mrzeidan1 said:
Hey... Im confused how all this school ranking business works...
I dont know what my school is ranked, but i dont think it would be near the top 100... Does this mean that my uai will be less then someone achieving the same marks/ranks in another school??
Possibly yes.
The way it works is,
- Everyone receives the HSC External Exam mark they actually get (50%)
- The Internal Marks (other 50%) are determined such that the person who comes first gets the highest, and so on. The person who comes first, gets as their internal mark, the highest mark anyone at the school gets in the External HSC Exam, and the rest go down so the gaps stay the same.
So, in the case of MX2, clearly you will be ranked 1, so you will get your External HSC Mark as both your internal and external (and hence your overall) mark. For arguments sake let's say you go to the lowest ranked school in the state and you come first in all your subjects comfortably. You will then get your own External Exam mark as your overall mark for everything.
Is that bad? Well, it's actually what happened to me (school ranked 493rd lol), and the positive side is at a low ranked school, you're sort of 'in control' of all your own marks. The down side is if you rank internally somewhere other than first, and everyone at the school does badly at the externals then you may be "dragged down".
The opposite is a top school, where you might get say 90/100 internally but be ranked like 10th due to the high standard. Well if the top 10 people get say 98+ in the External you'll get dragged up due to your
mrzeidan1 said:
Also, it looks like i might be the only person doing Ext 2 maths in my grade... How does this effect the uai situation?
thanks
As stated above, you are guaranteed being ranked first, so your result in MX2 will be such that your External Exam mark = internal mark = overall HSC mark.
To put it simply, going to a poor school and hence being ranked first in all subjects, means that your marks will be determined by the HSC Exams alone.
To compare your marks and ranks to people at top schools, well we don't have your marks and ranks, so generally:
If someone at a top school is ranked first, their situation is the same as yours because both of you will have your final marks determined solely by the HSC exam. You could of course argue they will benefit from better resources and teachers but we have to ignore that effect.
If someone in a top school has say 80 - 90 internal marks thus far and a 10 - 2 type rank, then compared to you, their situation is favourable because it's possible (though not certain) that a large number of the people ranked above them will perform very well in the HSC and help bring up their internal component.
If someone at a top school has say 50 - 70 internal marks thus far and a 50 - 20 type rank, their situation is also favourable but not much so, because how much the internal marks are 'dragged up' is determined by ranking order and the gaps between, well at a top school that kind of mark would see you far behind the others, so they wouldn't help you much.
Remember everyone gets their own HSC Exam mark, no one can drag that up, so the strategy is to aim for Rank 1 and kill the hsc exams.