The UNSW Scaling Thread (4 Viewers)

[mreditor16]

Hey UNSWers,

Just thought it might be good to make a thread dedicated to scaling of UNSW subjects.

So, use this thread to post your experiences with scaling of the subjects you have completed thus far. Also, feel free to post any queries you have about scaling of subjects you're currently doing or planning to do soon.

Essentially, don't hesitate to post anything scaling-related into this thread!

 

[mreditor16]

I'll get the ball rolling. Does anyone know anything about the scaling of ACCT1501, ECON1101, MATH1151 and MGMT1001 (all being done in semester 1)? I'm especially keen to hear your experiences/thoughts if you or someone you know has done it very recently (e.g. last year or something).

 

[anomalousdecay]

Higher first year maths final exam marks go up quite a bit (not sure about 1X51 though as they are run differently completely). First year higher Physics changes a tiny bit.

COMP1917 in second sem is just a raw mark. Apparently the same with Elec courses being just a raw mark, but I'm not too sure given how many people thought they would have failed 1112 last year.

 

[Shadowdude]

MATH3121 Optimisation

gg scaling

 

[Squar3root]

MMAN1300/2300 receive no scaling, your raw mark is your final mark

 

[sirable1]

As far as I know, most Arts courses receive no scaling, just your raw mark. I did two courses last year from Arts and received no scaling at all. The lecturer that I had for one of the courses said that the school/faculty is moving to this approach since they want to 'standardise' their system a bit more.

PHYS1160 also doesn't scale.

 

[sirable1]

COMP1917 in second sem is just a raw mark.

Awesome, I'm doing that next semester. Gives me a good indiction across the semester.

 

[anomalousdecay]

Awesome, I'm doing that next semester. Gives me a good indiction across the semester.

You'll have great fun with Alan Blair. The content isn't all that exciting (personal bias though), but some of his moments in lectures were priceless.

 

[RenegadeMx]

math1x51 doesnt scale as well compared to 1x41, dont know about your other subjects.., arts subjects dont scale at all, if i remember discrete maths doesnt scale much either

 

[erckle999]

Scaling (in my experience) falls into 4 categories (the last three overlap):

1. Scaling in relation to another course. For example Math1131/41, higher and lower physics etc
2. Scaling to some sort of departmental or faculty average. Eg some actuarial courses scale to an average of 65 (I think - I've only done one), I think this is what they do in Law. Tumarkin scaled FINS1613 last year to 75.
3. Some courses (ones that often don't get scaled) only ever get scaled to account for perceived differences between years. Eg some big first year commerce ones have very minor scaling (Macro last year). Some others, like MATH1151/1251, discrete, generally don't scale but if they do it is for this reason.
4. Some are scaled to bring pass rate up (not sure if these also fall into 2 or 3) but COMP1921 last year is one I know of.

 

[anomalousdecay]

Scaling (in my experience) falls into 4 categories (the last three overlap):

1. Scaling in relation to another course. For example Math1131/41, higher and lower physics etc
2. Scaling to some sort of departmental or faculty average. Eg some actuarial courses scale to an average of 65 (I think - I've only done one), I think this is what they do in Law. Tumarkin scaled FINS1613 last year to 75.
3. Some courses (ones that often don't get scaled) only ever get scaled to account for perceived differences between years. Eg some big first year commerce ones have very minor scaling (Macro last year). Some others, like MATH1151/1251, discrete, generally don't scale but if they do it is for this reason.
4. Some are scaled to bring pass rate up (not sure if these also fall into 2 or 3) but COMP1921 last year is one I know of.

At the start of sem, Tumarkin said he would give top 10% HD, then next 15% DN, then next 50% CR and the rest PS/FL or something like that. Not sure how much truth was in that though.

 

[4025808]

FYI all Petroleum Engineering courses do not scale - you can have as many people as you want getting HDs and the faculty won't give a shit. In certain cases lecturers may choose to do dodgy shit and increase/decrease up weightings of certain parts of the course if they like. Iirc PTRL2019 finals doubled up from 50% weighting to 100% weighting to give your total final mark - simply because people weren't doing well in the first two assessment tasks.

MATH3121 Optimisation

gg scaling

MATH3161 dude. And *sigh* - literally received a good mark for final yet still got credit in that subject. Not worth doing

As far as I know, most Arts courses receive no scaling, just your raw mark. I did two courses last year from Arts and received no scaling at all. The lecturer that I had for one of the courses said that the school/faculty is moving to this approach since they want to 'standardise' their system a bit more.

PHYS1160 also doesn't scale.

