Apologies for the mundane question, but i was just wondering if anyone knew how much General Maths got scaled down in the HSC as opposed to getting scaled up in 2U ?
And if youre someone who does relatively well in maths, what are your chances of getting scaled down drastically in General ?
thanks muchly =]
OK...I'm guessing you want the type of advice that is honest and straight-forward. To be honest, General Mathematics
does scale down.
However, Mathematics Advanced does NOT scale that well either (for example, Modern History and Advanced Math have
roughly the same scaling). The school of thought that says "maths will scale you up" are wrong. Tbh, there are STACKS of HSC subjects that do scale a lot better than 2-unit mathematics. Some of these subs are:
- LANGUAGES: German Continuers is one of the best scaling subjects for the HSC. Why? Because generally, being a hard language (i.e. very strict grammar rules), people struggle with it. Also, keep in mind that German is very similar to English - our words come mainly from Latin and German). I'm a languages person - I should know LOL I speak English (mother tongue), Italian (advanced), French (intermediate) and Spanish (beginners). I have also learnt German LOL ... trying to beat the Pope's language record ahahaha.
- HISTORIES: Ancient History has bad scaling compared to Modern History. However: Ancient scales better than General Maths.
- SCIENCES: Chemistry and Physics scale, generally (generally being the key word!!) the same. The conhorts for each subject are generally of the same quality. Therefore:
- People who do Chem generally don't do so well, and Chem, being MORE POPULAR than Physics, has better scaling in place. If people do badly in Chemistry (badly meaning 75% raw) perhaps it may be scaled up to 80 scaled mark and this mark included in the UAI calculation.
TO SUMMARISE: Math does NOT scale you up as well as people say - scaling is based on hear say - and the Board of Studies has never since 2001 - released the way marks are scaled.
WHY? The BOS do not want employers to be aware of how sh*t some people's raw marks are and how much they scale them up. Scaling, IMO, does the inverse of what it was intended to do. It was intended to STOP students from coming out of school with shit marks and not being able to get a job... which IT DOES DO...
but honestly! If prospective employers (generally ppl who employ young ppl are over 40)... if they KNEW how much the Board fiddles with your marks and fucks them up!!
OH WELL. My eng. teacher: "It doesn't matter. People who get Band sixes
generally deserve them." <--- I <3 Tricia Sewell!! haha
james