of UWA Audiology sit a simple entrance examination.

The entrance examination is thought to be essential for the success of the course and its students in its new format, for the following reasons:

First, our students have always needed to be prepared to study the course material, which covers a very wide range of topics, from the physiology of hearing to the technology of sound measurement, amplification, recording and playback, and hearing aid design. Coupled with this is the need for audiologists to understand the linguistics of speech production and reception, and the psychology of hearing impairment. Students also need to develop clinical skills, including a good patient/client interaction. All in all, the skills required of a good audiologist are very broad. Even without a restructuring of our course, it would have been adviseable to offer an entrance examination so that students could judge for themselves whether they were ready to take on the committement required for our course, with their own educational background. In the students' own interests it would be adviseable to offer a pre-enrolment examination. If it is clear that the student will struggle with the detailed material, or with study generally, then it is best for all concerned if they do not begin the course with false hopes.

The second reason for introducing an entrance examination is that we have compressed our course delivery, so that the teaching of the more theoretical course material will now occur in two very intense semesters per year, each lasting only 5 weeks. First semester will occupy the four weeks of February and the first week of March, while the second semester will occur in July and August. If it was adviseable to introduce an entrance exam previously, it is even more important now. To cope with the intensive teaching, we and our students need to be assured that they have every hope of coping with our new intensive course delivery.

Third, we have stuctured our course so that it should be possible for students to work during the year, outside of the intensive 5 week semesters and examination times. We have quite consciously structured our course and its timetable to allow the possibility of work, and more particularly to allow students to work within the audiological profession and the hearing aid industry. Over the past year we have been working towards the recognition by the Federal Government and Australia's professional audiological bodies of a category of "Practising Student Audiologist", wherein students can work together with suppliers of hearing aids, developing their own professional skills in client interaction, the routine testing of ears, and the provision of hearing aids. At the same time they should alleviate some of the backlog of work in the provision of hearing aids. During this time the students can be paid to cover some (if not most) of their course and living expenses. Of course, for the clinics to enter into such a teacher/employer relationship with students, they need to know that the students have good prospects of successfully completing their course, and working gainfully in the provision of hearing aids. Again, the need for an entrance examination for entrance into the UWA Practising Students Audiologist Scheme is apparent.

So what will the entrance exam contain? Our goal is not to make students cover much of the course work before semester, rather we want to make sure that the wide range of students entering our program all start without a disadvantage. The exam will be a relatively short (2 hour), "low impact" test to ensure that students have researched audiology as a prospective profession thoroughly, and know what a professional audiologist has to look forward to. We have previously had students who withdrew early in the year, because they finally appreciated what audiologists actually do, and it was not suited to them. Unfortunately, they then left a course place that could not be filled, and prospective students who were unable to fill their position because of other committments taken on after being told that there were no places available. 

We will also check in the entrance exam whether students have performed the necessary pre-reading that will ensure that they can cope with some very fundamental topics. While these are relatively simple, and are crucial to an understanding of some of the complex topics taught in our course, they may not be in a particular student's background. For example, "What is sound?", or "What is a cell?", or "How do I use a computer as a Word Processor"?, or "What is the very basic structure of the human ear and voice production mechanisms?", and more. There are many other "basics" that any keen student should easily master after  a few hours of self-directed learning and pre-reading. Our goal is not to have students do our work for us  ........... we want to ensure a level playing field for a group of good students with equal potential, but not identical backgrounds. Our previous students have had backgrounds in nursing, speech pathology, physics, business, computing, psychology, physiology, travel, social work, sociology, and more. All of them have developed well as audiologists, and audiology needs their broad and varied perspectives, but they (and you) all need a hand to begin your study of audiology with the least "cultural shock". 

We hope you see why an entrance exam is important and worthwhile for us all.