Low Ranking School ATAR (1 Viewer)

[enak101]

Hey guys, I've read the sticky topics and seem to have grasped the concept fairly well. One concern I have is my school. It's very low ranking. I think it was in the five hundreds out of six hundreds on this page, not sure how accurate it was.

Now I was reading for internal (class assessment) ranking matters more than marks. I can come 1st,2nd,3rd very easily in pretty much every subject. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? If every decent resource claims school doesn't matter than why do people always complain about getting dragged down?

 

[enoilgam]

Well it depends, if you come first internally and externally, then your cohort wont have any impact on your marks as they will be determined solely by your performance. The same goes if you are in a group of outliers (i.e. you are coming third in a subject, and you and the guys above you are way ahead of everyone else). However, if you do well internally and stuff the externals, then the cohort could really hurt you.

Its important to note that school rank doesnt have any impact on your ATAR whatsoever, only your cohort does. There are many doomsday rumours out there (like "ohh if your school is ranked really low you cant get above 90" etc), but the truth is that the most important determinate of a students ATAR is the student themseleves. There are heaps of stories of people who go to low ranked schools and get good ATARs. Here is a good example from last year http://community.boredofstudies.org/showthread.php?t=264823, and there are probably a few people who have gone to worse schools and done even better as well.

 

[enak101]

Hmm, that link helps me out a bit

That helps a bit, cohort>school as a whole as people seem to get more serious in year 11/12. Seems good.

 

[D94]

Well, the ranking system goes off how many Band 6's your school gets. So theoretically, if every student got 89 in like Maths, Sciences etc., and no Band 6's, those schools would still be lowly ranked. But this is an extreme situation (although probable) so chances are if your school is in the 500s, 600s, then your previous years' cohort would be pretty bad. This indicates either a fault in the students, or a fault in the level of education your school is giving to students. I'd say it's more the latter because anyone can rote learn and get a decent ATAR. Anyway, case in point - perform well in the HSC as a cohort. If you can, you should get as high as possible in ranks because coming first in each subject will mean no one else can influence your marks apart from yourself.

 

[enoilgam]

Well, the ranking system goes off how many Band 6's your school gets.

This is an important point to note - school rankings are usually based on this figure only. It can result in some inaccuracies (e.g. some performing arts schools are ranked high because they get a large number of band 6's in performing arts subjects, whereas in other subject areas, they dont do as well).