Why does methods only scale up by 4?

[Samueliscool223]

I feel like methods doesnt scale up a whole lot relative to its difficulty, quite a few of the question in the past exams I found actually more challenging than the ones in spesh. Maybe its just me but does anyone else feel like it should have a higher scaling?

[Joseph41]

I feel like methods doesnt scale up a whole lot relative to its difficulty, quite a few of the question in the past exams I found actually more challenging than the ones in spesh. Maybe its just me but does anyone else feel like it should have a higher scaling?

Scaling isn't really based on difficulty as such, as this is a subjective measure. For example, who's to say what's a more difficult subject out of Methods and Music? They're so fundamentally different, and different people have different strengths and weaknesses.

Instead, scaling is based on "competitiveness" of a cohort. And competitiveness is based on how students in a particular subject perform in all of their other subjects in any given year.

So if Methods students all perform extremely well on their other exams one year, the subject will scale up more than if Methods students all perform extremely poorly on their other exams the next year. You can see more here if interested.

[Samueliscool223]

Oh I see, thanks for the explaination. Kinda sucks though cuz I can see some flaws in that system... for example a handful of students who might be really good at maths and maths only might chose a difficult subject like spesh or methods and do really well in it, yet fail miserably in other subjects like English and economics. The scaling would therefore be influenced somewhat significantly, considering there's only like 1000 people who take spesh every year on average, and the subject might be considered a lot easier than it actually is... but I guess it works well enough.

[Sine]

Oh I see, thanks for the explaination. Kinda sucks though cuz I can see some flaws in that system... for example a handful of students who might be really good at maths and maths only might chose a difficult subject like spesh or methods and do really well in it, yet fail miserably in other subjects like English and economics. The scaling would therefore be influenced somewhat significantly, considering there's only like 1000 people who take spesh every year on average, and the subject might be considered a lot easier than it actually is... but I guess it works well enough.

scaling makes sure subjects are all equal so choosing high scaling subjects doesn't automatically increase someone ATAR + more than 4000 students to specialist maths each year.

The ATAR system actually favours students who are good at English quite a bit. Scoring a 50 in English puts you halfway towards a 99.95 ATAR. Scoring a 50 in methods/specialist is helpful but without a high English study score, your ATAR is heavily restricted.

[Freddo__]

scaling makes sure subjects are all equal so choosing high scaling subjects doesn't automatically increase someone ATAR + more than 4000 students to specialist maths each year.

The ATAR system actually favours students who are good at English quite a bit. Scoring a 50 in English puts you halfway towards a 99.95 ATAR. Scoring a 50 in methods/specialist is helpful but without a high English study score, your ATAR is heavily restricted.

Could you please explain how scoring a 50 in English puts you halfway towards a 99.95 atar? Thanks. 

[Sine]

Could you please explain how scoring a 50 in English puts you halfway towards a 99.95 atar? Thanks. 

Obviously, I can't really say "halfway" or "quarter way" but getting a 50 in an English subject puts you in a much better position for a high ATAR than a 50 in any other subject (even if that 50 scales to 55). The point is that English is everyone's most important subject if you are going for a 99.95 since it must be in your top 4. If you don't do well in English but do well in your other 5 subjects you end up having two high study scores only being used as 10%.

If you are going for 99.95 the only way you get past the heavy importance of English is to have 2 50's in subjects that scale over 50 e.g. getting a 50 in both Specialist and Latin. In this case you would still need a low 40 English study score for a 99.95.