Marks... (1 Viewer)

[maah4199sha]

Hey all. Lowkey getting scared for my ATAR...
I know internal ranks are important, but are raw marks that important too? I go to a decent school (in the top 15), but I bombed my task 1, and task 2 i'm doing average... I know the marks get moderated, but how much can moderation really change your raw school marks?

 

[jimmysmith560]

The moderation process uses your rank in your respective subjects relative to your cohort in addition to the Examination Marks achieved by other students in your cohort in order to determine your Assessment Mark, which is the mark that reflects your performance in your school-based assessment tasks/exams and also contributes 50% of your HSC mark (final mark) in a particular subject. Essentially, the highest Assessment Mark is adjusted to equal the highest Examination Mark of any student in a school cohort. Similarly, the lowest Assessment Mark is adjusted to equal the lowest Examination Mark of any student in a school cohort. Based on this, the actual marks that you achieve in each school-based assessment task/exam are only relevant in terms of determining your ranks across your subjects, meaning that these marks are no longer relevant beyond that point.

Of course, maximising your rank is important if you wish to achieve a favourable Assessment Mark (which can be rather difficult in a high-ranking school with significant competition), and the only way to do so is by achieving the highest possible marks in your remaining school-based assessment tasks/exams going forward.

I hope this helps!

 

[carrotsss]

what is the significance of your rank in your school (internal rank i think it’s called?) in the hsc and how does it affect your atar?

Your rank and the differences between ranks are applied to your cohort’s hsc exam marks in order to determine your internal mark (eg if you rank first internally, you’ll get your cohort’s highest exam mark as your internal mark). This internal mark makes up half of your HSC mark for a subject, and is averaged with your own exam mark to determine your overall HSC mark for a subject. It affects your ATAR a fair bit - in effect it makes up half of your ATAR, and so ensuring that you rank as well as you can is really important.

 

[yolo tengo]

Your rank and the differences between ranks are applied to your cohort’s hsc exam marks in order to determine your internal mark (eg if you rank first internally, you’ll get your cohort’s highest exam mark as your internal mark). This internal mark makes up half of your HSC mark for a subject, and is averaged with your own exam mark to determine your overall HSC mark for a subject. It affects your ATAR a fair bit - in effect it makes up half of your ATAR, and so ensuring that you rank as well as you can is really important.

nah thats not fair

 

[synthesisFR]

nah thats not fair

it is tho

 

[jimmysmith560]

Your rank relative to your cohort in a particular subject is an important element that is used in determining your Assessment Mark for the subject. The Assessment Mark is the mark that reflects your internal performance in a subject, and contributes 50% of your overall HSC mark for that subject. Your rank is one of two elements that is used as part of a process called moderation, the other element being Examination Marks (i.e. HSC exam marks) achieved by students in your cohort. The Examination Mark contributes the remaining 50% of your overall HSC mark for that subject. carrotsss's post is a very good summary of this process. The main rule is that the highest and lowest Assessment Mark will be adjusted to equal the highest and lowest Examination Mark achieved by any student in a cohort respectively.

Consider a positive example, where Student A has performed consistently well in their internal assessment tasks and exams in a particular subject, allowing them to place first in their cohort. Because Student A was able to place first, the highest Examination Mark achieved by any student in their cohort (including Student A) will also become Student A's Assessment Mark. For instance, if the highest Examination Mark of 95 was achieved by Student B, Student A will also receive 95, but as their Assessment Mark, because they placed first internally.

Another student, Student C, also performed well, although not as well as Student A, and was able to place third overall. The third highest Examination Mark in the cohort was 90. Here, the basic premise mentioned earlier may not necessarily apply (because we are no longer dealing with the student ranked first), meaning that Student C will not necessarily receive 90 as their Assessment Mark, although their Assessment Mark will be similar (see the discussion of relative differences/gaps in carrotsss's post). It could, for instance, be 89.

This brings us to the notion of trying to rank as high as possible as outlined by carrotsss, which enables a student to maximise their Assessment Mark. Additionally, an important thing to note is that the marks that you achieve in your internal tasks and exams are only used to determine your rank relative to your cohort in a particular subject. The mark values themselves do not serve a purpose beyond that.

I hope this helps!

 

[carrotsss]

wait so is the exam mark your hsc mark and ur internal mark is your avg school mark after your 4 assessments?

The internal mark isn’t directly your avg school mark, as that would be unfair to schools that set harder tests.

For another way of putting it: NESA pretty much pretends they don’t know your exam mark and guess how they think you would’ve went based on your ranking and your school’s hsc exam performance. For example, if you came first in your school assessments, then they’d probably guess that you also would come first in the exam, so they give you the highest exam mark in your school as your internal mark - though that may or may not actually be your exam mark.

It’s actually a very fair system so long as schools set good assessments, because it rewards and encourages effort throughout the year. Whilst it might suck to be at the mercy of other peoples performance, in reality if people don’t do well then generally you’ll rank better than them anyway, so you won’t really be affected by their performance.