Just what, exactly, do Trial marks and ranks really mean?
Trial marks are the same as any other assessment task. They are nothing special. Your ranks are used to determine your moderated assessment mark, nothing else.
Can a UAI be predicted from these? Is it valid to take class ranks and shove them in as percentiles in lazseeker?
No, you cannot predict a UAI solely from trial and/or assessment marks. It is
not valid to convert your class ranking to a percentile for use in
LazSeeker. The percentiles it uses refer to your position in the state corresponding to your HSC mark. HSC marks are what the program uses - this mark is the
average of your
moderated assessment mark and your
aligned exam mark. Raw assessment marks/rankings are neither of these, let alone the average of both. You need to estimate your HSC marks in order to have a hope of estimating your UAI accurately.
And, and... for uni courses that require a separate application and details of your trial marks... What happens if your school had hard trials and the best marks were about 60-70%. That's not going to look great on a uni application. How do the unis assess trial marks?
I think most universities also ask for your class ranking - if not, include it anyway in parentheses next to your mark. e.g. Chemistry - 65% (Rank: 3/24) I'm sure they're also aware of the fact that trial HSC exam marks are not indicative of final HSC marks. Hmm, I remember our student advisor at school last year also told us to write our overall assessment mark for a course instead of the trial HSC mark if the assess mark was higher. Don't know if that's valid or not, but the universities wouldn't be able to tell anyway. Not that I'm advising you to do that.