school rank impact (1 Viewer)

[hscc]

If you're in a top 5 school and you do pretty bad (like near last in all subjects), does that still guarantee you a high ATAR because of your cohort?

 

[D94]

If you're in a top 5 school and you do pretty bad (like near last in all subjects), does that still guarantee you a high ATAR because of your cohort?

No, not at all.

Historically, what has been the ATAR of the students in similar positions to you?

 

[D94]

No, I go to a mid 30s school. My friend goes to a top 5 school. I am performing much better at my school than he is at his school (relative of course). I am almost in top 10 in all my subjects, and he's last in about 3 subjects and near last in the rest. I was just wondering how well he is doing relative to me.

It's impossible to definitively say. We don't know the strength of both the schools - yes, he goes to a top 5 school, based on a ranking system that looks at the percentage of Band 6's. But that doesn't show how poor or how well the tail might perform. Even 10th in a top 30 school may not achieve an exam mark on par with someone coming last in another school. It's simply impossible to say. That's why if you look at the historical trends and see what ATARs are typical of your ranks.

If I were to guess, I'd say you'll achieve the better ATAR because even the tail (say bottom 10-20%) of James Ruse does worse than the top 10% of a 30-40th ranked school (based on when I sat the HSC). Of course the subjects and individual marks dictate this, but we can surmise this based on anecdotes.

 

[swagmeister]

Hard to say.

In general, a great cohort will drag you up, but when you're right at the bottom you're looking at potentially getting assessment marks of people that happened to stuff up the exam

 

[baktiar77]

Usually a top 5 will have a stronger cohort hence it's harder to come top of that than let's say top 30 or top 50 school where competition is a bit more relaxed.

I go to ~100 school and usually they tell us to aim for top third of cohort as bottom half will drag us down. I was ranked 15~20th/92 (our school never gives us final ranks) in maths and bio and despite doing good in externals, my internals dragged me down ensuring that I only just scraped a band 6 for both.

I know this guy who was ~70/92 in bio. he had external of 89 but his internal(79) dragged him down heaps to 84

 

[D94]

Usually a top 5 will have a stronger cohort hence it's harder to come top of that than let's say top 30 or top 50 school where competition is a bit more relaxed.

That's a poor take on this scenario. The kid is effectively coming last in their school.