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Secondary ATAR results

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magic_johnson! said:
How wouldn't it?
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There is more or less the same amount of people getting 99.95 as there are people getting say, 70.35, or indeed any specific score. Using a bell curve creates an anomaly - there would be FAR more people getting in the 40s and 50s (the thick part of the bell) and only a small amount getting in the 90s, as opposed to equal amounts in each section.

They do use the bell curve for study scores, of course - there are FAR more people getting 30 in any subject than 50.
 
breeno said:
I think it goes down by about 4-6; but the higher you get the less it is.

Don't pick subjects based upon their marking up or down; unless they are even in terms of your ability. So many kids found out this year that a 25 in methods scaling up to a 31 isn't as good as a 36 in another subject which scales down to a 33.
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Play the game though.

If you're able to do subjects that get marked up 5 or so, choose that over a subject that you may like a bit more that only gets mark up 1 or none. I'm not saying do something you hate that gets marked up, but look at all the options. A 32 to 37 is better than a 34 to 35.
 
Also if it's possible ask around the school to see how your school goes in particular subjects, because they get standarised aswell as scaled and your school might teach particular subjects better than others.
 
magic_johnson! said:
bell_curve.jpg

This is what it looks like. For every 99.95, there's a 00.05

When you get say a 60, it doesn't mean you get 60%. It means you have bet 60% of the population, and that you are in the top 40% etc.
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Nuh this is wrong - at least for WA anyway. Heres the ATAR distribution for 2009 and 2010.

As you can see the median is about 80ish.

I thought Melbourne's was similar but i could be wrong, I was a leaver in 2009 but i was pretty interested in all this stuff back then.


EDIT - Just saw this for NSW and the median seems to be about 70ish.
 

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Sorry to bump an old thread....

Can someone explain this whole school rank scaling thing to me?

My girlfriend also says year 11 marks count as well. I don't think that's the case. I did fairly average last year, by no means great, yet it wasn't a total disaster.

I'd like to do English at UWA, for which an ATAR of 80.00 is required (at the minimum). Of course, i'm aiming for the high 80's, just to be certain. I'm getting 80-90% for almost all my 3A/3B assignments/essays... so i'm quite confident. I'm plundering economics, as 50-60% seems to be my range. I'm around 60% in History, and 75% in philosophy. I have never revised in my year 12 life.

Could anyone make sense of the previous for me?
 
WA student here. Am interested in applying to study at University of Melbourne next year.

For the WA students, can you give me an idea of how the WACE is calculated for West Australian students? (for mature age and school leaver)
 
Silent Alarm said:
Can someone explain this whole school rank scaling thing to me?
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Unless it's changed a lot since I finished VCE in 2009, this is how I understand how final marks work for VCE. It doesn't really matter what score, number wise you get in assessments (apart from unit 3/4 exams), it matters how you did in comparison to everyone else at your school. Since every school will have tests of varying difficulty, it'd be unfair to compare SAC/assessment marks across schools. (i.e. scoring 85 in a test where the school average was 90, can't directly be compared to a 60 where the average was 50 at another school)

The way I understood marks was similar to this (probably not 100% correct). Say for a subject like English where the three scores that determine your final study score are unit 3 SACs, unit 4 SACs and the end of year exam. What happens is there's an internal ranking inside your school of everyone that did the subject, from the highest scores to the lowest scores for each unit. The exam marks from the school are also ordered from highest to lowest and assigned a ranking. The score you get for your unit 3 and 4 SACs are given based on both your SAC ranking and the exam scores from your school.

Say you were ranked 15th for unit 3 and 26th for unit 4. The mark you receive for unit 3 would be the 15th highest exam mark from your school, and for unit 4 you would receive the 26th highest. For the exam you would receive your own score.

