Strange things about 2013 HSC results (1 Viewer)

[oasfree]

Hi Guys, I wonder if you detect anything strange about your marks? When I looked at school rankings and results from students I sort of know, things look different from previous years. Some schools fell badly in ranking and some rose unexpectedly. However, even schools that fell in ranking still produce lots of 99.x ATARs!!! Some students with as little as 2 subjects at 90% or better (DA), still got 95.x ATAR and many students with only 3 DAs got 99.50+ ATARs!

This HSC exam is based on new curriculum and probably dumbed down a bit to fit other states so I wonder if we will end up with situation where we have too many students getting 99.x and there is no way to distinguished them properly. So the Uni top courses at top Universities may end up with cut off at 99.x!

I also notice that students with math ext 2 or Eng ext 2 and some core subjects in science could get 99.70+ ATAR even with only 3 DAs. One would normally expect those with 5 DAs or more to have any hope to get over 97 in the past. So there is even better scaling for harder units?

So I wonder if the ATARs for this year is worth as much as previous years. Some people told me ATAR is more or less just a ranking but I feeling is that this year has a lot more students with ATARs concentrated the range 95.00 - 99.99

 

[Randox]

Hi Guys, I wonder if you detect anything strange about your marks? When I looked at school rankings and results from students I sort of know, things look different from previous years. Some schools fell badly in ranking and some rose unexpectedly. However, even schools that fell in ranking still produce lots of 99.x ATARs!!! Some students with as little as 2 subjects at 90% or better (DA), still got 95.x ATAR and many students with only 3 DAs got 99.50+ ATARs!

This HSC exam is based on new curriculum and probably dumbed down a bit to fit other states so I wonder if we will end up with situation where we have too many students getting 99.x and there is no way to distinguished them properly. So the Uni top courses at top Universities may end up with cut off at 99.x!

I also notice that students with math ext 2 or Eng ext 2 and some core subjects in science could get 99.70+ ATAR even with only 3 DAs. One would normally expect those with 5 DAs or more to have any hope to get over 97 in the past. So there is even better scaling for harder units?

So I wonder if the ATARs for this year is worth as much as previous years. Some people told me ATAR is more or less just a ranking but I feeling is that this year has a lot more students with ATARs concentrated the range 95.00 - 99.99

Nope Atars are a rank! Every year 48 people received 99.95 atar. There is 48 people per 0.05 atar. Also a band 6 in physics/chem goes to 98 atar ussually. It's the same as every year.

 

[anomalousdecay]

I don't know what you are on about.

For the past 5 years (dare I say even 20 years), a 90 in MX1 would give an aggregate equivalent of a 98+ ATAR. A 90 in MX2 would give you an aggregate equivalent of a 99.7+ ATAR.

I got similar marks to these and my ATAR was around 96 this year.

Also, I got close to a band 6 in Chem and a low band 6 in Physics. These would give an aggregate equivalent of a 96/97 ATAR.

So you would think I would get a 98+ ATAR right? Wrong.

I got a high band 4 in English Advanced. This gives an aggregate equivalent of an 75-80 ATAR.

As a result, my aggregate was worth around a 96 ATAR.

I ended up with 2 B6's (MX1 and Physics) and got within 2 marks of B6 for my other two subjects.

Did I get a 99+ ATAR? No I didn't.

An ATAR is a rank and is purely based on your aggregate in comparison to the aggregate of other people in the state.

An ATAR of 95 is indicative that your aggregate was at the 5th percentile of all aggregates in the state.

The number each year is generally the same, and is only proportional to the cohort size each year.

So I wonder if the ATARs for this year is worth as much as previous years. Some people told me ATAR is more or less just a ranking but I feeling is that this year has a lot more students with ATARs concentrated the range 95.00 - 99.99

You got this misconception because many people on these forums have ATARs of 95+. Generally, you won't see many people on these forums who get a 60 ATAR, simply because they don't care much about study.

The people who care a lot about study are usually on here, hence giving you this misconception.

