ok, so how it works is, each course allocates a certain number of places to EAS students, depending on the course size it may be 10, or it may be 1.
Out of the EAS applicants for that course, the ones with the highest UAI's (but still too low to get in normally) get offerred the places.
So say the UAI cut off is 90, with 2 EAS places, and the applicants are
1. UAI 89.9
2.UAI 87.5
3. UAI 86.90
Only applicants one and 2 will get offerred places, even though applicant 3 was still inside that 5 mark lower range.
It sucks but if your course is popular, you still need to be really close to the cut off.
EG, i had EAS, got a UaI of 97, the cut off was 98, and i didnt get oferred a place, because only one place was offerred and the girl who got it got a UAI in between mine (97) and the cut off (98).
Hope that makes sense.... Oh, and Sydney Uni in general requires you to have 2 EAS "problems"or one really bad one to get accepted into its EAS scheme, its done on an individual basis, but it differs between universities.