ATAR internal and external correlation? (1 Viewer)

[LeadTaco]

At my schools HSC meeting at the beginning of term 3 last year, I remember the BOS person talking about how our ATARs are decided and how our external and internal marks contribute to it. The BOS person as I recall, claimed that the rank we get for our external marks correlate entirely to our internal rank i.e. If you come 3rd in your internal rank, your going to get the 3rd best external mark in your cohort.

So I have three questions;

1) Is what the BOS person said true?
2) As many of you have said our ATAR = our Internal rank + our External mark. Is this true, do our internal marks have any correlation to our ATAR?
3) Say your do poorly in your internals, what is the point of trying for you external tests, if your ultimately going to end with a bad mark, regardless how how much you studied?

Thanks

 

[SuchSmallHands]

Here's how it works;
Person A is ranked first internally, person B is ranked second internally. Person A does 17 hour FIFA sessions before the HSC on a daily basis and gets a 86 externally, the second best HSC mark in the class. Person b works their ass off before the HSC and gets 98, the best in the class. What happens now is that the internal mark for person a is taken as 98, the highest external mark (first equals first). Their HSC mark is left as it is. Their final mark is (86+98)/2 . The second person's mark is the same, as their internal rank was second they get the second highest external mark as their assessment mark, in this case 86 (well not exactly, the interval between internal marks is also regarded, but since this is all just a hypothetical to explain why studying for the HSC is a good idea regardless of internal rank, I'm not going to go there). Their HSC mark is also left as is. Then what happens is person b slaps person a and breaks his FIFA disk.

As for your question regarding whether it's worth studying: well, if person b was less capable than person a to begin with, one can assume they would have scored even lower externally than person a if they too hadn't worked hard. They'd have ended up with a mark more like (80+80)/2 than (98+86)/2. I don't do maths but it's pretty clear which is better.

 

[Chris100]

Your overall question about internal ranks was very similar to mine when I asked D94 about it, and he put it very nicely;
(Just in case you get confused the assessment mark percentage determines our ranks)
D94:



As for your question, the 'moderated' assessment marks are definitely based on your internal assessments, the weightings etc. but also based on your school's exam performance. Let's say your school assessments ranged from 80% down to 60%, and you may have achieved 75%. You are 5% behind first place, and 15% in front of last place. Now, your cohort sits the HSC exam and let's say the highest mark of anyone is 95, and the lowest mark of anyone is 85. That means, ALL moderated assessment marks fit within this range. That means BOS has to "squeeze" your school's 60% to 80% within that 85 to 95 range. For your school marks, you were 1/4 of the range of your school marks behind first place, so BOS roughly says you are also 1/4 of the range of the HSC exam marks. This means you would get an assessment mark of 1/4 * 10 = 2.5 behind first place, so you should get around 93 for your assessment mark. The calculations are a bit more complex, but this roughly illustrates how BOS determine the assessment marks.

Note that in the example, I have not considered your rank within your school. BOS also does not look at your rank, unless you are first or last.

Basically, you will want as many school marks as possible and be as close to first as possible in terms of marks, not ranks. If you are 30% behind first place and you are 2nd, well, your assessment mark will be significantly different to first, unless all HSC exam marks are very close.

So in terms of giving importance to school marks, rank and HSC marks, I would rank it as:
1. HSC exam marks
2. School marks
3. Rank