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Selective school scaling (1 Viewer)

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seremify007 said:
ahaha.. I'll put it this way, my personal UAI estimate (from school principal) is about 10 higher than what JUaiSeek and SAM. .

what school are you from?
 

seremify007

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helper said:
No. This will prepare you better for the exam and may result in better results but nothing to do with scaling.
I dunno about that but I sure hope so- my trial marks were piss poor but I was on average at my school.
 

angelar

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i dont know how totally accurate this is... but as far as i was told the only advantage for selective schools scaling wise is that the students are in tougher competition with each other, so USUALLY the internal marks are a little lower than what their HSC marks would end up being, so in that case, they may be pulled up 1 mark or so by BOS....EXAMPLE:
INTERNAL: 84
HSC MARk: 88
so that students internal mark would be pulled up to say 86, as a closer mark to their external, in case any inaccuracies occurred in the markings in schools....but that could happen to any student, at any school, as long as it also aligned with their ranking, eg. didnt put them higher than the studnet ranked above them

DONT QUOTE ME ON THIS THO...however thats what i was told
 
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seremify007

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Simply put there's no special treatment for selective high schools- it just so happens there are a higher quality candidature in the school so therefore when it comes to adjusting/aligning internal/external marks there's a greater discrepancy. All that's happened is our marks have been awarded on a different marking scale/criteria- but in the end, it'll all get adjusted with averages and whatnot to suit the BoS.
 

lala2

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You might have to use your school stats from last year or previuos years to determine what HSC mark you might get, e.g. raw marks I was about 70-ish in all subjects except for maths, but:

- 77 people got 90+ in Eng Adv, I'm ranked 55th so I should get 90+ :D
- 92 people got 90+ in 2U Maths, I'm ranked equal 10th so I should get 90+ :D
- 70%-ish of the Bio cohort got 80+, I'm ranked in the top 33% so I should get close to 90
- etc...

Maybe that would just boost my self esteem, and Dec 17th will tell, but with adjusting my marks using last year' stats (and they were the worst cohort to go through our school for a few years), I get a UAI of 97.45 :D which is better than 88.75 using my raw marks :D.

And no, selective school scaling dosen't exist--it's just the nature of the school and how they do compared to the state that drags up their internal marks. You don't get points for going to a particular school, otherwise all the comprehensives would be empty by now.
 

seremify007

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I think that's how our estimates were made- but then as I was thinking.. I wonder- what if our entire grade is just really stupid?
 

huangker

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Well the idea that selective school kids get bonus UAI points from scaling just isn’t true. There’s just a lot of complex mathematics behind it, the point is to standardize all the internal marks from different schools to make it (theoretically) fairer for everyone. I don’t think the BOS really reveals exactly how it’s done but here’s the general idea.

Scaling is done twice, once by the BOS, to change the mean and standard deviation of your year group’s internal assessments to that of the external exams. Your internal marks may change, but your rank will remain the same. As an example, say your school mean for subject X was 80 with a standard deviation of 5 and u got 85. So you are one standard deviation off from your mean. In the external exams, your year group gets a mean of 84 and standard deviation of 7. This would mean your internal mark will get scaled to around 91. This tends to be the case with selective schools as they either mark harsher or have harder exams (although this isn’t always the case) and so the BOS will have to scale up the internals. Anyway, these scaled scores are what you see from the BOS. (I have no idea btw, how they scale raw external marks).

The second set of scaling (internal and external marks) is done by UAC who will take these results and scale according their own standards. This means for example, a 95 scaled mark in EXT2 Math will be worth MUCH MORE to your UAI than a subject like Legal Studies. I think you can actually order material from UAC which goes thru in detail how certain subjects are scaled.


In terms of the SAM, you will need to feed in your scaled marks (or at least what u expect will be your scaled marks). I go to James Ruse, so a lot of that has already been done for me (i.e. the school scales the raw marks to the previous year’s BOS scaled marks so they are usually fairly accurate). As lala2 was saying, this is actually quite a good measure of your scaled marks. What you could do is, find your rank for every subject, find some from the grade who did the HSC the year before and ask their scaled mark. Unless your grade is a lot better or worse than the grade above, this is one of the best ways to get your scaled marks.

