Scaling?? to such an extent?! (1 Viewer)

[Kittyrules]

Hey guys,

so i am a bit very confused at this. Sorry if there have been threads like this before and i dont know if its in the right section. sorry about the big intro thing too ahh

I was choosing subjects for year 12 next year where i was hoping to do
4 eng
3 math
3 german
and have 2 units of IPT that i did in 2013 with a final mark of 95 (94 internal, 96 external)

this would mean i have 12 units altogether with at least 1 of the IPT units definitely being counted
i want to study film in germany after hsc and am going on a 10 week scholarship exchange to germany over the holidays and 4 weeks of school where i hope to film my 4u english film project and super-excel-awesomeify my german but also miss out on maths and english lessons. This means that i dont really need an amazing atar and want to simply do my best, so that if my plans dont work out i can still go to a decent uni here (maybe scholarships lel??)

i had a talk with my deputy principal today and she explained that due to scaling, my IPT mark of 95 would be taken down to 87-88. Because of this i am considering to maybe continue physics next year.

so i have a few questions...
Which one of these marks is used for atar calculation? Which one is called what??
How/why can scaling affect my mark so much!?
I heard that if you get >90 in all units you get something like ~98+. Is this true? Is this based on the mark of 95, or ~87?
Would taking physics be a lot of a bigger load on top of my extensions (even though only 3 subjects)? Whats your opinion, should i continue it?
If i did really well in german, and ok in the other subjects, how much better/worse would IPT or physics make my atar?

soz for long post and thanks!

 

[Kittyrules]

helpp

also edit: today i was told that i had the opportunity to take up 4u maths... but im not really that interested so i dunnoo

 

[D94]

Have a read on page 9 to 13: http://www.uac.edu.au/documents/atar/ATAR-Technical-Report.pdf

Try to understand, especially if you are interested in actually understanding how it works.

Maybe if you understood this, you could make an informed decision by yourself.

 

[FlameLash]

Your 95 is an aligned mark. Scaled marks are on a completely separate spectrum to aligned marks. Aligned marks attempt to fit you into bands whereas your scaled mark attempts to measure you against all other students across the state to determine your ATAR. Your ATAR will be determined from a 10 unit aggregate of these scaled marks, and a 400 aggregate generally equates to 94-95 ATAR. Keeping that in mind, that's an average of 80 scaled mark per 2 unit subject, so an 87 scaled mark is considerably higher than what you probably perceived it as being.