How important is your school? (1 Viewer)

[redom]

Im just curious on the importance your school's overall rank, and how it affects you. I spoke to my careers advisor recently and he told me no one 'in his time'..(his quite old!!)..has got a uai of >99. The schools preety crap acedmically generally and the cohort isn't that great...but if ur near the top of all your subjects and cream the hsc, 99 isnt out of the question is it?

Another thingi while im ranting on...is my business class. The course average is like 40%, if i do well and top the subject am i seriously affected?....(now i get why the selective test was important back in yr 6....dammit!!)

 

[SoulSearcher]

The schools preety crap acedmically generally and the cohort isn't that great...but if ur near the top of all your subjects and cream the hsc, 99 isnt out of the question is it?

Isn't out of the question.

Another thingi while im ranting on...is my business class. The course average is like 40%, if i do well and top the subject am i seriously affected?....(now i get why the selective test was important back in yr 6....dammit!!)

No, as long as you do well in the external HSC exam.

 

[Affinity]

Well It's a fact that students at schools with high ranks tend to get better marks, but is this a causal relationship or is it just because better schools happen to attact better students?

I believe it's mostly the latter

 

[Wackedupwacko]

its mainly because see in yr 6 the selective school exams select the best academic students and places them in schools according to preferences. thus ruse will probably get about 150 of the states brightest (usually) and steal more ppl from other selective schools in year 11 to make them invincible. whilst its not impossible to achieve high marks, the amount of room to screw up an internal assessment is greatly lower than in a selective school, however conversely your rank does not plummet as much if you do. (screw up badly an assessment = see you fly back in ranks)

given that you do well in every subject (top3 or something likethat) and do well in your external exam (say mostly band 6s) there is a good chance you will get a 99+ uai

 

[haque]

You should be trying to top all of ur subjects to get a uai >99(not meaning to sound offensive or pesimistic)-it's just that if ur ranked 3 or 4 the fact that everyone might do so poorly will bring u down. If u can get ranks of around 1 or 2 for all ur subjects then do well in hsc u can get a uai of 99. u don't need a very high aggregate(check the scaling report for 2006 from uac-it'll help u see where ur at). Best of luck.

 

[ossephj]

Whichever school you attend for year 12 has NO INFLUENCE in how well you do in your HSC. To put it in a nutshell, the work is really up to YOU and if you wanna get good, then you have to work hard for it. I mean, a underperforming student may be present in James Ruse, but they will always get a low score regardless of what school they attend. When you are at your school, dont think about competitive pressures just within your school, but more importantly, you have to remember the HSC is an EXTERNAL exam STATEWIDE, and so when you study, you have to think about all the other students in the state as well. So, you may joy you came 1st in a subject at your school, but it does NOT end there. It is most important, that you study consistently, 3 hrs minimum each night, squeeze your sleeping times, cut some TV, and really motivate yourself to study well. You only have to sacrifice fun for 1 year. And this 1 year will never come back in your life, so u might as well make most of it. So no, school is not important at all regarding what marks you will get in your HSC.

 

[redom]

Yeah...99 seems a challenge to achieve....i guess ill try my best!! but it would be nice to say 'im in the 99+ cohort'!! \
anewhooo, on a brighter note, haque... seen some of ur maths marks!!! well done...theyre freakily good!!!

 

[vorahk]

school is not important at all regarding what marks you will get in your HSC.

according my head science teacher,thats not neccessarily true. your school is also competing against other schools. the 'better' schools who perform better as a whole get higher scaling. then it goes to your rank in your school. so yeah, its a team effort for you and your classmates as a school to gain the best marks and scaling possible.

say if you're first in a subject in assessments but didnt do as good in the HSC exam. they look at your school mean then your rank and scale up your mark accordingly.

this is what my head science teacher told us, if i'm wrong, blame her, not me .

 

[haque]

Yeah...99 seems a challenge to achieve....i guess ill try my best!! but it would be nice to say 'im in the 99+ cohort'!! \
anewhooo, on a brighter note, haque... seen some of ur maths marks!!! well done...theyre freakily good!!!

Thanks man-(I needed to get good marks to get co-op for actuarial cos its proabbly the most academic dependednt of all the co-ops) so if ur going for actuarial(i dunno i'm just presuming, cos actuarial is pretty popular at the moment) keep ur maths good. Again remember if u can hold ur ranks and do well then a good uai isn't out of the question-i just asked a friend of mine who used to go to homebush(at the time homebush was ranked pretty hopelessly) and the dux of the grade got uai of 99.95, similarly the dux of canterbury boys last year got a uai of 99.65 and canterbury wasn't ranked very well.

 

[^CoSMic DoRiS^^]

now i get why the selective test was important back in yr 6....dammit!!

Hahaha, I didn't actually know when I did that test, that that was what it was for...our class just got told we were doing a test and to try not to screw it up... I don't think I even finished it; though I'm pretty sure if I knew what it was for I would have tried a bit harder lol. my school was/is a bit on the crap side.

 

[xinxin89]

kelvin what r we ranked in the state? aren't we the 21st on the selective skools list?

 

[gaoOO]

i think being at a good school can be positive and negative. There's more security if you're at a good school, you'll tend to do reasonably well, even if you screw your external exams because the rest of the cohort will pull your marks up. On the other hand, if you want to do "outstandingly well", it is REALLY difficult to maintain good rankings.