James Ruse actually does UAI estimates (I think NSG does too) in a very formal manner. They scale internals to the marks from the grade before and scale again using information from UAC. It doesn’t actually go on your report; rather it’s meant to give you an idea of where you are. I find that the Ruse estimates tend to be lower than the SAM scores. Anyways I hope I’ve made things a little more clear.

Jeremy
 

seremify007

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ROFL I could sooo tell you were from JR. Don't worry it's not such a bad thing- it's just a Baulkoer's 6th sense =P

We don't get our scaled marks or anything- but we can request a rough estimate from the Principal based on Trial marks, however for scholarship/cadetships/UMAT/etc... I think Baulko just said "Write 95+" for everyone ><
 

huangker

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hahaha! baulko 6th sense :p not such a bad thing?!?!
Hehe theres always a bit of friendly antagonism between ruse and baulko hey?

Ruse puts trial estimates for scholarships etc

I just get buggered though, when people get the impression selective schools give u bonus uai marks.
 

seremify007

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I think they forget the simple concept of a selective high school is to bunch together people who would get higher than average UAIs to begin with... But yeh it's all friendly rivalry- We don't like to think we're cooler than you guys, we just know it. jkjk~ But after reading today's paper- Good work to that Rachel Zhang chick... she should become an accountant I think.
 

huangker

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seremify007 said:
I think they forget the simple concept of a selective high school is to bunch together people who would get higher than average UAIs to begin with... But yeh it's all friendly rivalry- We don't like to think we're cooler than you guys, we just know it. jkjk~ But after reading today's paper- Good work to that Rachel Zhang chick... she should become an accountant I think.
hahaha yea it would be funny if selective schools took in the best kids in year 7 and produced bad academic results in year 12. It is really the fact that you are placed with a group of other kids who are commited to learning.

Havent read the paper 2day, how did Rachel go?
 

blackfriday

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huangker said:
hahaha yea it would be funny if selective schools took in the best kids in year 7 and produced bad academic results in year 12. It is really the fact that you are placed with a group of other kids who are commited to learning.

Havent read the paper 2day, how did Rachel go?
yeh it would be funny, which is what exactly normo does. take the ruse/baulko rejects (which are still quite bright) and turn the lot of them into junkies and alcoholics.
 

huangker

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seremify007 said:
Rachel said in the paper that she was dreaming about superannuation the night before the 2u paper!
Hahah, poor rachel, i think she meant to say "nightmares abt super"!! Well it cant be worse than what happened to me. I was dreaming abt writing out essays after the english paper two all night.

blackfriday said:
yeh it would be funny, which is what exactly normo does. take the ruse/baulko rejects (which are still quite bright) and turn the lot of them into junkies and alcoholics.
Hahaha im sure theres a quite few good kiddies at normo. Ruse took in dang yang though, wat did you guys make of that?
 
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seremify007

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huangker said:
Hahaha im sure theres a quite few good kiddies at normo. Ruse took in dang yang though, wat did you guys make of that?
DY is one ov my buddies- I think his reputation at normo for making inappropriate comments precedes him. I met him once in the ct before he went to JR back in yr10... ROFL. He's a decent guy though =]

Btw Jeremy, add me to msn if you want- seremify [@] hotmail.com
 

blackfriday

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oi jeff you obviously dont know DY like we do mate. nice guy, strange dispositions.
 

seremify007

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blackfriday said:
oi jeff you obviously dont know DY like we do mate. nice guy, strange dispositions.
ROFL... I've never met a Normo guy who's stood up for DY. Even without reason they like to dig into him for some reason >_> He can't be that bad can he? I remember someone telling me he made an insult at someone when they were playing handball- "hahaha you're fat" and that it was.. very lame >_>
 

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Ok, so I'm not really following this, but I come from a selective school, and when I got my end of year report ( yr 11) i entered my Assessment score to the SAM and got 85.6. Now I know this isn't 100% acurate, but GENERALLY, if my scores remain the same, should i expect a higher UAI than 85.6 in the HSC because I come from a more competetive environment, which means that I am marked tougher than a normal school? Is that right?
 

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