ATAR is a rank not a mark (1 Viewer)

[diggler]

Do you find some people think that an ATAR of 99.95 is a mark that means that the student got almost everything right? To remove confusion, I think they should turn things upside down so that the top student gets 0.05. It would then be pretty clear that the number is not a mark.

I think people can get their head around the best student having a small ATAR. I think people get it that if Roger Federer is ranked number 1, it is better than being ranked 100.

 

[vitamin D]

nah

 

[sy37]

Lol

hahahaha

Sorry I don't have much of a meaningful way to contribute here but uh, your suggestion of inverting 99.95 to 0.05 made me chuckle (probably because I know some people who'd definetly fail everything to get a 99.95 just for shits n giggles)

 

[D94]

Do you find some people think that an ATAR of 99.95 is a mark that means that the student got almost everything right? To remove confusion, I think they should turn things upside down so that the top student gets 0.05. It would then be pretty clear that the number is not a mark.

I think people can get their head around the best student having a small ATAR. I think people get it that if Roger Federer is ranked number 1, it is better than being ranked 100.

How did you come up with this idea?

 

[vitamin D]

How did you come up with this idea?

just shower thoughts...... LOL

 

[milkytea99]

This is so random... Then they should follow Queensland with op 1 as the top rank and op 25 as the worst

 

[KingOfActing]

Well, technically ATAR is not an exact rank nor a 'mark', but rather a percentile rank to the nearest 0.05. An ATAR of 99.95 means you did better than 99.95% of people (you are in the 99.95th percentile), though it doesn't necessarily mean you came first. I think the reason they choose percentile ranks over "top-percentages" (0.05 would mean top 0.05%) is because the percentile rank seems more like a mark, which is familiar to students (higher means better).

 

[RivalryofTroll]

Do you find some people think that an ATAR of 99.95 is a mark that means that the student got almost everything right? To remove confusion, I think they should turn things upside down so that the top student gets 0.05. It would then be pretty clear that the number is not a mark.

I think people can get their head around the best student having a small ATAR. I think people get it that if Roger Federer is ranked number 1, it is better than being ranked 100.

If this gets implemented, 100 TER or UAI/99.95 ATAR calibre students in the future would be like ''I graduated with a perfect [insert rank/index name] of 0.05''. All those who people who sat their HSC many years ago would have a very confused look on their face

Roger hasn't been number 1 since 2012 (to be specific, 2009 if we're looking at year end number 1) so an outdated example to use

 

[A1P]

ATAR is meant primarily as a selection "tool" for the universities, who at their level are perfectly capable of grasping what 99.95 means.

They can't rank same way as tennis, coz tennis has one player per rank whereas it's a multiple number of students & different between states. If doing one per rank NSW would be 1 to ~80,000 and WA 1 to 25,000. Rank 100 in WA means different to 100 in NSW thus unis can't directly compare interstate applicants.

If you want to make it easy for common folks just translate 99.95 to rank 1/2000, 99.00 = rank 20/2000 etc. But then this may give a false impression that only 2000 NSW students sit HSC.

 

[pomsky]

Why did they change the system from the UAI to the ATAR btw? Derailing I know ahaha.

 

[A1P]

Why did they change the system from the UAI to the ATAR btw?

Coz they want to have a common system Australia-wide and UAI wasn't it

The Qld OP system is being (or has been) persuaded to switch over to ATAR too.

 

[pomsky]

Coz they want to have a common system Australia-wide and UAI wasn't it

The Qld OP system is being (or has been) persuaded to switch over to ATAR too.

How does that work if different states take different tests? (VCE, HSC etc.) : o

 

[A1P]

How does that work if different states take different tests? (VCE, HSC etc.) : o

A lot of research has been done to ensure they are comparable between states and any differences are statistically insignificant.

For example it's possible to rank students within each state in percentiles against their cohort even though they do vastly different subjects. So it's possible to equalise between states as well (based on normal distribution, sampling errors etc).

 

[band6man]

Usually the people that don't understand have no use for their atar anyway

 

[haysheet]

Haha

 

[obliviousninja]

Atar is a way of life ~