Internal moderation (1 Viewer)

[Maurice69]

Gonna cut to the chase.

My physics cohort is about 130. I’m ranked 36. We usually do OK in physics, but nothing special like Baulko etc.

What I wanted to know is this: let’s say in the external hsc exam I score a overall mark of 95/96, which is ranked top 5. Obviously, that’s a lot better than my internal rank. Does that mean that my internal moderated mark will still be whatever rank 36 was, or can that move slightly? And does that go both ways? I want someone to reply who actually knows this stuff well.

 

[quickoats]

No, your moderated internal mark isn’t further moderated to reflect external performance. I thought that my internals would be further moderated downwards bc i felt like i did a lot worse, but nothing happened. A friend had a 20 mark difference between moderated internal and HSC mark - they did really well in school but totally flopped the exam. Their internal mark reflected their rank and wasnt pulled down by their externals, so I don’t think it will happen in the opposite direction either.

 

[ultra908]

you dont actually get the 36th external mark for ur internal moderated.
NESA looks at the range and distribution of marks your cohort gets in the external exams, and uses this to shift the distribution of marks in your internal assessments (i.e. they match the mean, max, min if possible and some other stuff). The external marks provide the context to how they do this shift. You then get the 36th mark in this new distribution.
So yes, your internal moderated mark can be lower or higher than whatever the 36th external mark was. However, this is influenced by a variety of factors, and can't really be associated with how you went in your externals.

 

[Trebla]

Your internal mark is a reflection of your internal performance alone. Your own external mark is effectively independent of that.

External marks of the cohort (not the individual) are used as a “guide” to calibrate where the cohort’s collective internal marks should be relative to the state. Usually that decides the min/max/mean internal moderated marks of the cohort. Once you have those parameters, the individual moderated marks in between are found by interpolation based on each individual’s ranks and the relative gaps between ranks.