i think it is like what you get in your external is half of your HSC mark. The other half is from the moderated mark that you get due to your rank in your school. It doesnt mean you've failed. Depending on how smart the guys in your economics class, they can scale your internal moderated mark, but yeh you will be capped up those 26 people, so your maximum internal is below the 26th person but above the 28th person. They add this internal moderated mark and your external exam mark to get an average = your hsc mark for that subject.
hope this helps. plz dont flame me if i get it wrong but i think this is how it works. >.<
You've got the basic principle, but only UAC (not BoS) scales marks and they only scale the final overall mark - you mean align.
If the gaps are really small between the ranks, that's good news for you. It just means that although you will get the 26th highest moderated internal mark (based on the gaps between the ranks and the highest HSC exam mark) as your rank, as the ranks are small it might only be a few marks lower than say the internal mark the 20th ranked person got. This mark becomes you internal mark.
Your aligned mark for the HSC exam you will keep as your external mark and this is added to your internal mark and averaged to get your HSC mark for that subject. As the final exam mark is an average of your internal and external mark, if you get a high enough external mark than the people in front of you then you might actually receive a final subject mark
HIGHER than some of the people ranked higher than you.
So don't give up hope - work hard to ace the HSC exam