Teacher compromised my chances?! (1 Viewer)

[curiouscat98]

HELLO! So, here goes:

I really wanted to get into a course at UNSW (cut off 90, plus an interview), and to apply I needed my Principal to fill out my 'estimated atar' and send it to the Uni before the HSC exams began. Based on this estimated atar, the Uni would choose applicants to then be offered an interview place. I found out recently that my Principal wasn't actually doing the estimated atar, but instead the head teacher of our grade did them.

Anyway, she filled them all out, and for mine I recently found out she estimated an atar of low to mid 80s... but I got an atar of 95+ in the end. I feel like she compromised my chances for this course and I feel really upset as it was my dream course. Had it just been based on atar I would have easily gotten in, but because it was based on estimated atar and she gave me a really low one (which I feel was really not justified!) I feel like she grabbed my only chance of getting straight into this course and threw it away.... It just really sucks that I worked so hard and gained (more than) the required atar but because she gave me a low estimate I can't get in now (also, interviews finished ages ago).

Sooooo.... besides ranting on here, is there anything I can do, or anyone I can complain to.. or do I just have to suck it up?

 

[crowley926]

What's the course? I'm sure there's still a chance of transferring during 2nd year or is a late round offer possible?

I don't think you can complain to get anything changed anymore though since as you said, interviews are over. But i do sympathize with you, that really sucks :\\

 

[faisalabdul16]

You can't blame your teacher. After all, it's an ESTIMATED ATAR. She doesn't work for UAC nor does she have any inside information on how to calculate ATAR.

 

[brent012]

If you're disappointed, at least let the school know. Provided that your internal and external HSC marks didn't differ too much, I think that gap between the estimate and actual is too much.

But to be honest, I think only the higher ranked (like top 50 or so) schools can give decent estimates. I went to a rank ~200 school and any estimates that we were given were intentionally conservative and I believe it's the same at similarly ranked schools.

 

[D94]

You can't blame your teacher. After all, it's an ESTIMATED ATAR. She doesn't work for UAC nor does she have any inside information on how to calculate ATAR.

Then she shouldn't be estimating. Many students here quite accurately estimate ATARs. They are not hard to estimate with information such as achievements of past students, assessing whether or not the school assessments are HSC standard, looking at ATARs of past students or even just giving the student the benefit of the doubt.

The difference between 85 and 95 is huge. That's not an estimate at all.

 

[strawberrye]

Wow-now I know why my school frankly refuses to do ATAR estimates... I think what you can do is to raise this issue with your school principal when the school year starts so at least to make sure these sort of things doesn't happen again to other people who want to get into similar courses requiring an ATAR estimate and suggest ways by which this system needs to be changed to provide more accurate ATAR estimates. I would not advise you to make full-fledged complaint because there is not much avenues given your HSC is over already, rather use this as an opportunity to rectify a clearly broken/biased system altogether and prevent it from happening again.

Never give up on your dream course, seek a transfer in second year-sure it sucks to be delayed, but delay is not denial unless you make it so!-you can do it with your strong ethic and congrats on a solid ATAR!

 

[InteGrand]

OP's teacher screwed up. However, it might have been nice if the universities used some sort of regression and correlation analysis when taking in the ATAR estimates. Namely, for each school with a student applying, they'd look at past histories of that school's ATAR estimates for students vs. actual final ATAR for the students. They could even fit curves to such scatter plots using linear regression etc., and analyse the covariance and correlation between the estimated and actual ATAR's. Then using such statistical analysis, they would use the sent-in ATAR Estimate from the student's school to come up with their own number, which could be some sort of "expected final ATAR". This would then help mitigate the effect of shifty school estimates (e.g. they might find that some schools tend to consistently under-estimate ATAR's, so for these schools, they would probably add a little bit on to the received estimated ATAR when processing applications). I would be quite surprised if they don't already do apply some statistical procedures to received ATAR estimates, but if they don't, maybe it's because they think it won't make much difference or are too lazy.