Great school, bad internal ranks vs Bad school, great internal ranks. (1 Viewer)

[RandomUser1]

So I'm moving schools next year to Sydney Boys for year 11 and 12, and I was wondering whether it is better to attend a top 10 school and have internal ranks of around 20/40, or attend a low ranking school (for the purpose of this thread let's just assume 400-500's) and have an internal rank of 1/40. I believe I will have quite a bit of catching up to do as I'm moving from a low performing school , but I'm going to go all out for the next two years and hopefully do really well on my HSC.

 

[D94]

Well the benefit or advantage of being 1st in any school regardless of rank is that your HSC mark can be solely dependent on your own performance. The highest exam mark of any student will be given to you for your assessment mark, and your HSC exam mark is your own performance.

The benefit of going to a high performing school, from purely process perspective, is that your assessment mark may be higher than your own exam mark if your cohort does well collectively. You may not get a higher assessment mark had you gone to a low performing school. However, you may also receive a lower assessment mark if your cohort does poorly.

You are probably better off going to Sydney Boys / top 10 school.

 

[iStudent]

Doesn't really matter tbh.

Going to a low ranking school means your fate is much more determined by your external exams.
Going to a high ranking school means your fate is much more determined by your internals since you need the ranks in order to benefit from getting pulled up by your cohort. (though to be fair, externals still account for a significant amount)

That said

In terms of achieving very *very* high ATARs or state ranks, I actually think going to a lower ranking school is a huge advantage - because getting the likes of 99.95 or state rank often means you need to come 1st in a variety of subjects - easily done in a 400 ranked school, but MUCH harder in a top selective since you need to be really consistent given everyone is so close in terms of marks.

So in conclusion
SBHS = much more ATAR security (you'll get a decent atar because your cohort will drag you up if you mess up in externals)
Low ranking school = much lower ATAR security (if you mess up externals, you're done for) but greater potential for very high ATARs ->> AND THIS IS DEFINITELY POSSIBLE (I came from a 300+ school myself)

 

[andrew12678]

I'll go for Syd Boys