killer queen's guide to ATAR calculators and predictions (2 Viewers)

[killer queen]

Disclaimer: This is not a guide for making accurate ATAR predictions. At the end of the day, nothing will be fully reliable. This is also not a guide for calculating anything else ATAR-adjacent. This is merely a guide for how to use the tools at your disposal for their intended purpose as effectively as possible.

Every year, when HSC season rolls around, the urge for an ATAR prediction grows greater. But it’s hard to know where to start. So I thought I’d make the most comprehensive guide I possibly could, using my limited knowledge, so you - dear reader - may understand the best way to go about seeing where you stand.

1. WHICH ATAR CALCULATOR SHOULD I USE?

The vast majority of ATAR calculators are designed for the period in between receiving aligned subject marks and the release of the ATAR on that morning. This means that you need aligned marks for the majority of them. If you want to input raw marks into the calculator, then go to the following thread: https://boredofstudies.org/threads/how-to-calculate-your-atar-from-trial-past-paper-marks.404596/

It is also important to know which calculators tend to give higher marks than others, so you’re not surprised by the number they give you. Using the exact same marks, this is all the ATAR calculators commonly used in ascending order of predicted ATAR based on my testing:

• Matrix https://www.matrix.edu.au/atar-calculator/
• Atar Estimator https://atarestimator.streamlit.app/
• UAC Atar Compass https://www.uac.edu.au/atar-compass/
• HSC Ninja https://www.hscninja.com/atar-calculator

UAC’s ATAR calculator is definitely generally the most useful, but it doesn’t hurt to experiment with various calculators. Use all of them if you want to get a prospective range. Do not use AI. I tried ChatGPT, and it doesn’t know the difference between scaling and alignment. Maybe on a good day it works, but as a language model, it’s just too risky - by all means have a go, but these ATAR calculators are definitely more trustworthy. (Also, AI is too easy to gaslight into giving you what you want.)

2. HOW DO I KNOW WHAT MARKS TO PUT IN?

This is a lot more complicated of a question. For subjects like mathematics, the raw marks database (https://rawmarks.info/#google_vignette) has a lot of data that you can use to align your raw marks. This is most reliable if you’ve done those specific HSC papers, because alignment changes from year to year. For papers like selective schools e.g. North Sydney Boys, it's safe to assume you'll perform better in the HSC than in one of their papers.

If you only have your trial marks, like for many written subjects, it gets a bit harder. On the bright side, their marks tend to be closer to the raw mark, which means just using your raw mark won’t lower the predicted ATAR too much. But if you want to account for it, here are some things to consider:

1. Check HSC Ninja for the number of band 6s your school gets in that subject every year. It probably fluctuates from year to year, but it gives you a good ballpark, and can be very helpful if you have rumours from school. For example, if last year there were 20 band 6s in English Advanced, you’re ranked 10th, and you’ve heard the highest aligned mark last year was 94, chances are you could estimate a 92 (+/- 1).
2. Figure out where your school sits, and therefore how hard the exam was in comparison to the real deal. If you did a paper from a company such as CSSA or Independent, they try to emulate HSC difficulty, and likely can be assumed to be the HSC raw mark. Based on the Sydney Morning Herald school rankings:
   • If your school is in the top 50 (or a selective school): Your exam was likely harder than the HSC.
   • If your school sits between 50-100: Your exam was likely similar to the HSC.
   • If your school is >100: Your exam may have been easier than the HSC
     
     Obviously this does change from school to school, but this piece of information can be used in tandem with your personal rank to make some educated guesses. This is similar in purpose to checking HSC Ninja for the number of Band 6s a year, and is a piece of background information that may assist you mentally.

1. Use these pieces of information together to make an educated guess. I know, guessing sucks, but if you’ve made it this far you likely have an idea as to what you can achieve in your school. You’ll know if you’re an outlier in your cohort compared to previous years. Use the raw marks database again to check if scaling is a factor in your subject, though its data tends to be more sparse for other subjects.

Do NOT use the UAC scaling document, because the ‘scaling’ there is completely different to what we colloquially refer to as scaling. What we call scaling is actually alignment - scaling, in the UAC sense, is how they calculate the mark they use to rank everyone. Remember, the ATAR is a percentile, not a score. You could get 99s in every subject and still get a 70 if everybody else got 100.

3. I’M STILL UNSURE. HOW CAN I ASK FOR AN ATAR PREDICTION?

That’s the beauty of BoS! If you want an ATAR prediction, then the lovely people here would like the following information:

• Subjects
• Number of band 6s in previous years in those subjects
• Approximate rank of school
• Trial marks + rank ( + what company it was, or if it was school-written)
• Overall rank

Something else that can also help is how close you are to your surrounding ranks. If you’re first, for example, how far are you above second? Do you know via hearsay whether you’re better than first place from the cohort before? If you don’t know this stuff, that’s okay - the average and highest marks can similarly give a picture of the range of marks. This is not necessary, but can help significantly.

It is important to recognise that the humans here are just humans. Invariably, with accurate aligned marks, calculators and their algorithms will give you better results. The only thing people are better than calculators at is accounting for variance, such as school ranks.

4. HOW CAN I FIGURE OUT WHAT EXTERNAL MARK I NEED TO GET MY GOAL?

This is a hard question. Firstly, you need to understand how moderation works. To the best of my knowledge, this is the process:

1. You get your internal ranks
2. Say the highest internal mark was 60 and the lowest was 20, and the highest aligned mark in the HSC was 80 and the lowest was 60 - the highest rank internal will get 80 as their internal mark, and the lowest rank internal will get 60 as their internal mark (externals are not affected)
3. If you're in between, then you get moved accordingly! So if you say ranked 2nd with a 54 internally, that would probably get changed to approximately 77. Note that though your actual internal mark doesn't do anything, it still determines how well you moderate, so it's not purely rank that matters.
4. Then they average this score and your external mark!

If you are first, and you come first in the HSC, your internal is the same as your external. There are exceptions, but this is the general rule. This means that, if you are not first, your internal does marginally rely on whoever was first to do well - and it also relies on whoever was last. Yes, this sucks, but that is the best way NESA has found to compare the difficulty of school assessments across the board.

5. THIS THREAD LITERALLY DID NOT HELP ME AT ALL. WHAT DO I DO?

Ask questions! I’m just a Year 12 student who has pieced together information from teachers, friends and the internet and haphazardly put it together in the span of half an hour. I’ll have missed something, or got something wrong. If you think of anything, please reply in the thread below!

Hopefully this helps! If I think of anything more, I will add it later - if this is useful, then maybe the mods could pin this? (So I don't look like a right fool.) The truth is, ATAR is variable, due to it being a percentile instead of a score. It's a rank, and how can you predict a rank? It depends on the people around you. And that is where the core variability of the ATAR stems from, and why no calculator will ever truly get it right.

Toodle-oo!

 

[coolcat6778]

UAC atar calculator, and many other calculators, are NOT accurate for low marks <80 in English advanced