Never done this: ATAR estimate? (1 Viewer)

[EmilyX]

Hey,
I was wondering if anyone could please help me out with an ATAR estimate. My school is ranked 500+ (pretty crappy ) and these are my final subject ranks:

English Advanced: 3/31
Mathematics: 4/13
Chemistry: 1/7
Biology: 2/17
Agriculture: 1/5
Primary Industries: not sure? 1st or 2nd

Going to have to work really hard for maths, it is my weakest subject

Thank you in advanced!

 

[enoilgam]

It's very hard to say, but my guess would be somewhere in the 80s maybe.

 

[EmilyX]

Ok, thank you

 

[panda15]

As said before, it's hard to say because you're first in a lot of your courses, meaning your school rank has no effect on you. All depends on how you perform in your exam.

 

[enoilgam]

It's also hard to say because of the low school ranking. Some low ranked schools might have one or two people who get high ATARs whereas everyone else does poorly. They can also have a few people sitting on above average ATARs as well.

 

[EmilyX]

meaning your school rank has no effect on you.

Sorry do you mind explaining school ranks? I don't really get the whole school rank biso haha thanks

 

[EmilyX]

It's also hard to say because of the low school ranking. Some low ranked schools might have one or two people who get high ATARs whereas everyone else does poorly. They can also have a few people sitting on above average ATARs as well.

So if you do really well in a low ranking school, it shouldn't affect your overall score?

 

[enoilgam]

If you come first out of your cohort both internally and externally, then you will receive your external mark as your internal mark. So, in that way you can "determine your own destiny" so to speak.

 

[panda15]

Your school rank pretty much shows the quality of your cohort, based on the previous year at your school. For low ranked schools, the cohort is usually poor quality and will get poor HSC marks, but the top student generally sets the top exam mark to which your cohort is aligned to, meaning you will get the top exam mark as your assessment mark.

 

[enoilgam]

Your school rank pretty much shows the quality of your cohort, based on the previous year at your school. For low ranked schools, the cohort is usually poor quality and will get poor HSC marks, but the top student generally sets the top exam mark to which your cohort is aligned to, meaning you will get the top exam mark as your assessment mark.

That's debatable to be honest - keep in mind that the school rank is neither official nor is it based on the best measure of performance. It's based solely on the percentage of Band 6s a school gets, which doesnt really give the best picture of the quality of a cohort.

 

[brent012]

That's debatable to be honest - keep in mind that the school rank is neither official nor is it based on the best measure of performance. It's based solely on the percentage of Band 6s a school gets, which doesnt really give the best picture of the quality of a cohort.

+1, when you get that low down it's hard to tell whether a school is getting a decent amount of band 5s or if it's all band 3s for examples.

OP has a fairly small cohort too, so it's likely that the school rank could fluctuate considerably as just one or two students can make a massive difference to the cohort.

 

[D94]

Your school rank pretty much shows the quality of your cohort, based on the previous year at your school. For low ranked schools, the cohort is usually poor quality and will get poor HSC marks, but the top student generally sets the top exam mark to which your cohort is aligned to, meaning you will get the top exam mark as your assessment mark.

Consider a school where every student does English Advanced, MX1, MX2, Phys and Chem, and gets 89 in every subject.

That school would rank very lowly, in fact, last. Their median ATAR would be 97.5 (2012 data), which would place them in the top 15 schools, yet the published rankings would have them as last since they are based on how many Band 6's.

So no, the school rank does not necessarily reflect the quality of the cohort.