<p>Australian system: here, you apply for different degrees (bachelor of engineering, science, arts, visual arts, law, social sciences, languages, education etc) for example im doing a bachelor of medical science, which is structured differently to the bachelor of science and the bachelor of biomedical science at the same university. </p>
<p>yr 12 students have to do a big exam at the end of the year (called the higher school certificate, or the HSC) much like the german Abitur or the A-levels. Based on the marks, everyone is given a numerical ranking (very hard to explain, but basically a mark out of 100, called a University Admissions Index.) I got 83.2. Every course in the state has a UAI (the lower the UAI the more places available in the course), like mine was 77.0. As long as you get over that, you get in :) for law, its like 97 or 98, and for medicine its 99.5. </p>
<p>at the start of yr 12 everyone has to sign a form confirming details like address, name spelt correctly dob etc, and then thats filed electronically. All your marks go to a centre called University Admissions Centre (UAC), and in sep/oct you start your electronic application, where you again have to confirm your details, then add each course you want to apply to in order of preference, for a total of nine. You can change them around as many times as you like until the middle of January (the uni year starts in beginning of March), whereas your final school marks come in in mid-Dec. You get an email/text about a week afterwards, and confirm by sending another email. You only get offered one place, and they do it by comparing your UAI to the UAI of your first preference course, then continuing down the list in order of preference. The whole process takes about half an hour to fill out the form initially, (and all you really have to do is list your courses), and costs AU$15, which is about US$10, and you only pay that when you start the application. </p>
<p>Hope i haven't confused the crap out of everyone, but what I wanted to say is, admissions is based on end-of-yr-12 marks, you apply once electronically, and pay US$10. No recommendations, essays, personal statements etc. Although for visual arts and music you have to provide portfolios/samples :)</p>