I emailed a professor in Australia for a PhD program. In the response, and as a part of that, he told me "For scholarships, you need to be at least 85% and over". What does it mean? Is this refer to GPA or something else?
2 Answers
It may be GPA. It may be rank in your class. It may be your percentile on the graduate exams. I agree with @GrotesqueSI: The answer is to email the professor again and request clarification.
Typically Australian universities would use Honors 1 equivalence for allocating scholarships both to locals and international students. So the 85 would be that of an equivalent mark. I have found one document from QUT that explains this, you should search something similar for the university you are applying for.
In my experience that would be the minimum and without things adding to it, you would be less likely to be competitive for a scholarship.