So as a Year 11 student, aspiring to achieve a high ATAR next year (98-99), my units for the HSC are Biology, Chemistry, English Advanced, Mathematics Extension 1, IPT (Accelerated - Meaning I am doing the HSC for this subject this year in Year 11), and then I am deciding between Mathematics Advanced or Mathematics Extension 2 (dropping Advanced for HSC)? I am wondering which I should choose, as when I go on to ATAR calculators (I am well aware they may not be accurate, scaling changes each year, I am still in Year 11 I technically shouldn't be worrying about this, I have no idea what my marks will be scaled or raw or aligned, etc.), I see that with the same marks for each subject, when I put Maths Extension 2, I get around 98.75 - 99.1, but when I replace that with Maths Advanced I get 99.7-99.95, but my tutors are all saying Extension 2 is better, and scales better if I do well in it, and I should choose it. I am conflicted, and wondering why this is occurring, and what you recommend.
Math Extension 2 + Math Extension 1 vs Math Extension 1 + Math Advanced (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Sheep29
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what marks are you putting in to get this result? this should definitely not be the case, if anything for identical marks the atar with ext 2 should be much much higher because the scaling for ext 2 is much better - not that scaling should be a reason to choose a subject, a higher scaling subject typically just means that it is harder and hence you're still putting in the same effort for the same scaled mark (although i have noticed ext 2 seems to be an exception and seems to scale a fair bit better than it should)
on the whole though if you enjoy maths then just do ext 2, especially if maths is one of your better subjects doing ext 2 will provide a significant benefit to your atar by letting 4 units worth of maths count overall, and even beyond that its a really interesting/fun course and depending on what u study in uni, it may help a lot in first year to have already covered a bunch of content.
v.tex
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plus atar calculators calculate ur scaled marks not raw marks im pretty sure. so a 80 in math adv scales much lower than ext 2 which would give you a huge boost. In fact, if you achieve a 60 in ext 2, I believe it scales to a 90
they take in aligned marks, which are sort of an intermediary between raw marks and the scaled marks which are added to determine your atar, and are the ones you get from nesa on hsc results day. and yes, a raw mark somewhere in the 60s in maths ext 2 typically aligns to a 90