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getting 99.95.... (3 Viewers)

panda15

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Now if something as trivial as waking up can give you even the tiniest level of satisfaction, then surely something that requires a year of dedication and sacrifice will feel incredible.
Wut. Waking up at 6am is harder than getting 99.95.
 

Futuremedstudent

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Hmm well let's put it this way, 1920 people in the state receive an ATAR above 98, while 960 people in the state receive 99+ and a mere 48 people receive 99.95.

Aiming that high has more to do with self-satisfaction, pride and I daresay ego than anything else. I know the saying, shoot for the moon, and if you miss you'll land amongst the stars, but yeah just don't be too disappointed if things don't go your way. As others have said, it's pretty tough to discern between the ability of students past a certain level, say 99.6+, so luck does play a pretty big role. What if the Mod B essay I memorized for English fit the essay question perfectly, or if my creative piece was perfectly adaptable this year? What if I had all my weetbix on the morning of the 4U paper and in the last 15 minutes, something clicked and I was able to figure out the last question lol?

The only practical reason for wanting .95 would be to enter USYD Combined Med, which is fair point I guess though. Still, that's only for the students who didn't do well enough in the UMAT. I'm sure the intelligence is correlated somewhere there.
Also people who want a guaranteed spot for law @usyd
 

cho6092

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Another reason apart from USyd combined med is also for scholarships - both degree and accommodation at colleges, which can be incredibly helpful for interstate people too

Hmm well let's put it this way, 1920 people in the state receive an ATAR above 98, while 960 people in the state receive 99+ and a mere 48 people receive 99.95.

Aiming that high has more to do with self-satisfaction, pride and I daresay ego than anything else. I know the saying, shoot for the moon, and if you miss you'll land amongst the stars, but yeah just don't be too disappointed if things don't go your way. As others have said, it's pretty tough to discern between the ability of students past a certain level, say 99.6+, so luck does play a pretty big role. What if the Mod B essay I memorized for English fit the essay question perfectly, or if my creative piece was perfectly adaptable this year? What if I had all my weetbix on the morning of the 4U paper and in the last 15 minutes, something clicked and I was able to figure out the last question lol?

The only practical reason for wanting .95 would be to enter USYD Combined Med, which is fair point I guess though. Still, that's only for the students who didn't do well enough in the UMAT. I'm sure the intelligence is correlated somewhere there.
 

Mdyeow

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I'm going to respond to the OP on each of those bolded points.

Diminishing returns kicks in when your ATAR approaches 99.95.

A number of people have alluded to this already, but I can attest that there are only two factors which determine if you get the top (and I mean THE top) ATAR. They are: scaling, and luck. In my case, I ended up with the 100.00 because I performed my best in English (which then flows indirectly to your other subjects' weighting) and Latin (once again, extremely high scaling). I knew this when I chose my subjects (based on what I was good at, and what scaled well), so to an extent I was able to "hack" my performance. But a whole bunch of my friends rolled state rankings across multiple subjects and ended up missing out on the 100.00 by one or two .05's. Did I study harder? Definitely not. Smarter? Debatable. So therefore, the only real discriminant was luck.

If you truly follow through with it, you will make sacrifices in other aspects of your life. Social. Emotional. Spiritual, even. All your growth will be academically geared.

During my HSC year, I began my first serious relationship, swam every week, and gamed almost every second day. All this already done to death in my AMA. This also fits with my point about scaling and luck (though of course you need to work decently to get to that highest echelon).

Now, during my university studies, I focused almost exclusively on writing professionally. I bled internships out of the wazoo, picked up freelance gigs that saw me writing from 6am to 9pm (with a bit of class and sleep thrown in), and put so much into my first comms role that I ended up crying in the toilets on several occasions. This is not a pretty story. It has a pretty ending - me being comfortable enough in a role far more senior than my age to start my own English training business while writing a novel - but it is not a pretty story. I sacrificed friendships, relationships, all sorts of fun things to get to where I am.

Would I change any of that? Unlikely. But I have been on both sides of the equation - the flawless victory and the sacrifice play. You just have to keep asking yourself if it's worth it, and not be afraid to opt out before it's too late to.

In Year 12, many students turn 18. They start to mature as people. They learn about life, people, who they are and values they might hold for the rest of their lives. Aiming for 99.95 will restrict most of your learning to the textbook form.

Not necessarily, it won't. My 100.00 taught me that any system can be broken if you remember it's a system. It also taught me that hardest-working rarely, if ever, wins. It's not the goal that will restrict your learning - it's how you pursue that goal. You start to learn about life, people, self, and your values around the age of 18, but you will continue doing so for the rest of your life. And if you don't...well, I'm truly sorry.

Hope that helps the OP and others out there.
 

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