Maths advice (1 Viewer)

[Spare_information]

I'm a current year 10 student going into year 11 in a top 30 school, i want to do advance maths but the school will only let me do standard because i got 1% under the cutoff. The funny thing is that they made the exam soo hard that they're only letting 5 people do extension and 20 people do advance out of a cohort of over 100. The thing is that I want to do Civil engineering, preferably at USYD or UNSW, but the prerequisite for both is advance math. The deputy who is in charge of subject selection told me that I'm better off doing standard then going to USYD and doing a 6 month advance math course then getting into engineering. Currently I'm too late to apply at any selective school and most alright public schools are all full. The only school I can get into now is Condell park high, which from reviews is a really bad school and ranks at around 500. From the people I have talked to there are two sides, 1. Stay in this school because it will help your ATAR and just do the bridging course or 2. Go to Condell park high and do advance (or extension) , this will help your scaling and you could get a better ATAR and no bridging course. I am leaning more towards he second option but the first option is swaying me back.

 

[Drdusk]

I'm a current year 10 student going into year 11 in a top 30 school, i want to do advance maths but the school will only let me do standard because i got 1% under the cutoff. The funny thing is that they made the exam soo hard that they're only letting 5 people do extension and 20 people do advance out of a cohort of over 100. The thing is that I want to do Civil engineering, preferably at USYD or UNSW, but the prerequisite for both is advance math. The deputy who is in charge of subject selection told me that I'm better off doing standard then going to USYD and doing a 6 month advance math course then getting into engineering. Currently I'm too late to apply at any selective school and most alright public schools are all full. The only school I can get into now is Condell park high, which from reviews is a really bad school and ranks at around 500. From the people I have talked to there are two sides, 1. Stay in this school because it will help your ATAR and just do the bridging course or 2. Go to Condell park high and do advance (or extension) , this will help your scaling and you could get a better ATAR and no bridging course. I am leaning more towards he second option but the first option is swaying me back.

That's a sticky situation. Personally if it was me I would definitely not switch to a 500 ranked school. Usually teachers are willing to let you into a subject if you show an absolute necessity for it and by that I literally mean beg. It's what I did, when I switched schools it got me into a subject the school did not want to budge on because it was 'full'. It even got my friend in 5.2 Maths into Adv.

In the worst case scenario you could even convince the teacher to give you 1 term trial run in that if you do well in your first Adv test you should be allowed to stay but you have to show them you NEED this subject by essentially begging to get it.

 

[quickoats]

Um that's really weird - I went to a school that is 30ish with a cohort of 150, and 100+ did MX1 and ~140 did 2U in yr 11. Literally beg your way in and if everything fails, ask your parents to come into the school. That usually fixes things

 

[ezOolong]

Agree on what was said above, you really just must get into Maths adv because standard 1) has atrocious scaling 2) seems too easy for you. It's just such a waste if you're good at maths and end up only doing standard. I'm actually quite surprised on the size of the ext1 classes though, why would your school do that?? Just to keep the success rate??

The rank 500 school sounds a lil too bad comparing to your current one, can you try dialling any other school? Any school within the Top 200 is quite acceptable.

 

[Eagle Mum]

High schools should be preparing all their students for the careers of their choice. It’s pretty much their raison d’etre. They should not be blocking capable students from taking subjects to maintain their high reputations (I know many private schools do this & I’m appalled by this business model behaviour). I second the above suggestion of involving your parents - they should have the prerogative of negotiating with the school. If they are paying private school fees, you may be better off attending a public school and using the money to hire a tutor. It wouldn’t hurt to at least make some enquiries at a few public schools (do it before the new school year starts - information gathering is never a wasted exercise). Some do have good teachers just waiting for enthusiastic good students to come along. Our local public school flits in & out of the top 400 but they’ve supported my kids very well. My eldest attended a private school up to Yr 6. We weren’t happy with what they were providing, so we wrote a couple of letters and when the school refused to accommodate, we voted with our feet and left. It was a very good decision in our case. I hope things work out well for you whichever decision you make.

