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Question about State rankings (1 Viewer)

TL1998

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Hi all.

i heard that in the external HSC common paper, there is no such thing as half marks. So your raw mark must be an integer right?
Then please explain to me this. For instance, each person in the top ten list is differentiated from another by 1 mark right??? That equates to a difference in raw percentage of 1.2% approx. So assuming the person who topped the state got 84/84 for his externals, that means that rank 10 must've gotten 75/84, which equates to a raw mark of only about 88.1%.


Does this mean that with a score of 88.1%(raw) you can earn a state ranking?? Cause i thought state rankers all got like at least 97% as raw.
 

obliviousninja

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Also the rankings dont behave linearly as you have mentioned.

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TL1998

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What?A couple of my seniors told me that the state ranks are merely ranks for the external component
 

Futuremedstudent

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What?A couple of my seniors told me that the state ranks are merely ranks for the external component
it's both a combination of internal and external marks.
good luck in ur studies :D
 
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D94

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Then please explain to me this. For instance, each person in the top ten list is differentiated from another by 1 mark right???
No... just look at the statistics for 2013. The ranks were: 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 6, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10. That clearly shows in 3 different ranks that students achieved the exact same mark. They could all well have achieved 100% in the HSC exam, but it could have been their moderated assessment mark that differentiated each student. Those state rankings were determined by their final HSC mark, which is the average of your HSC exam mark and assessment mark.

Just to substantiate my claim, the BOSTES writes:
Students are ranked by their HSC mark. Where students have equal HSC marks, they are then ranked by the average of their examination marks and their assessment marks, each taken to one decimal place.
Source: http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/ebos/static/TAINC_2013_12.html

So any repeated ranks means students achieved the same or similar score to the nearest 0.1.
 
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seanieg89

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If you come first internally and externally (at your school), is your internal "mark" equal to your exam mark? If not, does someone know (precisely!) how your internal "mark" is calculated based on your position in the spread of internal and external marks at your school in this subject? (and any other factors that may be involved?) A link to something official would be amazing.

The rate of ties, particularly in the top rankings for competitive subjects like 2U mathematics seems a bit on the low side for the explanation I received way back as a student that top internal ranking and external ranking at your school means your internal mark equals your external mark.

For the competitors for first place from different schools, an external tie would then be an overall tie assuming they place first internally.

I presume it is more of a bell curve thing where your performance relative to the spread internally gets mapped to the external spread to give you your internal mark. This would allow for a lot more possible marks for the top students, ie less ties.

I have also heard from some people (but cannot recall if I ever found it somewhere official) that performance in the standard units plays a role / acts like a tiebreaker in extension units. Does anyone know anything about this?
 
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D94

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If you come first internally and externally (at your school), is your internal "mark" equal to your exam mark? If not, does someone know (precisely!) how your internal "mark" is calculated based on your position in the spread of internal and external marks at your school in this subject? (and any other factors that may be involved?) A link to something official would be amazing.

The rate of ties, particularly in the top rankings for competitive subjects like 2U mathematics seems far too low for the explanation I received way back as a student that top internal ranking and external ranking at your school means your internal mark equals your external mark.
That is correct. Link: http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/hsc-results/moderation.html

It states:
The top assessment mark is adjusted to equal to the highest examination mark obtained by any student in the group.
Therefore, it's clear that if you are first internally and you achieve the highest mark externally, you must receive that mark. However, strange things happen if you are equal first. It then becomes the average of the x highest number of external marks, where x is the number of students tied first internally.


For the competitors for first place from different schools, an external tie would then be an overall tie assuming they place first.

I presume it is more of a bell curve thing where your performance relative to the spread internally gets mapped to the external spread to give you your internal mark.
Well, they do look at your mark to 1 decimal place, so if they are still tied in that event, then one can only assume there will be more than one first in the state.

So an example: http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/ebos/static/FSTIC_2013_12.html Classical Greek Continuers has two 'first place in course' students.


I have also heard from some people (but cannot recall if I ever found it somewhere official) that performance in the standard units plays a role / acts like a tiebreaker in extension units.
I have heard that as well, but I have yet come across anything official about that. I have also heard (from a HSC marker) students in EE2 who achieved 50/50, (and since EE2 is just that major project), that students were ranked based on whose 50/50 was better than someone else's 50/50.
 

Squar3root

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also i heard that they sort state rankings by how good your solutions is/are
 

seanieg89

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That is correct. Link: http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/hsc-results/moderation.html

It states:


Therefore, it's clear that if you are first internally and you achieve the highest mark externally, you must receive that mark. However, strange things happen if you are equal first. It then becomes the average of the x highest number of external marks, where x is the number of students tied first internally.




Well, they do look at your mark to 1 decimal place, so if they are still tied in that event, then one can only assume there will be more than one first in the state.

So an example: http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/ebos/static/FSTIC_2013_12.html Classical Greek Continuers has two 'first place in course' students.



I have heard that as well, but I have yet come across anything official about that. I have also heard (from a HSC marker) students in EE2 who achieved 50/50, (and since EE2 is just that major project), that students were ranked based on whose 50/50 was better than someone else's 50/50.
Thanks for your response and links, I do wish the process was a little more transparent.

I am still not convinced that there aren't other differentiating factors between ranking students, (as you say you have heard, and others have said too etc) but that looks like a pretty clear explanation of how your actual HSC mark is calculated (albeit with a silly degree of precision for something with such little information, increments of 0.1 are tiny compared to the gains of even a single mark).
 

seanieg89

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Does this mean you have to do extension 2 to get a state rank in extension 1? (2nd last sentence)
Yeah this is the kind of ambiguity I mean, some proportion of the MX1 course will have MX2 as their other subject, the complement will have Mathematics as their other subject. How does one fairly compare such tied candidates?
 

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What if for example, a class had only 1 student in it and they did not try at all for their assessments, thus receiving terrible results, but did extremely well on the exam? Would the assessment mark = the external mark? I know this is very hypothetical...
 

obliviousninja

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So what if there was a tie for 3u. But one of these students did 2u whilst the other did 4u?
 

obliviousninja

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What if for example, a class had only 1 student in it and they did not try at all for their assessments, thus receiving terrible results, but did extremely well on the exam? Would the assessment mark = the external mark? I know this is very hypothetical...
Yes. But as you mention ofc hypothetical, otherwise you would get an N award.
 

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