Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessments (2 Viewers)

[aruna5va]

Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessments throughout the year ?

 

[D94]

Re: Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessm

Both.

The HSC exam mark is the mark of your own individual perform in the exam.

The assessment mark is derived from your school mark (which includes trials and assessments) but it is adjusted so that it can be compared to other students in the state.

The average of these raw marks is your raw HSC mark used in the ATAR calculation.

Edit: I should add that after your 'raw HSC mark' is determined by UAC, that mark then gets scaled so that each subject can be fairly compared to each other. Then the combination of your scaled marks gives your aggregate, which is then ranked. The top 50 or so get 99.95, next 50 or so get 99.90, and so on, giving your ATAR.

 

[porcupinetree]

Re: Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessm

Also, you may be interested to know that ATARs are calculated using raw (HSC exam) marks, before they've been aligned.

 

[A1P]

Re: Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessm

Also, you may be interested to know that ATARs are calculated using raw (HSC exam) marks, before they've been aligned.

Pretty sure you got that back to front. ATARs are calculated using marks well after they've been aligned.

Raw exam mark is aligned to give Exam mark
Raw school mark is moderated then aligned to give Assessment mark

These two (aligned) marks combine to give HSC mark for a subject/course. This is what BOSTES shows on your HS Certificate, nothing to do with University admission yet.

UAC then scale HSC marks to equalise the difficulty levels between courses, then Aggregate for ATAR ranking.

 

[Green Yoda]

Re: Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessm

Also, you may be interested to know that ATARs are calculated using raw (HSC exam) marks, before they've been aligned.

Is this true?

 

[D94]

Re: Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessm

Pretty sure you got that back to front. ATARs are calculated using marks well after they've been aligned.

Raw exam mark is aligned to give Exam mark
Raw school mark is moderated then aligned to give Assessment mark

These two (aligned) marks combine to give HSC mark for a subject/course. This is what BOSTES shows on your HS Certificate, nothing to do with University admission yet.

UAC then scale HSC marks to equalise the difficulty levels between courses, then Aggregate for ATAR ranking.

UAC scales the raw HSC mark (raw exam mark + moderated assessment mark), not the aligned marks.

Aligning is based on the standards set by BOSTES, but that doesn't compare each course to each other.

 

[porcupinetree]

Re: Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessm

Pretty sure you got that back to front. ATARs are calculated using marks well after they've been aligned.

Raw exam mark is aligned to give Exam mark
Raw school mark is moderated then aligned to give Assessment mark

These two (aligned) marks combine to give HSC mark for a subject/course. This is what BOSTES shows on your HS Certificate, nothing to do with University admission yet.

UAC then scale HSC marks to equalise the difficulty levels between courses, then Aggregate for ATAR ranking.

Not quite. Take a look at this extract from the 2015 ATAR scaling report, particularly the last paragraph.

Is this true?

Well I'm not a liar

UAC scales the raw HSC mark (raw exam mark + moderated assessment mark), not the aligned marks.

Aligning is based on the standards set by BOSTES, but that doesn't compare each course to each other.

Yup.

 

[A1P]

Re: Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessm

Not quite. Take a look at this extract from the 2015 ATAR scaling report, particularly the last paragraph.

Okay thanks, I stand corrected.
So we can say HSC mark is aligned and UAC mark (aggregate) is unaligned but scaled.

 

[porcupinetree]

Re: Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessm

Okay thanks, I stand corrected.
So we can say HSC mark is aligned and UAC mark (aggregate) is unaligned but scaled.

Yup, sounds right

 

[Green Yoda]

Re: Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessm

It would be unfair to use raw marks wouldn't it? Some exams are harder than others.

 

[porcupinetree]

Re: Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessm

It would be unfair to use raw marks wouldn't it? Some exams are harder than others.

The marks are later changed ('scaled') to compensate for this. It's similar to the way the BOSTES aligns the marks, but for some reason the UAC feels that instead of using the BOSTES' aligned marks, they'd prefer to align/scale them themselves

 

[Green Yoda]

Re: Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessm

The marks are later changed ('scaled') to compensate for this. It's similar to the way the BOSTES aligns the marks, but for some reason the UAC feels that instead of using the BOSTES' aligned marks, they'd prefer to align/scale them themselves

oh wow I actually never knew this

 

[A1P]

Re: Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessm

The marks are later changed ('scaled') to compensate for this. It's similar to the way the BOSTES aligns the marks, but for some reason the UAC feels that instead of using the BOSTES' aligned marks, they'd prefer to align/scale them themselves

I think I understand the different purposes now. BOSTES aligns the marks of each subject/course so they are comparable to previous years (ie. after alignment an 85 in a subject this year indicates about the same as 85 last year). Whereas UAC deals with ranking same-year students doing different subjects, the marks are scaled to compensate for different difficulty levels between the subjects.

 

[D94]

Re: Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessm

It would be unfair to use raw marks wouldn't it? Some exams are harder than others.

I think I understand the different purposes now. BOSTES aligns the marks of each subject/course so they are comparable to previous years (ie. after alignment an 85 in a subject this year indicates about the same as 85 last year). Whereas UAC deals with ranking same-year students doing different subjects, the marks are scaled to compensate for different difficulty levels between the subjects.

No, UAC doesn't scale based on difficulty. They scale based on the strength of the cohort. To quote:

The scaling algorithm starts from the premise that a student’s position in a course depends on:
- how good he/she is in that course, and
- the strength of the competition.
Scaling controls for the strength of competition

 

[A1P]

Re: Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessm

No, UAC doesn't scale based on difficulty. They scale based on the strength of the cohort.

