LoveHateSchool
Retired Sept '14
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2009
- Messages
- 5,136
- Location
- The Fires of Mordor
- Gender
- Female
- HSC
- 2012
- Uni Grad
- 2016
Selective schools tend to be the way to go if you're looking for high HSC marks-a 90 is a perfectly achievable ATAR at any school though. Trying out for selectives is definitely an option if they do well at that local comprehensive that is pretty good rank for comprehensive.just note: even if you go in a public school in year 7, you can still transfer out to selectives in year 8, 9, 10 and 11. from my experience, lots of people who transferred into my school in year 11 from lower ranked selectives or your average local high school are doing well, even better than some of the people who started in year 7. just because you go to a public school doesn't mean you are disadvantaged for the HSC - it is easier to come ranked first in the cohort than at a selective, but school's testing standards may be not quite as a HSC exam standard compared to a selective school.
private schools are good as students are exposed to everything opportunistically, not saying that public/selectives aren't like that (maybe to a small degree). you get more support for sports and probably studying at a private. studying is maybe more independent in a public/selective due to how the teacher is willing to help individually rather than as a class/all at once. However you can still participate in sports/co curriculars and enter competitions (sports, academic) normally in a public or selective, just that the full range of options is only available at private which gets more funding and support due to dedicated groups. However I say that private is at a price - even with going to a public + tutoring works out to be cheaper by a lot. At public schools you pay $1000 - $1500 per year in school contribs, compared to private which is a lot higher. With all that money you could save for going overseas or towards uni which also isn't cheap, given the fact that you have children which are only 1 year apart or so.
Also if you were to transfer into a selective from a private/public, you could still transfer from that selective into another higher ranked selective again and again. A 90 ATAR is much easier to attain if you are in the top 10 schools - provided if you put in the work and are not literally coming last in the cohort, however many of these students are independent workers and do not only rely on the teacher for help and the academics are more competitive (however not all of the students at these schools go to tutoring). A 90 ATAR is still attainable at any school, just that it requires more of the individual's work than instead of the cohort helping to push the marks up. NB: Most of the top 10 schools are selectives with only 2 privates or so at the bottom of the top 10 list, but getting to these selectives from a public school is not as hard as you think
If you are considering to transfer into a selective school one day - you will need to show off your achievements if you are to apply to them. Just include some certificates of sporting activities, academics (e.g. ICAS certificates, maths comps, science comps, language tests), co curriculars, what you participated in/represented in your old school and community service such as volunteering and your school reports. Make sure to includes everything you can - if you know it will be a fat pile of info, just send it because you get a better advantage. However some of the top top selective schools require a test to be sat and possibly an interview - just accelerate/learn some of your content for the next school year and sit it and hopefully you do fine.
And wow are school contribs that high for selective? Mine had $30 compulsory (which some people shyed from anyway), $60 voluntary and I think $10 suggested for library fund. That was for the whole year. Ohh and certain subjects had contributions like drama, music but I didn't do any of those subs.