 

[Saint Dev]

Wait, so are there only 5 people in your cohort doing Extension 1? What about extension 2? I guess as someone else said, that it helps your success rate and SMH rankings, but that sounds ridiculous to me.

I'd exhaust trying to get into the extension 1 course before thinking about moving to the rank 500 school. Whilst the ranking is honestly quite awful, I would be more concerned about how you are going to enjoy such a school (If the reviews are that bad). If you are Ranking at the top in all your subjects the schools ranking it won't matter, however, if you slip up because you hate the school and drop down towards the average, then you'll be screwed. I can imagine that you are committed to doing Engineering, which is great, but I'd cautious to completely switch up everything so close to the HSC.

 

[Spare_information]

The thing about my school is that it is a private school and they just want band 6's so their ranking can go higher. Another reason is that there is an accelerated advanced stream with around 30 students and most of them have taken up the extension class. In regards to begging, after I found out that i'm not in the advanced class, I begged the deputy everyday for a month and asked any teachers who could help me and they always just said either do the bridging course, or the class is full, considering they just hired a 4 unit teacher and they already had 3 teachers who could easily teach advanced.

High schools should be preparing all their students for the careers of their choice. It’s pretty much their raison d’etre. They should not be blocking capable students from taking subjects to maintain their high reputations (I know many private schools do this & I’m appalled by this business model behaviour). I second the above suggestion of involving your parents - they should have the prerogative of negotiating with the school. If they are paying private school fees, you may be better off attending a public school and using the money to hire a tutor. It wouldn’t hurt to at least make some enquiries at a few public schools (do it before the new school year starts - information gathering is never a wasted exercise). Some do have good teachers just waiting for enthusiastic good students to come along. Our local public school flits in & out of the top 400 but they’ve supported my kids very well. My eldest attended a private school up to Yr 6. We weren’t happy with what they were providing, so we wrote a couple of letters and when the school refused to accommodate, we voted with our feet and left. It was a very good decision in our case. I hope things work out well for you whichever decision you make.

With involving my parents, the school won't budge, and they kept making up bad excuses, rephrasing "the class is full" or "do the bridging course", My parents even had a meeting with the principal and he said similar things. This isn't just the case with me but nearly the entire cohort.

Agree on what was said above, you really just must get into Maths adv because standard 1) has atrocious scaling 2) seems too easy for you. It's just such a waste if you're good at maths and end up only doing standard. I'm actually quite surprised on the size of the ext1 classes though, why would your school do that?? Just to keep the success rate??

The rank 500 school sounds a lil too bad comparing to your current one, can you try dialling any other school? Any school within the Top 200 is quite acceptable.

I've tried many schools and most of them said I'm out of area or they are full, pubic and private.

That's a sticky situation. Personally if it was me I would definitely not switch to a 500 ranked school. Usually teachers are willing to let you into a subject if you show an absolute necessity for it and by that I literally mean beg. It's what I did, when I switched schools it got me into a subject the school did not want to budge on because it was 'full'. It even got my friend in 5.2 Maths into Adv.

In the worst case scenario you could even convince the teacher to give you 1 term trial run in that if you do well in your first Adv test you should be allowed to stay but you have to show them you NEED this subject by essentially begging to get it.

The thing about the one term trial is that they're making 8 people who got higher than the cut off do that, me and many of my friends have asked and the outcome is always negative.

 

[Saint Dev]

The thing about my school is that it is a private school and they just want band 6's so their ranking can go higher. Another reason is that there is an accelerated advanced stream with around 30 students and most of them have taken up the extension class. In regards to begging, after I found out that i'm not in the advanced class, I begged the deputy everyday for a month and asked any teachers who could help me and they always just said either do the bridging course, or the class is full, considering they just hired a 4 unit teacher and they already had 3 teachers who could easily teach advanced.

