@anon111 Short answer:
It does help when your cohort does well too, but you aren't necessarily dragged down with them if they don't do well.
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Long answer... two reasons why they might not drag you down so far. (All this assumes you are doing well, raw mark 92 suggests that)
1. Your External mark (ie HSC exam itself) counts to 50% of your HSC mark, that's it, you get what you get and you don't get upset.
2. Your Internal mark counts for the other 50%. This part is where your ranking at the end of the internal assessments determines how much you need your cohort to do well. NESA take the highest External mark of the cohort and gives it to the 1st ranked internal and the lowest External mark to the lowest ranked internal, simple if you are one of these two.
They fit everyone else in using an algorithm that matches how everyone went internally compared to one another. The theory is, if you are near the top internally, you will receive an internal mark near the top External mark. If you are near the lower end, you are closer to the lower mark. Very simplified, but that might make you feel better if you are working well and the others aren't trying at all.
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Here are a couple of examples from my child who did some subjects last year (I'm a helicopter dad, so apart from looking at what others are doing on BOS, I'm really into scaling)
Example 1 - Maths (Students pretty close to each other):
My child was equal 5th in their cohort of 14 or so
Rough assessment marks of cohort (note, these marks are only to determine rank and nothing to do with your final HSC mark, apart from the algorithm I mention above):
1st: 100, 2nd: 95, 3rd: 92, 4th: 91, Eq 5th:90 7: 88 -> Really dropped off from there for the rest.
The top 7 students were all pretty good, the rest not so good, real bad.
My child ended up getting highest External mark. In fact, the top 7 got External marks within one or two marks of each other, so their internal marks also reflected that before dropping off for the others.
The top internal deservedly got the highest Internal mark all alone while the rest got one mark lower, including my child. (In reality my child still got the 5th highest mark, but hidden in decimal places).
My child was unhappy their exam mark "went" to the top student, but the 1st had earned their spot during all the internal assessments.
The thing is, my child still got half their HSC mark from the External exam, so when that was taken into account they had equal highest HSC mark in the cohort.
Example 2 - Language (Massive gaps between all students)
My child was first in assessments - 1st - 97 2nd - 88 3rd - 82 , the rest dropped off considerably.
Exam, my child came first, got the same mark internally as externally. No effect from everyone else.
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Just a note:
Scaling only affects the final result after you have your HSC mark (which is affected by your cohort).
ie > Your raw mark is what you get in exam - 92 in your example (you don't see this unless you pay NESA to release it)
> Your aligned "HSC" mark is what you get on the results day, 50% internal + 50% external, generally this is higher- say 94 for you.
This is a complete random guess, as we only had one year of S.E and there is only one result on the Raw Marks Database. It is 96.25 raw 97 aligned State Rank - 6th, the increase gets smaller as you get near the top.
> Your scaled mark, which you never see, relates to the raw marks. NESA produces a report on the scaling of the HSC, which relates to the aligned "HSC" mark, which also adds to the confusion.
Last Year in S.E. a 98 HSC Mark got 100 when scaled, 96 HSC Mark got 94.6 scaled, 89 HSC mark got 81 scaled.
So, for you potentially 90 +/- 2 marks scaled, which in my book, pretty good. Score that (scaled) in all your subjects, that's 97+ ATAR. (Disclaimer: Each subject has its own scaling, ie 91 "HSC mark" in Korean Continuers scales to 56, so not as good as S.E.)
Apologies, went a bit longer than planned, but I'm really into it. Once you get your head around it, it is cool. Though don't go wasting your time trying to work it out, focus on your studies, be consistent and aim high.
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