How much do internal rankings affect your ATAR? (2 Viewers)

[D94]

Suppose I had an internal assessment mark of 94. Is it possible that the performance of my cohort would result in my mark being reduced? Also assuming that my mark resulted in me being placed as Rank 1 for that particular subject mean for my external HSC Exam & my overall ATAR for that particular subject?

I will assume that 94 is 94%, i.e. your raw school percentage, given how you then talk about that mark being reduced. Your moderated assessment mark is dependent on the overall performance of your cohort. If all HSC exam marks are between 85 and 95, then all moderated assessment marks will be between 85 and 95. Similarly, if all HSC exam marks are between 75 and 85, then all moderated assessment marks will be between 75 and 85.

It is not being "reduced" in the sense that you achieved 94%, then that got reduced. The point of moderation is to ensure fairness of assessments across the state. To do this, BOS compares the performance of the HSC exam marks. You are being "moderated" to an appropriate and fair mark, as opposed to being "reduced".

If you are ranked first, then your moderated assessment mark will be the mark of the highest HSC exam mark of any student at your school. Your HSC exam mark will be your own performance, so if you stuff that up, then you will have a crap exam mark despite the top rank.

You don't have an ATAR for a particular subject. You have a scaled mark or a percentile, but you don't have an ATAR. The process is: raw HSC exam mark + moderated assessment mark -> raw HSC mark -> (complex calculations) -> scaled HSC mark -> aggregate of your best 10 units -> ATAR.

 

[anomalousdecay]

This thread deserves a sticky because it has useful information for all HSC students (it helped me heaps back last year).

Plus, many students ask this question in this section by making new threads.