Nope Atars are a rank! Every year 48 people received 99.95 atar. There is 48 people per 0.05 atar. Also a band 6 in physics/chem goes to 98 atar ussually. It's the same as every year.

Nope. Its proportional to how large your year 7 cohort was.

If the year 7 cohort was as large as 100000 people, then only 50 people would get 99.95, and every percentile after that would have roughly 50 people as well.

If the year 7 cohort was only as large as 50000 people, then only 25 people would get 99.95 and a similar amount per percentile after that.

Also, the aggregate is the big factor, not the actual mark.

 

[oasfree]

Guys, thanks for the info. Have a look at these DAs and let me know if they are worth 99.50+. The way I see it is that, this student got a few exams over 90 and the rest under 90, so 99.75 seems excessive?

English (Advanced) 2 unit (15140), Chemistry 2 unit (15050), Mathematics Extension 2 2 unit (15260). This student must have done math ext1 in year 11 and must have got a DA for it.

This school got 9 students at 99.x and the above is one of these students.

So a simple way to get 99.x is to focus on doing hard subjects? The above student did very well in math ext1 and ext2. These accounts for 4 units. Chem and English (advanced) made up 4 units. Two other units must be under 90. So I can see that having 2 units under 90 did not stop a student from getting 99.75.

One overseas student (long ago) said to me that the secret to 99.x HSC profile is very simple, do 4U math, 3U Eng and 4U of science subjects as hard subjects scale well. Now there are so many subjects to choose from but this school asks students to do whatever they like for fun up to year 10. Then they seem to advise the top students to focus on 4U math, 3-4U Eng and science to seek maximum ATAR. I don't know if this is still correct logic. The school did suffer a big fall in ranking this HSC, but a lot of top students still get 99.x! In fact similar number of students compared to their best ever year got above 97. What I don't understand is why having about 100 DAs lower than 2012 did not seem to impact top students. Even those with only 3-4 DAs reached 99.x! I though every exam (that add to 10 units) must be above 90 to hope for 97+.

 

[D94]

Where are you getting your data from? It seems like you've plucked it out of thin air. (specifically the ATARs and 2 DA's, 3 DA's etc.)

Anyway, there is almost certainly nothing strange going on.

Also, you need to understand how school rankings work. For starters, they are unofficial. They are not published by BOS, they are mainly published by the press/media, and by other third party websites that are not associated with the BOS. Secondly, the ones that the press publishes base their rankings on the percentage of DA's, which is a rather rudimentary method. It puts 99 and 90 in the same group, and it completely separates 89 and 90. In theory, a school can be ranked last, but have all students with an ATAR of above 97 since all students achieved 89 in higher scaling subjects.

 

[Spiritual Bean]

Don't conclude that the ATAR's are concentrated around 95-99 based on reading the ATAR thread on this site. The kids on here are by no means a representative sample of the state. There's a school that didn't get any b6's, and b5's were rare, in a 150 student cohort. There's no conspiracy here, just students underestimating their ability and being surprised at their marks.

 

[oasfree]

Where are you getting your data from? It seems like you've plucked it out of thin air. (specifically the ATARs and 2 DA's, 3 DA's etc.)

< Real data I have from a school. I know the students and just go to BOS website to extract the DAs for students. This is why I do not mention school name.

Anyway, there is almost certainly nothing strange going on.

Also, you need to understand how school rankings work. For starters, they are unofficial. They are not published by BOS, they are mainly published by the press/media, and by other third party websites that are not associated with the BOS. Secondly, the ones that the press publishes base their rankings on the percentage of DA's, which is a rather rudimentary method. It puts 99 and 90 in the same group, and it completely separates 89 and 90. In theory, a school can be ranked last, but have all students with an ATAR of above 97 since all students achieved 89 in higher scaling subjects.

When I see a huge slump of DAs by over 30% compared to previous year and a huge fall in school rankings by both all-rounders and DAs, I thought that top students of the school would be in serious trouble but the number of students who got 99.x seemed to stay the same as 2012. As this is a very big number of students with 99.x and some got only 3 DAs, I cannot see why.

