Scaling – You, Your Friends, and the HSC (3 Viewers)

[Absolutezero]

Internal: The marks of your school assessments
External: The marks of your HSC exams
Cohort: The other students in your year at your school


If you do well in the externals, a good internal mark and a good cohort will raise your final mark

If you do well in the externals, a bad internal mark but a good cohort may raise your final mark

If you do well in the externals, a good internal mark but a bad cohort may lower your final mark

If you do well in the externals, a bad internal mark and a bad cohort will lower your final mark



If you do badly in the externals, a good internal mark and a good cohort will raise your final mark

If you do badly in the externals, a bad internal mark but a good cohort may raise your final mark

If you do badly in the externals, a good internal mark but a bad cohort may lower your final mark

If you do badly in the externals, a bad internal mark and a bad cohort will lower your final mark

 

[Kolmias]

Such a terrible system which doesn't reward individual achievement.

 

[kunza]

Wait so a bad internal of say 80 in HSC physics, but good external plus (hopefully) a great cohort could possibly get me a band 6?? I need some hope ughhhh

 

[BandSixFix]

yep!

 

[chrisx000]

so if i get an average of 90 on my externals and internals but my cohort gets an average of 60 my mark will drop?

 

[A1P]

so if i get an average of 90 on my externals and internals but my cohort gets an average of 60 my mark will drop?

Rationally if you get 90 external 90 internal and your cohort averages 60 external, they should also average 60 internal. If that is true then no your mark won't drop.

Bad case for you is when you get 90 internal, they average 80 internal but only 60 external. With external being the yardstick everyone (except 1st & last ranked) gets pulled down for the reason the school marked the cohort as a whole too generously.

 

[eyeseeyou]

so if i get an average of 90 on my externals and internals but my cohort gets an average of 60 my mark will drop?

If you're first then I don't think so

 

[chrisx000]

Rationally if you get 90 external 90 internal and your cohort averages 60 external, they should also average 60 internal. If that is true then no your mark won't drop.

Bad case for you is when you get 90 internal, they average 80 internal but only 60 external. With external being the yardstick everyone (except 1st & last ranked) gets pulled down for the reason the school marked the cohort as a whole too generously.

Why do you get penalised for the efforts of the rest of your classmates?

 

[A1P]

Why do you get penalised for the efforts of the rest of your classmates?

BOSTES does have safeguards to exclude a few unusually bad exam marks (for lack of trying) from calculation for the cohort so you are not affected. But if the cohort in general averages 60 external versus 70-80 internal, BOSTES won't believe only you try in the exam and the rest don't. It's more logical to believe your school is too generous with marks therefore your 90 internal is inflated & needs moderated down.

Note this moderating up or down does not apply to your external mark, you get what you get yourself. Only to the School Assessment mark.

 

[Roronana]

For example if you do higher scaled subjects, does that mean you have a certain advantage when ranked against all HSC students?

 

[jazz519]

For example if you do higher scaled subjects, does that mean you have a certain advantage when ranked against all HSC students?

This is true to an extent. The thing is you have to compare the benefits of say doing an easier subject that might be more easier to get a higher mark in but it is scaled less, but then you have to consider are you able to get a good mark in a harder subject, because the thing is a lot of people go into subjects like chemistry, physics and maths extension thinking they are just going to get any mark and then get scaled so high over other people, but this is not always the case. For scaling to benefit you doing a harder subject you still need to get a decent mark. That being said you can get a very high atar doing subjects that are considered low scaling. For instance I have the tes scores (like the scaled marks when different subjects are compared) for my school and a 95 in business had a higher tes than a 93 in physics. I would say personally since I did these subjects that getting that business mark is easier than getting that in physics. However, if you do have the academic ability to score high in high scaling subjects I would take those over low scaling ones, but still you need to consider if you enjoy the course. Hope this helped

 

[zhu0902]

This guide is pretty extensive Good work

 

[haony98]

If I do average in internals (70-85) and well in externals (80-95) will I get a good atar(75+)?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Ihateschooll]

Agreed

 

[Ihateschooll]

80 is bad ??

 

[Ihateschooll]

I need some help

okay so I just started HSC course this week and I'm stressing out so much ! Atars are stupid and apparently the subjects I'm doing are "low" in scaling ?? I want to do really well in my internal and externals assessments but I have a really hard time remembering information especially essay points and I'm just so lost,I don't know what uni I want to go to nor do I know what I wanna study in uni I feel like going into a room and coming out when all this is over.I don't know why it's stressing me out so much I just started year 12 and I've already had. Breakdown by crying myself to sleep anyone have any advice on how to get a extremely good atar and to make people proud-because that's all I want tbh

 

[Frostguard]

I need some help

okay so I just started HSC course this week and I'm stressing out so much ! Atars are stupid and apparently the subjects I'm doing are "low" in scaling ?? I want to do really well in my internal and externals assessments but I have a really hard time remembering information especially essay points and I'm just so lost,I don't know what uni I want to go to nor do I know what I wanna study in uni I feel like going into a room and coming out when all this is over.I don't know why it's stressing me out so much I just started year 12 and I've already had. Breakdown by crying myself to sleep anyone have any advice on how to get a extremely good atar and to make people proud-because that's all I want tbh

First of all, you’re not alone in your suffering, it’s completely ok if you don’t know what to study at university or know what university to go to, my friends are just like you, lost and confused, you are not disappointing anyone through this, like who cares if you don’t know what to study? You just haven’t found yourself, that’s all, it’ll take time to discover yourself (haha get it? It’s discovery?’). It’s ok to let it out and cry once a while, de stress yourself a little because this year will be stress over stress over stress. Even if your subjects are low scaling or whatever people have told you, try to ignore them., scaling doesn’t mean jack if you do well, come first on your subjects and or at least perform well in your subjects because I’m sure you’ve chosen your subjects based on your interests and capability, much better than choosing subjects simply because of scaling. Do past papers, have study groups and make notes and I’m sure you won’t get a terrible ATAR. We can all suffer together ))

 

[MrOlsen]

Pro-tip: Get it from the horses mouth. Some good points here, but NESA is very clear on how it works, so don't take it second hand when you can get it first hand here:

http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/hsc-results/moderation.html
http://www.uac.edu.au/atar/calculation/scaling.shtml

TL;DR The better you go, the better you get. Everything else is to balance out teachers different levels of assessment of your work.

P.S. Fun story, my brother was the only person in his school doing a particular subject, so the teacher put in an assessment mark of 75 (purely because it's half way between 50 and 100) and on his HSC it said Internal: 92 External: 92 because of moderation. Many teachers estimate too high (they'll tell you you're getting 90% when you're actually at 80%) and this rectifies that.

 

[studygirl118]

Is this person saying if you have a bad cohort, you're stuffed? Even if you do well in internals and externals?

 

[pikachu975]

Is this person saying if you have a bad cohort, you're stuffed? Even if you do well in internals and externals?

If you're first you're not stuffed at all