This allows VCAA to scale SAC scores based on how strong the school's cohort was. In a strong cohort with difficult tests, the highest SAC mark average could be a 75, but highest exam mark could be an A+. That highest ranked student would receive an A+ for his/her SACs, despite only averaging 75 in tests. The same principle applies for a weak cohort with easier tests.
 
JasRulz63 said:
Unless it's changed a lot since I finished VCE in 2009, this is how I understand how final marks work for VCE. It doesn't really matter what score, number wise you get in assessments (apart from unit 3/4 exams), it matters how you did in comparison to everyone else at your school. Since every school will have tests of varying difficulty, it'd be unfair to compare SAC/assessment marks across schools. (i.e. scoring 85 in a test where the school average was 90, can't directly be compared to a 60 where the average was 50 at another school)

The way I understood marks was similar to this (probably not 100% correct). Say for a subject like English where the three scores that determine your final study score are unit 3 SACs, unit 4 SACs and the end of year exam. What happens is there's an internal ranking inside your school of everyone that did the subject, from the highest scores to the lowest scores for each unit. The exam marks from the school are also ordered from highest to lowest and assigned a ranking. The score you get for your unit 3 and 4 SACs are given based on both your SAC ranking and the exam scores from your school.

Say you were ranked 15th for unit 3 and 26th for unit 4. The mark you receive for unit 3 would be the 15th highest exam mark from your school, and for unit 4 you would receive the 26th highest. For the exam you would receive your own score.

This allows VCAA to scale SAC scores based on how strong the school's cohort was. In a strong cohort with difficult tests, the highest SAC mark average could be a 75, but highest exam mark could be an A+. That highest ranked student would receive an A+ for his/her SACs, despite only averaging 75 in tests. The same principle applies for a weak cohort with easier tests.
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Spot on.

There is some extra standardising stuff they throw in which confuses the **** out of me (when I got sick and missed an exam I found out that what you've said isn't exactly what happens), but it's the best anyone will come to possibly understanding it without pretty much being the one who designed it :p
 
Haha awesome. Good to know I was telling everyone bs in year 12! At least the exams are marked straight forward though. I sat the GAMSAT this year (Graduate Australian Medical School Admission Test) and it has the most screwed up marking system I've ever seen. Uses probabilities and stuff for each question, just horrible.
 
SAC scores are a tad depressing :p Had two weeks to prepare for my first SAC on Slaughterhouse 5, a pretty bad two weeks for me at home, and pulled out a ripping 26 out of 40. Followed it up with 19/20 and 20/20 in my other two, and will probably (based on last years 1/2 results) keep that up for the remainder of the year (two more SAC's).

Am I ****ed either way? I really hope not, because Literature is meant to be my best subject. Aiming for the Premier's Award in it, since that's based on exam marks, but if that first SAC kills me off study score-wise I might murder someone. How does the GAT work for scaling? And is it true that if you get a ripper exam score VCAA scale your individual SAC score up?
 

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If you get an expected result in your exam compared to your sac marks and your gat, then the gat won't affect anything. It only affects the marks IF the an exam mark is completely different to the SAC marks, where they would look at it and think why.
 
So if the exam score is worse than the SAC score, rather than better? How about vice versa? Dreading my SAC score.
 
SAC scores are vital, especially for subjects with one exam.

In History last year I got a 42. For the first semester I was ranked second (only lost 2 marks) and for the second semester I was ranked equal third (0 marks lost). I got an A+ on the exam. Somehow my first semester SAC results were scaled down (apparently our teacher may have over-marked the class on the whole - not her fault however). So things like this do come into consideration. The only way to be 100% safe is to get 100% 100% of the time!
 
breeno said:
SAC scores are vital, especially for subjects with one exam.

