Everyone from my school ended up being relatively dissapointed - i think the two teachers we hads marking criteria might have been weird. Some students walked out of the hsc really confident and had internal marks well into the 90s but ended up with mid band 5s.
Personally, im not sure what happened because i was ranked around 8/30-ish and walked out of that exam a bit dissapointed - it was my worst eco exam ever. Two essays i wrote were VERY basic and poorly written, multiple choice i would have done ok in but not great since they were hard, short answers surprised me a bit. Wouldn't have gone horrible, but it was my worst eco exam ever. I actually ended up getting 81 exam mark and it was higher than my internal = S, got 80 overall. I thought for sure my internal would pull me up but it was the other way around -.-, either way i thought i'd just miss out on a band 5 so while most my grade that did eco were shocked i was slightly pleased until talking to everyone else.