Advanced or Standard? (1 Viewer)

[mattskioner]

Here's the situation:

I am currently in Advanced English, studying belonging. So far we have analysed Immigrant Chronicle and Beneath Clouds. Our first assessment task was an in class essay, analysing Beneath Clouds. 45 minutes to view two scenes, 45 minutes to write the piece.

I got 10/15, which is not the worst mark in the world, better than half our cohort (we have three advanced classes, one of which is an extension classes). So of the ~70 kids currently in advanced, i'm probably ranking ~30. I could have probably put in more effort preparing, but bear in mind there were two other exams scheduled the same day, and school photos (three exams in one day is ridiculous).

The problem is, english is not a subject in which I:
a. take interest in
b. perform well in

PERSONAL OPINION WARNING: I just don't see the point in pulling apart a text that is not relevant to our everyday lives. It's not factual writing - it's very subjective, and I do not like writing crap. I would much prefer to write an essay on the current economic state of Australia, or a court case or just something that has a clear purpose.

So my thinking is, would it be more practical for me to drop to standard, and rank relatively well in that, so I can devote more time into other subjects that I am interested and can do better in?

What's best?

Thanks

 

[Zoinked]

Stick with advanced. My biggest regret is doing standard. Essentially the same subjects but advanced is a little but harder. However, theres no resources on the internet for standard and a ton for advanced. Further, advanced aligns higher than standard. Keep that in mind.

 

[porcupinetree]

Personally I would recommend staying in English Advanced. Yes, if you dropped to Standard, you would be more likely to get a better rank, but you need to remember the fact that aligning for Advanced is sooo much better than the aligning for Standard, and on top of that, ATAR scaling for Advanced is much better than Standard. Hence I suggest, unless you're really struggling in Advanced (which you don't seem to be), stay in Advanced. Yes, the content is a lot more sophisticated/convoluted, but it's worth the effort overall, imo.

(Plus, I have a friend who did exactly what you're considering doing; he was probably capable of a high band 5 or low b6 in Advanced, but dropped down to standard because he didn't enjoy the style of Advanced and wanted to devote more time to his other subjects. His Standard mark was quite disappointing and meant that his ATAR was a lot lower than it probably would have been if he had kept Advanced.)

 

[mattskioner]

What's aligning as opposed to scaling? Our year still hasn't been taught the ins and outs of the HSC and ATAR.

 

[Silky_Smooth]

Do Advanced. Don't drop.

 

[BLIT2014]

Stay in Advanced. Aligning refers to the proportion of people in the state getting band 6s,5s, or 4s etc.

The difficulty of the course are similar.

 

[Zoinked]

Aligning is about bringing your raw mark to the reported mark. For example according to the Raw marks database http://rawmarks.info/wiki/Main_Page , A raw mark of 79/100 overall is aligned to give you a mark of 91 overall (in 2015).

Comparatively, an 82/100 raw in standard, aligns to 86. This was in 2011, however you can see here exactly how much better advanced aligns.

However, they scale the same. So if you got an aligned mark of 90, in both Advanced and Standard, it contributes exactly the same to your atar, thus scales the same.

 

[InteGrand]

As everyone has said, just do Advanced. Otherwise you have really poor aligning for a course of similar difficulty.