I also got one relative with 95.50 ATAR and only 2 DAs and one of them was math ext1 only. So with 4 units at/over 90 and the rest of the units under 90 (with some known weak subjects), would the ATAR be as high as 95.50? It seems too high to be true. As ATAR is ranking, does it means many students must have done badly for a seemingly average performances to have such high ATARs?

 

[D94]

You are misinformed about what is an ATAR. It is not a mark, it is a rank. The number of DA's has nothing to do with how the ATAR is calculated.

A Band is determined during the alignment process. This process seeks to standardise the marks, such that the performance/mark that is between a Band 5 and Band 6 is awarded a 90; similarly for 80, 70 etc.

To determine your ATAR, UAC is given your raw HSC exam mark and your moderated assessment marks, both before the alignment with the standards. They don't care how BOS aligned the marks to the Bands - that's all irrelevant.

You don't need a certain number of Band 6's in order to achieve a certain ATAR. Theoretically, one year, you may need all Band 6's in order to obtain a 60 ATAR; whereas in another year, all Band 4's may get you a 99 ATAR. The ATAR is determined by the quality of the candidature doing one set of subjects compared to another doing another set of subjects.

As I said before, getting 89 in all high scaling subjects can get you a 97 ATAR. But 89 is not recognised in the school rankings. The unofficial rankings are determined by the percentage of Band 6's, not by ATAR. If a school had every student achieve 89 in all high scaling subjects, and all students got above 97 ATAR, they would still be ranked last in the state.

Please understand what an ATAR is, how an ATAR is determined, and how schools are ranked, and then you will see that nothing strange is going on.

 

[RealiseNothing]

I can't even comprehend how you came to this conclusion.

 

[Trebla]

Um, I don't think the statistics are being interpreted correctly. Consider this scenario:

Student A gets 89 in all his/her subjects.

Student B gets 90 in all the same subjects as student A.

Hence, one would expect that student B would have only a slightly higher ATAR than student A. However, student B gets a mention on the DA/All Rounders list but student A does not.

The point is, getting the top band tells you just that and nothing else. It doesn't reveal any information about whether the student scored in the low 90s or high 90s. A student could have gotten high 90s in some subjects but get below 90 in others with a 99+ ATAR whilst others could have gotten low to mid 90s in all the same subjects also with a 99+ ATAR. There is too much variability in the categorical data to make any reasonable conclusions about ATARs from the DA list.

 

[RealiseNothing]

Um, I don't think the statistics are being interpreted correctly. Consider this scenario:

Student A gets 89 in all his/her subjects.

Student B gets 90 in all the same subjects as student A.

Hence, one would expect that student B would have only a slightly higher ATAR than student A. However, student B gets a mention on the DA/All Rounders list but student A does not.

The point is, getting the top band tells you just that and nothing else. It doesn't reveal any information about whether the student scored in the low 90s or high 90s. A student could have gotten high 90s in some subjects but get below 90 in others with a 99+ ATAR whilst others could have gotten low to mid 90s in all the same subjects also with a 99+ ATAR. There is too much variability in the categorical data to make any reasonable conclusions about ATARs from the DA list.

Also consider if student B did low scaling subjects whereas student A did high scaling subjects. Student A would have a much higher ATAR with no DA's as oppose to student B who had 5 DA's.

 

[anomalousdecay]

I think OP does not understand the concept of an ATAR being derived from an aggregate.

 

[Randox]

When I see a huge slump of DAs by over 30% compared to previous year and a huge fall in school rankings by both all-rounders and DAs, I thought that top students of the school would be in serious trouble but the number of students who got 99.x seemed to stay the same as 2012. As this is a very big number of students with 99.x and some got only 3 DAs, I cannot see why.

I also got one relative with 95.50 ATAR and only 2 DAs and one of them was math ext1 only. So with 4 units at/over 90 and the rest of the units under 90 (with some known weak subjects), would the ATAR be as high as 95.50? It seems too high to be true. As ATAR is ranking, does it means many students must have done badly for a seemingly average performances to have such high ATARs?

