• Want to help us with this year's BoS Trials?
    Let us know before 30 June. See this thread for details
  • Looking for HSC notes and resources?
    Check out our Notes & Resources page

Newbie Question(s) (1 Viewer)

nandayo

ismist
Joined
Jun 25, 2006
Messages
252
Gender
Male
HSC
2008
Just had a few questions, and I tried to find the answers in other threads in this forum...but there's so many - and the whole UAI calculation thing seems to fly over my head, and I hear different things from different people, so here are my questions:

1) In a class of three students, if two students do poorly and one student does really well (so ranked first in ext. exam and in internal assessments), does that persons mark for the course get dragged down because of the other two? If it does, how is that fair...

2) I've accelerated one of my courses, and so I'll finish it at the end of this year. Does this mean the Board of Studies takes that mark and scales it individually?

I think q)1 is the one really itching at me at the moment, but thanks in advance for your answers! Especially people who have left school and still stay on here to comfort those freakin' out about the technicalities of UAI calculation. Cheers.
 

mzduxx2006

Member
Joined
Mar 18, 2007
Messages
323
Location
MERRYLANDS
Gender
Female
HSC
2007
nandayo said:
Just had a few questions, and I tried to find the answers in other threads in this forum...but there's so many - and the whole UAI calculation thing seems to fly over my head, and I hear different things from different people, so here are my questions:

1) In a class of three students, if two students do poorly and one student does really well (so ranked first in ext. exam and in internal assessments), does that persons mark for the course get dragged down because of the other two? If it does, how is that fair...

2) I've accelerated one of my courses, and so I'll finish it at the end of this year. Does this mean the Board of Studies takes that mark and scales it individually?

I think q)1 is the one really itching at me at the moment, but thanks in advance for your answers! Especially people who have left school and still stay on here to comfort those freakin' out about the technicalities of UAI calculation. Cheers.
scaling will affect you somewhat but at the end of the day its ur overall performance in which your UAI is calculated on. I am currently having the same problem with my chemistry class....everyone is failing and i am passing (sitting on a low band 5). Try not to stress about it.
 
Joined
Mar 3, 2005
Messages
2,359
Location
Wollongong
Gender
Male
HSC
2006
nandayo said:
Just had a few questions, and I tried to find the answers in other threads in this forum...but there's so many - and the whole UAI calculation thing seems to fly over my head, and I hear different things from different people, so here are my questions:

1) In a class of three students, if two students do poorly and one student does really well (so ranked first in ext. exam and in internal assessments), does that persons mark for the course get dragged down because of the other two? If it does, how is that fair...

2) I've accelerated one of my courses, and so I'll finish it at the end of this year. Does this mean the Board of Studies takes that mark and scales it individually?

I think q)1 is the one really itching at me at the moment, but thanks in advance for your answers! Especially people who have left school and still stay on here to comfort those freakin' out about the technicalities of UAI calculation. Cheers.
1) no it doesn't. unless they screw up the final exam and the other two people improve in which case it will bring your school mark down.

2) BoS doesn't take into account that you accelerated. as far as they know you are just a student who has done the hsc for that subject.
 

nandayo

ismist
Joined
Jun 25, 2006
Messages
252
Gender
Male
HSC
2008
Another question.

If your trial exam mark is say, late 80's border 90's - does this equate to a 90+ mark in the HSC exam? I know it depends on the difficulty of the paper, but it just seems that people seem to say that they got a sigificantly higher jap mark than shown by their assessment mark. Say a late 70's to an 80's a late 80's to a 90's etc. etc.

The whole aligning and scaling difference I don't get...If an 87 in the exam gets aligned to a 95 for example...why is that not taken to calculate the UAI..? Are trial exam marks generally lower than the final HSC marks...generally?..

If any of that confused blabber makes sense..
 
Joined
Mar 3, 2005
Messages
2,359
Location
Wollongong
Gender
Male
HSC
2006
nandayo said:
Another question.

If your trial exam mark is say, late 80's border 90's - does this equate to a 90+ mark in the HSC exam? I know it depends on the difficulty of the paper, but it just seems that people seem to say that they got a sigificantly higher jap mark than shown by their assessment mark. Say a late 70's to an 80's a late 80's to a 90's etc. etc.

The whole aligning and scaling difference I don't get...If an 87 in the exam gets aligned to a 95 for example...why is that not taken to calculate the UAI..? Are trial exam marks generally lower than the final HSC marks...generally?..

If any of that confused blabber makes sense..
it's because people either improve substantially, or sit easier tests than what they sat. :)
 

alby

cool duckie
Joined
Aug 31, 2003
Messages
2,327
Location
everywhere and nowhere
Gender
Female
HSC
2004
nandayo said:
Are trial exam marks generally lower than the final HSC marks...generally?..
they tend to make trials harder than the actual hsc. i dont know if that's just caus they can or if they're trying to scare you into thinking that you know crap all and need to study your but off...but either way, they seem a hell of a lot harder than the hsc.
in short, yeah..what watatank said :p
 

webby234

Member
Joined
Nov 14, 2005
Messages
361
Gender
Undisclosed
HSC
N/A
nandayo said:
Another question.

If your trial exam mark is say, late 80's border 90's - does this equate to a 90+ mark in the HSC exam? I know it depends on the difficulty of the paper, but it just seems that people seem to say that they got a sigificantly higher jap mark than shown by their assessment mark. Say a late 70's to an 80's a late 80's to a 90's etc. etc.

The whole aligning and scaling difference I don't get...If an 87 in the exam gets aligned to a 95 for example...why is that not taken to calculate the UAI..? Are trial exam marks generally lower than the final HSC marks...generally?..
Trial marks will likely be lower than the HSC mark because aligning usually works such that the aligned mark is higher than the raw mark.

Scaling basically works as follows - a scaled mean is then worked out for each course based on the average overall academic achievement of students in that course (basically their average scaled mark in all the other subjects). Same process is used to work out the standard deviation. (Extension subjects are scaled in a slightly different way - read the document below) The raw marks are then adjusted to this distribution, maintaining the rank order. Your scaled marks for your best 10 units (including at least 2 of English) are then added up, giving an aggregate. This gives your percentile in the state which, after comparison between the School Certificate performance of those who continued to the HSC and the overall performance, can be transformed to a percentile compared to all those from your year 10 cohort. That is a UAI - your percentile in the HSC if all those in year 10 had continued to the HSC.
http://www.uac.edu.au/pubs/pdf/tsc_report_2005.pdf probably explains it better.

Moderating - this thread:
http://community.boredofstudies.org...na/6642/explanation-hsc-marks-moderating.html

Basically in regards to your questions:
1. Scaling is a different process to aligning - they could equally use your aligned mark rather than your raw mark for scaling and come to the same result.
2. Usually the aligned mark will be higher than the scaled mark and the raw mark.
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 0, Guests: 1)

Top