Hi guys, as you have seen lately, after each exam there has often been a thread "raw mark band cut off", however I do not quite understand the relevance of it and what effect it may have on your final mark.
As an example, say a student has an internal mark of 98 and an external aligned exam mark of 82, to my way of thinking this averages out as 90 overall. Hypothetically, however, let's say the band 6 exam cut off is 85... Thus they miss the cut off by 3...What effect would this have on an individual's overall mark/band even though they scored 90?
Could someone explain this to me please???
Ok, the story is that if the person who got 98 internally gets 82 externally, what happens is that the person's 98 gets moderated to meet/be similar to the external mark. So the 98 may drop down to 85 or closer to 82. These two marks... the internal which is moderated and the external (82) are averaged to give a final mark which then is scaled to determine the band. So lets say:
82 + 85 (which is the moderated 98-internal)/2= 83.5. If the band 6 cutoff for that year was less than 83.5, then this person gets lucky. If not, then its another story.
Rank is also a big factor when it comes to marks.. If you are ranked 1st and somehow blackout in the HSC and get 82 for example. You would still get the highest external raw mark that will average with your external, before averaging with your internal. e.g lets say your friend who is 2nd gets 88 as an external and it was the highest. What happens is you get an external of (82+88)/2= 85 as an external. This would once again alter your internal of 98 and it will be moderated close to 85, i.e 87. Your final score would equal to (87+85)/2=86. Which looks well above the cutoff for most subjects.
When we 'talk' about the 'raw' we are talking just about the external mark needed to align to a band 6, without any moderation of the internal. Just because you under performed in the HSC does not mean your chances of band 6 as a final are over. There is a thing called moderation, and that is why your rank and your internal mark needs to be high.Your cohort also needs to do better in the external, than in the internal. What happens is if the total mark of the cohort i.e (455- internally for 5 students) is below the external (i.e 400 for the same 5 students), then all the students get moderated down.