 

[haque]

What do you mean? People who are ranked 1st or 2nd are still able to be affected by others whose marks are much lower than their own.
Its not about how great your rank is in the end. Its about the difference in marks between the person ranked 1st and 2nd, 2nd and 3rd etc. Thats why people who top a subject are affected when others do not do well in it.
The better everyone does [regardless of ranks], the better everyone does.

No. Do u know how the marks are distributed? I think not. The top mark achieved by the yeargroup goes to the person ranked first as the school mark and the bottom mark from the year group the bottom ranked, the remaining marks are moderated according how everyone goes, which is why a rank of number one isn't affected-how do you think Keypad topped the state in 4 unit maths huh? He was ranked number one, did really well in the hsc and he got the top mark as his hsc mark and the school mark-keypad's grade in st ignatius would have done much more poorly than a grade in ruse, however keypad wasn't affected. Go read the scaling report before u make claims.

 

[haque]

Sorry if i sounded agro-didn't mean to, it's just that's what i've been told and that provides the best explanation why every subject isn't topped by ruse. sorry again-this is an issue that is quite cloudy.

 

[gaoOO]

Bleh it doesn't matter. Everyone's told different things.
And you don't need to be sorry. Its just what you've been told.

actually what haque said is correct.

 

[kloudsurfer]

Well your school matters in the way that generally
crap ranked school = crap teachers, crap resource, cohort that doesnt care = crap marks
as opposed to
high ranked school, usually private or selective = good teachers, good resources, students who care about thier studies = good marks

In that way, the school rank matters. But its not the rank itself, its the factors which result in that rank.
Directly the school rank has no effect on your UAI.

Yes, i go to a crappy school. I whinged about it all last year, but i got over it and learned to accept that the mark you get is up to you. It is up to you how hard you work, how much time you put in, and how motivated you are

That is until you get your crappy hsc marks. Then you can blame your school

 

[redom]

"Thanks man-(I needed to get good marks to get co-op for actuarial cos its proabbly the most academic dependednt of all the co-ops) so if ur going for actuarial(i dunno i'm just presuming, cos actuarial is pretty popular at the moment) keep ur maths good."

lol exactly what i wanna do!!...doubt im capable of getting in though....heard competitions fierce....some random from a public school will have little chance against those ruse boys!! i know its kinda off topic, but is 99 even enough to be a serious contendor for the actuarial co op?

 

[chocolate_lover]

Well your school matters in the way that generally
crap ranked school = crap teachers, crap resource, cohort that doesnt care = crap marks
as opposed to
high ranked school, usually private or selective = good teachers, good resources, students who care about thier studies = good marks

In that way, the school rank matters. But its not the rank itself, its the factors which result in that rank.
Directly the school rank has no effect on your UAI.

Yes, i go to a crappy school. I whinged about it all last year, but i got over it and learned to accept that the mark you get is up to you. It is up to you how hard you work, how much time you put in, and how motivated you are

That is until you get your crappy hsc marks. Then you can blame your school

Hahaha, I agree and love, everything you wrote there.
The only decent post in this thread .

 

[haque]

"Thanks man-(I needed to get good marks to get co-op for actuarial cos its proabbly the most academic dependednt of all the co-ops) so if ur going for actuarial(i dunno i'm just presuming, cos actuarial is pretty popular at the moment) keep ur maths good."

lol exactly what i wanna do!!...doubt im capable of getting in though....heard competitions fierce....some random from a public school will have little chance against those ruse boys!! i know its kinda off topic, but is 99 even enough to be a serious contendor for the actuarial co op?

As well as ruse do, they don't get even 1/3 of the co-ops-cos its not just academic but ur leadership and communication skills count(that's where public speaking comp ranks and debating helped). if u get predicted of 99 and do really well in interview and ur extra curriculars are really good then yes-some of my friends got rejected and they had predicted uais of 99.4 and one got shortlisted when his predicted was 99.7. But they look for other qualities than just academic and not all scholars have uais of over 99-so don't fret and keep extra curriculars and leadership stuff up.

And to Kloudsurfer-the teachers at selective schools aren't necessarily better, there ar3e some good teachers but there are some really hopeless ones(majority). one of the maths classes got taken by a geography teacher for half a year cos the maths teacher was away.

 

[bingo]

well the things with schools is that some just give u more options i.e some schools allow u to be accelerated and may even expect u to excellerate in certain subjects, meaning that u will have more time to study in ur actual HSC year when u already have one subject under ur belt....

also, dont forget that its much harder to come first in a 'good' school then a 'crap' school, because obviously the people there are better/ worse - this means that if u come first in a crap school then compared to a good school u may have only come like 20th or so - showing ur competition, however so long as u still do well on ur actual HSC exam it shouldnt matter too much...

the thing with the general class is also that if u go to a good school and get a good rank but stuff up ur exa, u will have some1 to fall back on for marks as everyone their would probably have gotten generally good marks, however in a crap school u have no one to fall back on but urself...

uncooperative classes could also mean that the teacher has less time to teach and pay attention to u if she is trying to control ur class... the work set may also not thus be as challenging and may therfore not prepare u well enough for the real thing - making tutors good i guess - however a good school doesnt necessarily gurantee a good class...

all in all school DOES matter to a certain degree, BUT if u are willing to put in alot of ur OWN effort and get a good mark then nobody will steal tht 99 away from u....

as my teacher said.... a band six is still a band six....no matter wat school u go to...

p.s. just make sure that u have all the neccessary resources and knowledge (check the syllabus and cross check with friends from other schools) to successfully complete the exam!!

GOOD LUCK