In History last year I got a 42. For the first semester I was ranked second (only lost 2 marks) and for the second semester I was ranked equal third (0 marks lost). I got an A+ on the exam. Somehow my first semester SAC results were scaled down (apparently our teacher may have over-marked the class on the whole - not her fault however). So things like this do come into consideration. The only way to be 100% safe is to get 100% 100% of the time!
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That's a little bit of overmarking. My school's the opposite, there are two classes of history (revs), and i think over the two sacs we've done so far only one person got an a+ on the first one (low) and again only one person (different) got an a+ on the second one (pretty sure low again). I'm probably sitting about ~6th and i got a B and an A!
 

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magic_johnson! said:
That's a little bit of overmarking. My school's the opposite, there are two classes of history (revs), and i think over the two sacs we've done so far only one person got an a+ on the first one (low) and again only one person (different) got an a+ on the second one (pretty sure low again). I'm probably sitting about ~6th and i got a B and an A!
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Not really. They over-marked the mid tier kids at my school. I was second ranka and got a mid to high A+ on the exam. The 1st rank got a high A+ and didnt get his SAC scores marked down at all and got a 48.

So really at the upper end, her predictions were spot on. It was the mid tier that were predicted to get Bs but got Cs and Ds that dragged it down for the rest of us.

Same for English, I lost no marks for the year (didn't get to sit the exam but still got a 45), the kid behind me who lost 2 for the year got a 48 and a very high A+ on the exam.

Our school (despite being a public school) had a ridiculously good top tier of kids for our area, but our mid-tier weren't so great.

I always thought it was just the rankings that counted, however when I got sick it was explained to me that the marks for SACs count and the only way to ensure you don't get marked down is to be the first rank.
 
This still confuses me a lot...

So, do my (year 12) school marks count toward my ATAR? Is it a 50/50 split between course scores, and exam scores?
 
Silent Alarm said:
This still confuses me a lot...

So, do my (year 12) school marks count toward my ATAR? Is it a 50/50 split between course scores, and exam scores?
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Yep. But it's not so much the sac "marks" that you get that mean anything, just class order and then the actual marks are worked out from there.

I doubt if anyone knew the whole vce system....Probs easier to do your best and let it sort itself out.
 
Gazza_11 said:
SAC scores are a tad depressing :p Had two weeks to prepare for my first SAC on Slaughterhouse 5, a pretty bad two weeks for me at home, and pulled out a ripping 26 out of 40. Followed it up with 19/20 and 20/20 in my other two, and will probably (based on last years 1/2 results) keep that up for the remainder of the year (two more SAC's).

Am I ****ed either way? I really hope not, because Literature is meant to be my best subject. Aiming for the Premier's Award in it, since that's based on exam marks, but if that first SAC kills me off study score-wise I might murder someone. How does the GAT work for scaling? And is it true that if you get a ripper exam score VCAA scale your individual SAC score up?
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You will be fine, the Premier's Award will mean you need to kill the exam anyway.

Focus on smashing your next two SAC's and going as well as you can on the exam.

Two of my mates were getting C's on their SAC's but ended up with 37 and 39.

Of course going to a private school helps, but otherwise don't worry.

SAC's are important but a good exam can make up for it, especially in a subject like Lit where there aren't huge numbers of participants state-wide
 
Yeah it kind of annoyed me when people got one bad mark on their SACS and declared that they were ****ed for the year and they may as well get a job at Maccas cause that's where they would be working for the rest of their lives.

In all honesty I think one bad mark makes hardly any difference. There is no doubt in my mind the exams are far and away the most important element in VCE. I have only a limited understanding of the very complicated marking system but it seems that the VCAA 'trust' the exams more simply because it's their people that do the marking.

Not to say SACS are irrelevant but they do get adjusted depending on cohort and individual performance in exams.
 
Ah sorry :p Had another SAC today which I'm sure I did well on. Yeah supposedly for Lit the exam is where you really get your marks. I'm at Glen Waverley anyway, and the Lit cohort is pretty damn competitive.

I'm not getting C's though, just one B and 2 A+'s so far. Sigh.

Is the Premier's Award completely based on the exam?
 

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