looking for someone to explain atars (1 Viewer)

[AntarcticMonkeys]

so my friend did subjects that scale higher than mine, and did better than I did but her atar is lower and we both wanna know how in the heck that happened

her
Ancient: 90
English Adv: 88
English Ext1: 43
2u math: 93
Japanese Continuers: 92
Japanese Extension: 47

atar: 95.5

Me
engadv: 88
3u math: 90
4umath: 84
phys: 84
chem: 87
business studies: 88

atar: 96

tyz in advance!

 

[EarthSci34]

It's because you did better scaling subjects than her despite the band disparities

Subjects like phys, chem and 4U maths scale much better than 2u and japanese

 

[leehuan]

Scaling is based on the difficulty of subjects relative to each other. This is determined by whether the more capable candidature does course x over course y.

English is used as a scaling norm.

Because stereotypically better students do 4U/PHY/CHEM over the other subjects, (despite a similar aligning algorithm) the scaling on some subjects makes your ATAR go higher for them, despite your aligned mark being lower.

This is only true for margins around ~10 marks I believe. >20 marks and scaling doesn't help anything.

 

[Queenroot]

chem, phys & 4u

enough said

 

[InteGrand]

so my friend did subjects that scale higher than mine, and did better than I did but her atar is lower and we both wanna know how in the heck that happened

her
Ancient: 90
English Adv: 88
English Ext1: 43
2u math: 93
Japanese Continuers: 92
Japanese Extension: 47

atar: 95.5

Me
engadv: 88
3u math: 90
4umath: 84
phys: 84
chem: 87
business studies: 88

atar: 96

tyz in advance!

It's actually you who did the higher scaling subjects!

 

[spatula232]

Where do the ranks come into play? Because I was ranked second in a subject, yet got a higher exam mark than my mate who was ranked first... Shouldn't he automatically get that higher mark?

 

[InteGrand]

Where do the ranks come into play? Because I was ranked second in a subject, yet got a higher exam mark than my mate who was ranked first... Shouldn't he automatically get that higher mark?

No, everyone's exam mark is their own exam mark. So if you got a higher exam mark than your friend, it means you did better than him in the external HSC Exam, and this is unaffected by internal ranks.

 

[spatula232]

No, everyone's exam mark is their own exam mark. So if you got a higher exam mark than your friend, it means you did better than him in the external HSC Exam, and this is unaffected by internal ranks.

Then what do the internal ranks decide??

 

[InteGrand]

Then what do the internal ranks decide??

Simply put, internal performance affects how your internal mark will be moderated ("scaled").

 

[RealiseNothing]

Then what do the internal ranks decide??

The assessment mark.

 

[braintic]

It boggles the mind how the HSC can be over and the marks out, yet some people still have no idea how the system works.

 

[InteGrand]

It boggles the mind how the HSC can be over and the marks out, yet some people still have no idea how the system works.

I'd actually be more surprised if everyone knew how it worked.

 

[spatula232]

It boggles the mind how the HSC can be over and the marks out, yet some people still have no idea how the system works.

I apologise my good sir, but I thought it was the exam mark as opposed to the assessment mark. My mistake your mind was boggled.

 

[SudhiTheBoat]

For every mark you get in PHYS/CHEM you are beating alot more people. For every mark you lose in 2U/JAP more people are beating you.

For every mark you lose in PHYS/CHEM less people are beating you. For every mark you gain in 2U/JAP you are beating less people.

Hope that makes sense.

 

[InteGrand]

For every mark you get in PHYS/CHEM you are beating alot more people. For every mark you lose in 2U/JAP more people are beating you.

For every mark you lose in PHYS/CHEM less people are beating you. For every mark you gain in 2U/JAP you are beating less people.

Hope that makes sense.

In other words, you're saying that the distributions of marks for HSC Maths 2U/Japanese are generally positively skewed (longer tail toward the right) whilst for HSC Physics and Chemistry, they are generally negatively skewed (longer tail towards left).

 

[AntarcticMonkeys]

Thanks guys, I thought Japanese was extremely high scaling tho, much love