equal first.

**Riproot** · 19 Aug 2012, 3:50 AM

Originally Posted by someth1ng

That would also depend on the school. If you were at say, Ruse, I wouldn't mind being equal first...

you couldn't physically get first in the state unless the person equal with you came second (or equal first with you).

**someth1ng** · 19 Aug 2012, 1:14 PM

Originally Posted by Riproot

you couldn't physically get first in the state unless the person equal with you came second (or equal first with you).

That depends, in some cases, the top two could be rank 1 and 2 in the state. Their internals would probably be the average and maybe a raw mark difference or so in the externals.

**brent012** · 19 Aug 2012, 1:20 PM

Originally Posted by asianese

Um it was... (raw-average)/(standard deviation) * weighting

I don't know if they round.

So in other words the z-score * weighting? From my little understanding of stats that is ridiculous and wouldn't work properly.

**Riproot** · 19 Aug 2012, 1:52 PM

Originally Posted by someth1ng

That depends, in some cases, the top two could be rank 1 and 2 in the state. Their internals would probably be the average and maybe a raw mark difference or so in the externals.

I said unless that was the case.

If the person coming equal first with you fucked up and no one else picked up the slack it would disadvantage you majorly.

**cem** · 19 Aug 2012, 3:49 PM

Originally Posted by deswa1

Depends on how your school submits marks. The school pretty much has freedom with the marks they send- they could send it off as 90.18 or just as 90.00 if they wanted which is like effective rounding.

Schools submit whole marks only - at least in my 20+ years of teaching the HSC. There has never been a provision for the submission of anything but whole marks so the 90.18 can go in as 91 or 90. If there is another student who would round to 90 but is below 90 the school could send the top student in as 91 and the second as 90 - which is what my school tries to do.

**EvansOne** · 19 Aug 2012, 6:07 PM

Excuse my stupidity here, but how excactly do schools decide what assessment score you get? One of my teachers always says "your mark doesn't matter, only the rank" when referring to assessment tasks (eg I was bummed about getting 17/20 but it ranked 1st so apparently that was as good as 20/20). It doesn't make sense to me if that is the case, but then again none of it really does...feels like the whole system is way behind to me.

**D94** · 19 Aug 2012, 6:33 PM

Originally Posted by EvansOne

Excuse my stupidity here, but how excactly do schools decide what assessment score you get? One of my teachers always says "your mark doesn't matter, only the rank" when referring to assessment tasks (eg I was bummed about getting 17/20 but it ranked 1st so apparently that was as good as 20/20). It doesn't make sense to me if that is the case, but then again none of it really does...feels like the whole system is way behind to me.

Your teacher is ill-informed or is misleading you. Marks determine ranks - how the hell does a rank determine an assessment mark? You need raw assessment marks, like that 17/20, to determine your raw school assessment mark. You sit the HSC then BOS knows the highest/lowest exam marks. All assessment marks are now moderated so the average of school marks is the same as the average of exam marks, and that all assessment marks are within the highest/lowest exam marks. So, if the highest exam mark is 95, and the lowest is 80, then all your assessment marks will be altered so they are within these two marks. Then, let's say you're 'n' raw marks behind first place, then you will receive an assessment mark which is proportionally the same as the raw marks.

So, gaining as many marks is very important. The exact magnitude of each mark separately isn't important - it's how much you differ from first, and from the average on a collective scale which matters.