Bolded part... Not possible. Stop using anecdotal evidence to support your claims. The fact is that every year roughly the same amount of people get 95+ atar and 90+ atar and 50+ atar. Also the percentage of band 6's stays relatively constant between years as well. I got 93.25 atar with 0 da's because i got a few 89's in high scaling subjects.

 

[oasfree]

I understand ATAR ranking and obviously this depends on the year. If the tests are too hard for the year, a lot of students will get low raw marks but that will not alter the ranking as the top performer would get 99.95 as a ranking. I also understand that DAs are not reliable in predicting ATARs at all but this is the only information the BOS releases publicly on their website so that is all I have to look at.

What I have is a small set of students that I could find their DAs, check the subjects they got their DAs in and try to assess the claim of this school that these students got 99.x. So all I am trying is to figure out is how trustworthy is this claim of a huge number of 99.x ATARs the school has got for these students. What I hope is people out there with their own HSC results could look at their own ATAR and DAs and comment whether it makes sense to get only 3 DAs for 6 units and achieves 99.75 ATAR like of the student I used in the example.

A lot of information is not available in the public domain so only the experience of various HSC students here can help to judge whether a claim is reasonable or not.

I am trying to see if this claim is believable or just a boastful claim. If its claim of the big number of 99.x ATARs is true against the backdrop of big fall in DAs and all-rounders then it would imply that the other schools within top 40 of these rankings have taken an unprecedented number of 99.x ATAR. I would find this hard to believe.

On the newspapers I see that many unknown schools leaped up and got a lot of DAs and all-rounders. Therefore I feel the 99.x ATARs should be spread out more this year to lower schools. This makes me further doubt the claim from some top private schools about the 99.x ATARs they got (despite fall in number of all rounders and DAs)

In other words, if there are many students here who got only 3 DAs and got 99.x then it is likely that the claim (about the large number of students with 99.x ATARs) from this school is believable otherwise it is just a fib to cover for its damaging drop in rankings.

 

[anomalousdecay]

Its a fib.

Anything to do with school rankings is a fib.

School rankings don't affect your ATAR.

And plus, if the exams are hard, they are aligned to give the appropriate mark.

 

[oasfree]

I think I finally understand this better by looking at the aggregate versus ATAR.

http://www.uac.edu.au/documents/atar/2013-tables/2013_HSC_TableA8-A9.pdf

ATAR 99.50 requires aggregate 450.00 which I suppose to be the combined scaled marks from both exams and schools for 10 units. When a student has 4 DAs and these accounts for 8 units (each at/above 45) already plus high internal rank in a school, the school marks will not be dragged down at all. If the left-over 2 units are also near 89 then it is completely possible to achieve 450.00 or a bit better and secure ATAR 99.50 or a bit better.

The way I read BOS' description of school marks scaling (try to match top, mean and bottom marks with exam marks) is that this provides safety net for all students while still guarantees top students in a low ranked schools the mark they deserve (based on their scaled exam marks). What seems to be the real advantage of extension subjects is that there are fewer students, less competition and a chance for brilliant students to leap ahead to secure the top marks.

http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/hsc-results/determining-achievement.html

This why it is "easier" for really smart students to do extensions and secure top marks and not be buried among a large crowd like the case of easy subjects where too many people get near 100%. So by doing 4U math, 3-4U Eng, 1-2 science subjects or 1 science and 1 humanity subject, students aim to get above 450.00 aggregate to secure 99.x ATAR.

So a drop in school ranking based on DAs definitely affect ATARs of average students but won't really affect the top 10-15 students of the school. The top students get pretty much same from school scaled marks as their real scaled exam marks. So it is the case of "What you can get from exams is almost what you actually get."

 

[enoilgam]

I'm reading through this thread and I'm struggling to understand the point you are trying to make. Also, it seems as if most of what you are saying is conjecture and speculation based on weak inductions.

 

[iEatOysters]

really, the only impact school ranks have on your ATAR is probably your self-esteem/confidence levels.
i know a few people who have moved to "higher end schools" and have kinda dropped off because of an unrealistic expectation that their new school will pull up their atar.