That's saying in a nice diplomatic way to avoid offending the "lesser" subjects.
Effectively it leads to the same outcome.

 

[D94]

Re: Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessm

That's saying in a nice diplomatic way to avoid offending the "lesser" subjects.
Effectively it leads to the same outcome.

No, strength is different to difficulty. Strength is of the student, difficulty is of the paper.

Courses such as General Maths, Geography, Aboriginal Studies etc. scale poorly because there are a lot of drop kicks who choose those subjects, then also do poorly in them. Courses such as MX2, Physics, Chemistry scale well because there is an overall better quality of students in those courses, regardless of the difficulty, and if using say English as a control course, those students do as well or even better than students doing say Modern, PDHPE, Mathematics.

In fact, should a high quality cohort decide they will do Geography, General Maths, Aboriginal Studies etc., and not choose MX2, Physics, Chemistry, and then all the drop kicks choose those subjects but not the former, then Geography, General maths, Aboriginal studies will become high scaling subjects, since the strength of that cohort far supersedes the quality of the MX2, Physics, Chemistry cohort of drop kicks.

Scaling controls for the strength of competition, not the difficulty of the course. There is absolutely nothing diplomatic about it since it has nothing to do with difficulty.

The outcome can be controlled by the selection of subjects by students. This is why UAC and BOSTES say to choose subjects based on what you are good at and what interests you. It so happens that the same scaling situation occurs each year because higher scaling courses such as MX1/2, Physics, Chemistry are suggested/assumed courses for university so higher achieving, i.e. stronger students, undertake those subjects in order to get into university, especially ones with higher ATAR entry scores. How many General Maths, Geography, Aboriginal Studies etc. students attend university compared to MX1/2, Physics, Chemistry etc.? Not many.

UAC doesn't mislead or use euphemisms to categorise each subject. It is as they describe it, and it has been for a while.

 

[A1P]

Re: Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessm

No, strength is different to difficulty. Strength is of the student, difficulty is of the paper.

It's not about the exam paper but the subject/course as a whole. We're talking about difficulty as in the capability to achieve the same mark in one subject relative to another, leading to the necessity to scale them differently.

If it's all about strength of the cohort let's see this
http://www.uac.edu.au/documents/atar/2015-ScalingReport.pdf (page 36)

Physics: HSC mean 36.5 / Software Dev: HSC mean 36.9 (rather similar)
After scaling, Physics mean = 30.4 / Software Dev mean = 23.6

I guess your explanation says the SDev cohort is worse than the Phys cohort in the common English courses. Another way of expression is it's less difficult to achieve 36.9 mean in SDev than for 36.5 mean in Phys. Same effects overall.

 

[Green Yoda]

Re: Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessm

It's not about the exam paper but the subject/course as a whole. We're talking about difficulty as in the capability to achieve the same mark in one subject relative to another, leading to the necessity to scale them differently.

If it's all about strength of the cohort let's see this
http://www.uac.edu.au/documents/atar/2015-ScalingReport.pdf (page 36)

Physics: HSC mean 36.5 / Software Dev: HSC mean 36.9 (rather similar)
After scaling, Physics mean = 30.4 / Software Dev mean = 23.6

I guess your explanation says the SDev cohort is worse than the Phys cohort in the common English courses. Another way of expression is it's less difficult to achieve 36.9 mean in SDev than for 36.5 mean in Phys. Same effects overall.

They compare it to how those students did in comparison to English as a medium and students with the same subjects.

 

[D94]

Re: Is the ATAR calculated only with the HSC marks or the Trials+HSC+Internal Assessm

It's not about the exam paper but the subject/course as a whole. We're talking about difficulty as in the capability to achieve the same mark in one subject relative to another, leading to the necessity to scale them differently.

If it's all about strength of the cohort let's see this
http://www.uac.edu.au/documents/atar/2015-ScalingReport.pdf (page 36)

Physics: HSC mean 36.5 / Software Dev: HSC mean 36.9 (rather similar)
After scaling, Physics mean = 30.4 / Software Dev mean = 23.6

I guess your explanation says the SDev cohort is worse than the Phys cohort in the common English courses. Another way of expression is it's less difficult to achieve 36.9 mean in SDev than for 36.5 mean in Phys. Same effects overall.

Well no, that's your own misinterpretation. Correlation is not causation, for which you have incorrectly concluded that because UAC has reduced the mean for SDD much lower than Physics, it must be due to it being more difficult (how ever you want to define that). This is simply not true, and it is not the same effect.

As I have described above with the scenario of high achievers and drop kicks, I guarantee that the scaling process would lead to Geography, General Maths, Ab. Studies being higher scaling subjects, should only typically higher achieving students have taken them. This is because the strength of those cohorts are stronger than others, therefore producing higher scaled marks.

Let's say we use your explanation with those marks for SDD and Physics: what measure is there to go from those HSC means to the scaled means? What objective calculation is used to drive that scaling?

Anyway, to quote UAC:

The model underpinning the scaling algorithm specifies that the scaled mean in a course is equal to the average academic achievement of the course candidature where, for individual students, the measure of academic achievement is taken as the average scaled mark in all courses completed. The model specification leads to a set of simultaneous equations from which the scaled means of 2 unit courses are calculated.

So this implies both the cohort's academic achievement and the individual's academic achievements are modelled to derive the scaled mark for that subject. At no point is 'difficulty' assumed by UAC. They don't know if the exam or the overall subject is difficult, even by your definition.