I did some Chinese courses and I can confirm this.

math1x51 doesnt scale as well compared to 1x41, dont know about your other subjects.., arts subjects dont scale at all, if i remember discrete maths doesnt scale much either

MATH1151 doesn't scale well compared to MATH1141 because it's scaled separately - you're competing with a completely different cohort (who are all very good at maths in general - probably averaging E4 for Extension 2 maths) and as a result your marks will be significantly lower than if you did MATH1131/1141

 

[anomalousdecay]

FYI all Petroleum Engineering courses do not scale - you can have as many people as you want getting HDs and the faculty won't give a shit. In certain cases lecturers may choose to do dodgy shit and increase/decrease up weightings of certain parts of the course if they like. Iirc PTRL2019 finals doubled up from 50% weighting to 100% weighting to give your total final mark - simply because people weren't doing well in the first two assessment tasks.

Lol but no-one gets all the HDs. The dean's award had only one Mining student and one Petroleum student this year. They do have significantly less people doing Mining and/or Petroleum, and hence contributing to a lower number, but there isn't a huge amount there that can skew the data to give all of Mining and Petroleum students a very high average.

 

[4025808]

Lol but no-one gets all the HDs. The dean's award had only one Mining student and one Petroleum student this year. They do have significantly less people doing Mining and/or Petroleum, and hence contributing to a lower number, but there isn't a huge amount there that can skew the data to give all of Mining and Petroleum students a very high average.

Well theoretically you can but barely anyone gets HDs simply because the exam is difficult enough to not allow such an event to happen anyway.

 

[VBN2470]

MATH1151 doesn't scale well compared to MATH1141 because it's scaled separately - you're competing with a completely different cohort (who are all very good at maths in general - probably averaging E4 for Extension 2 maths) and as a result your marks will be significantly lower than if you did MATH1131/1141

+1. Both 1151 and 1251 ain't great in terms of scaling (I'd say 1141/1241 is much better) even though difficulty is bumped up a whole heap for final exams. Quality of students doing 1151/1251 is pretty good overall (well above average) so I can see why this would be the case (although there are some Engineering/Math geniuses I know of who did 1141/1241 and got very close to 100 overall). That said, scaling (for 1151/1251) will only help if you manage to perform decently in the final and attempt most questions (which a lot of the cohort will do), where in 1141/1241 you could probably skip an entire question and still end up with a HD.

 

[4025808]

At the start of sem, Tumarkin said he would give top 10% HD, then next 15% DN, then next 50% CR and the rest PS/FL or something like that. Not sure how much truth was in that though.

Inb5 got told off by School of Banking and Finance for grading too generously

 

[erckle999]

At the start of sem, Tumarkin said he would give top 10% HD, then next 15% DN, then next 50% CR and the rest PS/FL or something like that. Not sure how much truth was in that though.

Did he say that this year? Because I think I remember him specifically saying at the beginning of last year that the other lecturer (sem 2 guy) gives out about that ^^^ distribution of grades but that he usually does like 20/25% HD and some other ridiculously generous numbers. But yeh, he was bound to get told off eventually.

 

[anomalousdecay]

Did he say that this year? Because I think I remember him specifically saying at the beginning of last year that the other lecturer (sem 2 guy) gives out about that ^^^ distribution of grades but that he usually does like 20/25% HD and some other ridiculously generous numbers. But yeh, he was bound to get told off eventually.

I can't remember word for word as he said it in passing in the first lecture quite briefly. The only thing I eyed out was HD --> 10%. Can't remember DN exactly but it was either 15% or 25%.

 

[D94]

I've done a few courses.


COMP1917 - no scaling but easy marking.
ENGG1000 - no scaling.
MATH1141 - some scaling up.
PHYS1131 - no scaling.
ELEC1111 - no scaling.
MATH1241 - good scaling up.
MMAN1300 - no scaling.
SOLA1070 - no scaling.
MATH2019 - some scaling down.
MMAN1130 - no scaling.
MMAN2400 - no scaling.
MMAN2700 - minimal scaling up in the top range, crazy scaling up in the lower range.
MATH2089 - some scaling up.
MINE1010 - no scaling.
MMAN2100 - no scaling.
MMAN2300 - some scaling up.
MMAN2600 - no scaling.
MMAN3200 - no scaling.
MMAN3400 - minimal scaling up.
PHYS1160 - no scaling.
SOLA5057 - no scaling.
MECH3110 - no scaling.
MECH3610 - no scaling, marking criteria for the final exam effectively scaled people down
MECH9325 - no scaling.
MMAN3000 - no scaling.

There may be some scaling up in the lower range, but none in the top range for most courses where I've indicated no scaling.

 

[Squar3root]

MMAN2300 - some scaling up.

wat

mark said there was no scaling in it?