How competitive is your cohort?

[Focus is Key]

Just wondering how competitive the cohorts of the school's you people go to are really. My school is ranked very low (though does fluctuate sometimes gaining 100+ ranking), and I feel has a pretty competitive cohort, particuarly in English and Maths.

In English, we have 4 people in Advanced that are ranked very,very closely to one another and are competitive to achieve first place. Also 3 of these people do Extension English making the #1 ranking very coveted in our school.

Maths is arguably even more competitive as the rankings are extremely unpredictable and often extremely close. In Year 10 for example I believe the rankings were so close the school had to look at decimal points in results because there was less than 1% between the top 3. This year in Prelim many people are becoming very competitive to achieve top rankings as well and some are talking themselves up at every opportunity because they did well.

So I'd like to hear the responses from the BOS on this issue

[scarvesss]

we have about 8 people in adv eng that are within one or two marks of each other. math theres about the same. but in all my other classes there is usually only two or three. apart from a select 10 or so the rest of my grade are just terrible, its really worrying.

[madharris]

I think some subjects are competitive, but as a whole my cohort is not too competitive

[Shadowdude]

Really depends who's in your class.

I'd say the least competitive class I had when I did Year 12 was Advanced English (if we don't count my one-person MX2 class). That was because everyone knew this one girl was going to get first because she was miles ahead of us, and everyone else fought for second place - luckily, I won that tussle. Well, not really... I mean, what actually happened was that we were like "Yeah, she's going to get first so... meh".

Perhaps the most competitive was maybe... Legal Studies? There were a few bright sparks in that class - two or three of them, which really pushed me. In my three-person MX1 class, me and this other girl vied for top spot...


So really, just depends how many "bright" people you have. Because even if they don't actively compete for ranks (I know the girl who came first in English didn't really... actively compete, she just did her thing and got first regardless) - they do push you to do better.

[LoveHateSchool]

I think my cohort is competitive, at least by my school's standards compared to the 2011 cohort. Some people are scary haha.

But it differs a bit by subject by subject. Some are more competitive than others. There's tends to be a top pack in each though, and then the tail.

[eat_well]

My cohort is insanely competitive. There's always people crying after they receive their assessment marks especially for English. Since my school is so harsh with marking, everyone in English gets around the 60s so many people end up with the same ranking. There is always someone who is really good at a certain subject and those that are insanely dedicated so it gets quite scary.
My school is ranked in the 70s (I don't know if it's usually that competitive with schools with my ranking) and it's an all girls school which explains all the crying.

[So-joo]

Whilst the rest of NSW discusses studying tactics to make the most of their HSC timetable, my group discusses how to smuggle a penis cake into school for someone's 18th birthday.

Most of my cohort are concerned about not failing their tests, rather than getting 1st place.

[unLimitieDx]

imo competition is good and it influences me to study harder and achieve the top 5 ranks. In my school there is only a handful of students who are really competitive maybe like a bunch of 30 out of 120 students and the rest dont care about ranking, marks etc..

[HybridKath]

Yeah, competition's my main motiviation to actually try hard. And uni of course, but that feels so far away, even if it isn't.

As far as I can tell, my cohort is somewhat competitive, but it mostly depends on subject and people. For pretty all my subjects, we have the top 20% or so of people who are very competitive and try hard to beat each others' marks, then the majority who compete and do well, but not er... vocal enough about their competition to be really notable. Then there are the few people who simply don't care. And of course, pretty much everyone is competitive amongst their friendship groups.

[twinklegal19]

Just wondering how competitive the cohorts of the school's you people go to are really. My school is ranked very low (though does fluctuate sometimes gaining 100+ ranking), and I feel has a pretty competitive cohort, particuarly in English and Maths.

In English, we have 4 people in Advanced that are ranked very,very closely to one another and are competitive to achieve first place. Also 3 of these people do Extension English making the #1 ranking very coveted in our school.

Maths is arguably even more competitive as the rankings are extremely unpredictable and often extremely close. In Year 10 for example I believe the rankings were so close the school had to look at decimal points in results because there was less than 1% between the top 3. This year in Prelim many people are becoming very competitive to achieve top rankings as well and some are talking themselves up at every opportunity because they did well.

So I'd like to hear the responses from the BOS on this issue

I'm go to a top 5 ranked school, and from year 7-10 it wasn't really that competitive at all (except for perhaps maths). However the level of competition definitely increased a fair bit this year in prelim, but I don't think it's too bad from my perspective. In maths heaps of people got only 0.5-2 marks off in the exam though, however we still have a few people getting below 70. IMO subjects like social sciences and languages are nowhere near as competitive as maths and science, however I'm sure everything will change in year 12, guess we'll have to wait and see.
One good thing about my cohort is that everyone is willing to help each other. Sure there are always a number of geniuses in every subject dominating the top ranks, but as a whole we we are still alright

[Nooblet94]

Overall there's about 10 or so people that are ridiculously competitive, ~50 that are reasonably competitive and the rest are pretty chilled (although most care about their marks).

At the start of the year MX2 was my most competitive subject but it's not anymore because it seems everyone else has given up on trying to beat me, which to be honest I hate because not only are there people that could beat me if they applied themselves more, but it takes the pressure off me and means I'm not pushing myself to keep first.

MX1 is now the most competitive because there's at least 2 people within 1 mark of me and at the moment there's probably 20 people that could end up with first.

Some people doing Legal are ridiculously competitive (giving each other wrong information, refusing to share their notes with the class etc.) but the people right at the top all seem to be pretty chilled about it all. Physics is sort of the same.

I think most of my grade's given up on English, so it's not competitive at all (although I believe ext1 is).

Music's competitive in the sense that the person coming last is within ~10 marks of first place, but everyone gets along really well and helps one another out so there's not really a competitive atmosphere.

[Br0]

haha maths at my school is realise get 100%. then like 2 other people in 90% range.

[Levity]

Comprehensive school so not competitive at all.

[ClassOf2013]

My school does both HSC and IB, the IB cohort is pretty competitive, but the HSC cohort isn't really that competitive. I'm guessing we will only have 1 or 2 ATARs above 90 in the HSC (hopefully i'll be one of them )

[RealiseNothing]

haha maths at my school is realise get 100%. then like 2 other people in 90% range.

But that's for 2U, in extension no one gets over 90% (but me).

2nd is usually low 80's.

[Demento1]

The competition at my school is quite high, especially during examination periods with some of the other gifted people in my school who compete to ensure that their scholarships are sustained.

[GravezDigger]

I went to top 5 selective and we were quite competitive.. in a nice way of course. If anyone needed help, it would be given. After the trials, we pooled all our resources for all HSC subjects (exam papers, essays, solutions, notes etc etc) to help raise everyone up.

[kevintang]

School i go to is top 30, some people are stingy to share notes/help out while others are willing

[iSplicer]

I went to top 5 selective and we were quite competitive.. in a nice way of course. If anyone needed help, it would be given. After the trials, we pooled all our resources for all HSC subjects (exam papers, essays, solutions, notes etc etc) to help raise everyone up.

+1.

[BrokenGlass]

Top 5 school -
Years 7-11 - everyone's a bunch of lazy sh*ts
Year 12 - Study. STUDY. STUDEEE. like crazy. (super, heavy duty level of competition implied)

[jkayy1996]

My selective school (top 5) is highly competitive, after every exam everyone asks each other what they got and most people hide their marks from people in order to avoid scrutiny in means of ranks. Also, a girl in my class cried because she got 'shit' in an exam, I later found out she got 19/20...

[atar90plus]

Half /Half

[atar90plus]

Depends