In a nutshell, this is what happens to each successive HSC student who wishes to recieve a UAI:
Just after examination and marking, you have the following marks for EACH COURSE:
- School assessment mark (mark the school submits)
- Raw examination mark (mark from external test)
The school assessment mark goes through a process called moderating in which justifications are made to students' marks in every school in correspondance to their ranking. In other words it is a way to stop any school becoming advantaged or disadvantaged over other schools when marks are submitted, due to different standards and marking criteria in each school. However, ranking does not change, so it is just a way of making each school "equal" in the state. The resultant mark after moderating is called the moderated assessment mark.
Your raw examination mark remains the same and does not change.
The raw examination mark and your moderated assessment mark are combined and converted to a mark out of 50 for each one unit course or a mark out of 100 for each 2 unit course. This is your RAW HSC MARK. This is NOT the mark that is reported to you from the Board of Studies when you recieve your results.
After that the SCALING PROCESS begins. The raw HSC mark gets scaled according to the statistics of that course and the overall state performance. After scaling, that new mark is called the SCALED MARK.
Your scaled marks for each course are taken and YOUR HIGHEST 8 UNITS OF SCALED MARKS PLUS 2 UNITS OF ENGLISH are then added together to form an aggregate out of 500.
Your aggregated mark out of 500 is then compared to other students in the state. The top ranked marks out of 500 get a UAI of 100.00, the second highest marks out of 500 get 99.95 and so on.
For each course:
SCHOOL ASSESSMENT MARK --> MODERATING --> MODERATED ASSESSMENT MARK
then
RAW EXAMINATION MARK + MODERATED ASSESSMENT MARK = RAW HSC MARK
after that
RAW HSC MARK --> SCALING --> SCALED MARK
finally (if scaled mark would count in the UAI)
SCALED MARK--> AGGREGATED (added to other scaled marks) --> UNIVERSITY ADMISSIONS INDEX
Keep in mind that these type of marks are not given to you when you receive your results. The marks you receive in your HSC goes through a different process of alteration to the scaling process.