I can relate to the private school accelerated stream for cheap B6s, my school has two classes of them for the sole purpose of increasing the success rate for SMH rankings!

It sounds like a difficult situation, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that. If you are aiming to do Civil Engineering, then that's about 92-93 ATAR as I am aware. If you look into the University bonus points schemes you can find how many bonus points you can expect to get as a domestic student. I forget which university it is (of those two), but one gives Bonus points for B5-B6 in relevant subjects whilst the other is streamlined to just B5-B6 in the various levels of English and Mathematics. If you are fairly confident that you can get that ATAR with or without higher-level mathematics (it might be a bit early for ATAR predictions) then it's just a question of if you want to do the bridging course.

 

[Spare_information]

I can relate to the private school accelerated stream for cheap B6s, my school has two classes of them for the sole purpose of increasing the success rate for SMH rankings!

It sounds like a difficult situation, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that. If you are aiming to do Civil Engineering, then that's about 92-93 ATAR as I am aware. If you look into the University bonus points schemes you can find how many bonus points you can expect to get as a domestic student. I forget which university it is (of those two), but one gives Bonus points for B5-B6 in relevant subjects whilst the other is streamlined to just B5-B6 in the various levels of English and Mathematics. If you are fairly confident that you can get that ATAR with or without higher-level mathematics (it might be a bit early for ATAR predictions) then it's just a question of if you want to do the bridging course.

I've heard from many people that bridging courses are useless and you don't learn anything, but if I don't get into USYD or UNSW, I know someone who did Civil engineering at UTS and they say it's really good there and the ATAR requirement is only 83. I'm just skeptical about bridging courses and if they're worth doing

 

[idkkdi]

The thing about my school is that it is a private school and they just want band 6's so their ranking can go higher. Another reason is that there is an accelerated advanced stream with around 30 students and most of them have taken up the extension class. In regards to begging, after I found out that i'm not in the advanced class, I begged the deputy everyday for a month and asked any teachers who could help me and they always just said either do the bridging course, or the class is full, considering they just hired a 4 unit teacher and they already had 3 teachers who could easily teach advanced.



With involving my parents, the school won't budge, and they kept making up bad excuses, rephrasing "the class is full" or "do the bridging course", My parents even had a meeting with the principal and he said similar things. This isn't just the case with me but nearly the entire cohort.


I've tried many schools and most of them said I'm out of area or they are full, pubic and private.



The thing about the one term trial is that they're making 8 people who got higher than the cut off do that, me and many of my friends have asked and the outcome is always negative.

this sounds like that Muslim school that chooses subjects for their students lmao.

 

[Spare_information]

this sounds like that Muslim school that chooses subjects for their students lmao.

it is

 

[Velocifire]

Also, nice $500 for the smarties.

Australian school 'pays students $500 CASH if they do well in exams'

It’s believed the school paid out more than $100,000 to high achievers last year.

7news.com.au

 

[Drdusk]

Also, nice $500 for the smarties.

Australian school 'pays students $500 CASH if they do well in exams'

It’s believed the school paid out more than $100,000 to high achievers last year.

7news.com.au

No idea how in the world the school can afford this. It’s fees aren’t even that high for it to be giving away that much money :|

 

[B1andB2]

No idea how in the world the school can afford this. It’s fees aren’t even that high for it to be giving away that much money :|

and what about schools that give out scholarships to multiple students?

a cash prize per band 6 is a harmless reward... not sure why so many people are dumbfounded by it.

 

[Drdusk]

and what about schools that give out scholarships to multiple students?

a cash prize per band 6 is a harmless reward...

I mean I got no problem with it. Just curious that's all.

 

[Spare_information]

my school give a $1500 voucher if you get an atar of 95 or above, it's very common in muslim schools

 

[CM_Tutor]

I wonder if the school might be motivated to reconsider its position if motivated by the potential for negative publicity. Perhaps getting local media involved might help? I doubt that the school would be keen on headlines about prioritising Band 6s in lower courses at the expense of meeting the needs of students...