Well, a lot of my friends are ESL candidates.
My friends basically have prepared essays written. I looked at it once. the standard of their essays are better than many candidates' in Adv English --> of course, after being 'changed' by tutors and friends (who they asked to have a look at and adjust essays for them)
I've seen my ESL friends using BIG words (that were added by extension english friend of mine into their essays) and they just memorised their essays for the exams. Not that this is not right but they are not memorising stuff that are written on their own. once again, this is just what my friends did. I don't mean ALL ESL candidates do that. Afterall, it won't be fair to all other ESL candidates if my friends did that
I am not criticising people who do ESL, afterall, I can do ESL if I want to.
It's just that, it's not fair how many of them just do ESL because of the better scaling, They have a choice between Standard and ESL while many Aussies are only restricted to Standard and above levels.
(for the record, I do neither Standard or ESL)