Guide to how Study Scores and ATARs are calculated!

[brenden]

So basically being ranked 1 in a strong cohort accounts for naught if the same student does not perform equally well in the exam.

Whereas a student who is ranked, say 10th  in the cohort and does exceptionally well in the exam will now ace overall as his SAC GA score now gets automatically scaled up.

No this counts for a lot. The student will get the highest exam score as their SAC score. The 10th student will still do exceptionally well however his SAC GA depends on the 10th highest exam score.

I should stop getting nervous and just aim to do my best! Que sera sera...

Most certainly.

Another quick question - I've been hearing how SAC scores get scaled up? So a student getting say 100/100 can't expect any scaling - go any higher than that? Is that his max SAC score?

Yep. The SAC scores are equivalent to exam scores. I've never seen someone get more than 100% on any VCAA exam.

And I'm not meaning to be prejudicial at all but I wouldn't worry about your ranking and SAC score etc etc going to MacRob.

[Vicky95]

So basically being ranked 1 in a strong cohort accounts for naught if the same student does not perform equally well in the exam.

Whereas a student who is ranked, say 10th  in the cohort and does exceptionally well in the exam will now ace overall as his SAC GA score now gets automatically scaled up.

No this counts for a lot. The student will get the highest exam score as their SAC score. The 10th student will still do exceptionally well however his SAC GA depends on the 10th highest exam score.

Right, thanks so much for this detailed explanation. I think I've understood how the system works now.

Edit: Sorry no idea how to get my post out of that quote...lol

[brenden]

Hahaha, no worries at all Vicky's Owner.
And FYI, you could have deleted the post and re-quoted

[Truck]

So basically being ranked 1 in a strong cohort accounts for naught if the same student does not perform equally well in the exam.

Whereas a student who is ranked, say 10th  in the cohort and does exceptionally well in the exam will now ace overall as his SAC GA score now gets automatically scaled up.

No this counts for a lot. The student will get the highest exam score as their SAC score. The 10th student will still do exceptionally well however his SAC GA depends on the 10th highest exam score.

I should stop getting nervous and just aim to do my best! Que sera sera...

Most certainly.

Another quick question - I've been hearing how SAC scores get scaled up? So a student getting say 100/100 can't expect any scaling - go any higher than that? Is that his max SAC score?

Yep. The SAC scores are equivalent to exam scores. I've never seen someone get more than 100% on any VCAA exam.

And I'm not meaning to be prejudicial at all but I wouldn't worry about your ranking and SAC score etc etc going to MacRob.

Yeah that's true, to clarify my post, it won't matter for you nearly as much because you're at McRob.

[Faith-PoweR]

Can someone tell me how many marks do I need to get in the ESL exam for each section if I aim for 43+
How about the SAC?
Thanks! 

[FlorianK]

Can someone tell me how many marks do I need to get in the ESL exam for each section if I aim for 43+
How about the SAC?
Thanks! 

At least 8/10 for all 3. One of them will probably have to be 8.5

[munir]

So basically being ranked 1 in a strong cohort accounts for naught if the same student does not perform equally well in the exam.

Whereas a student who is ranked, say 10th  in the cohort and does exceptionally well in the exam will now ace overall as his SAC GA score now gets automatically scaled up.

No this counts for a lot. The student will get the highest exam score as their SAC score. The 10th student will still do exceptionally well however his SAC GA depends on the 10th highest exam score.

I should stop getting nervous and just aim to do my best! Que sera sera...

Most certainly.

Another quick question - I've been hearing how SAC scores get scaled up? So a student getting say 100/100 can't expect any scaling - go any higher than that? Is that his max SAC score?

Yep. The SAC scores are equivalent to exam scores. I've never seen someone get more than 100% on any VCAA exam.

And I'm not meaning to be prejudicial at all but I wouldn't worry about your ranking and SAC score etc etc going to MacRob.

I think sacs scale lol. Basing off what my teacher showed me, some kid who was rank 2 in last year's cohort scored 28 and rank 7 scored 38?

[Holmes]

So if there are three students, Thushan, Dan and Paul in a cohort and they each get an average SAC mark of 100, 70, 60 respectively, this means that Thushan will be ranked 1, Dan will be ranked 2 and Paul will be ranked 3. Say they all sit the exam, and on the exam day, Dan's beard has grown so much that he can't see his exam paper anymore, thus, their exam marks are 100, 20, 70.

This means that for the SAC GA - Thushan will get 100, Dan will get 70 and Paul will get 20.

So, who is this famous Thushan? A genius? 

[grannysmith]

So, who is this famous Thushan? A genius?

Rexxy. Yes, a genius.

[spectroscopy]

i have a sac score question LOL
if in a cohort of say 4, there are 3 students who are equal rank 1 and the other student is ranked last, come exam time the students scores are 100% 80% 70% and 60%, does that mean that the top 3 students would get 100% for their sacs, and the 4th student would get 60? because he would be the second highest rank but the 4th highest student? or would he get the 80% ?
THANKS GUYS

[Neo]

Hypothetical Question:

Let's say we have a cohort of students undertaking unit 3/4 'Methods' at some school. We have one hardworking student who performs significantly better than the rest of his cohort, who are, for the sake of this question, under performing (they are unwilling, lazy students)

All the SACs for the year have been completed and the cohort ranking sees the hardworking student well above the rest of his cohort. Soon enough the students sit the methods exam and score as follows:

The hardworking student's effort pays off, he receives full marks on both exams. The rest of the cohort, however, do not even attempt the questions and consequently they all get 0 for both exams.

Will the student's SAC mark (one of three graded assessments) be in any way affected by the performance of his cohort or will the student simply receive his own average exam mark as his score for the SAC component of the graded assessments?
 

[Lasercookie]

The student won't be affected, since they would have been rank 1. His sac mark would be correlated with the highest exam mark from the cohort, which would have been his own.

[Neo]

The student won't be affected, since they would have been rank 1. His sac mark would be correlated with the highest exam mark from the cohort, which would have been his own.

Thank you for answering. So does this SAC score become his/her concrete GA mark or is this score further scaled by other factors (like the GAT for example)?

If there are other factors in regards to the scaling of the SAC mark, could someone care to identify them as well as the extent to which they affect the mark

[Lasercookie]

Thank you for answering. So does this SAC score become his/her concrete GA mark or is this score further scaled by other factors (like the GAT for example)?

If there are other factors in regards to the scaling of the SAC mark, could someone care to identify them as well as the extent to which they affect the mark

Scaled by other factors too.

These four pages is as far as I know all the detail that VCAA has given (there's probably more documents about it somewhere). For some parts they seem somewhat vague.
http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Pages/vce/exams/statisticalmoderation/statmod.aspx
http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/statmod2010.pdf
http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/handbook/2013/AdHand2013.pdf (section 12)
http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Pages/vce/exams/gat/relates.aspx#H2N1000B

They always state stuff along the lines of that "In all such cases, the examination scores will always be the major influence."

[Professor Polonsky]

From those pages, it seems that the actual raw (unmoderated) SAC mark does matter, especially between quartiles.