Is it possible for VCAA to mess up my study score?

[Ra Ra Rasputin]

When I think of my ATAR, I'm happy; but when I start dissecting my Italian study score, something seems really sus. For Unit 3 and 4, I got a B+ when I've only gotten one B+ throughout the year. My sac grades were; 90%, 86%, 85%, 78%, 95% and 80%. Averaged out; that's like 86%, a high A. Somehow, even though my teacher's been giving me practice exams since year 9 and even though when I did my practice orals I was told that I would go excellently; I only ended up getting a B for the exam. This is really hard to accept since I got an A on the practice exam (for which I barely even attempted section 3 cause it was the holidays and I couldn't be bothered), I won the subject award and I didn't even find the exam that challenging, as I was doing it, I felt really sure of myself. It's really hard to believe that I only got a 30; I thought the lowest that I could get would be 34. I don't want to sound entitled but this is really strange and unexpected, I honestly believe that I deserved more. I can't get over this.

[Bri MT]

It is possible for there to be errors (people have had their marks raised before due to this)  so it may be worth paying for a transcript of your marks and going through the process of having your teacher look through your exam answers with you, & getting it re-examined. 

[Lear]

It is possible that VCAA messed up your study score. Yes.

But this is very rare.

To explain for the disparity between your internal SAC scores and what VCAA gave you i’m going to out right say your internal sac scores are pretty arbitrary except for the purposes of ranking. VCAA uses the ranking your teacher forwards to assign outcomes for GA1 and GA2 using your external exam score. This is done to ensure the difference between difficulty of SACs across different institutions is accounted for by a process that utilises a standardised test. As you have stated, you received a B for your exam and hence VCAA adjusted the GA outcomes to reflect the performance of your cohort on the external exam.

Now to the practice exams. Unfortunately these can often be deceptive for a few reasons. One of the bigger ones is that, depending on who marks it, it can be an inaccurate indicator as it may not be aligned with a VCAA assessors strictness. This is something that happens a lot and indeed happened to me when I did LOTE.

On the point of not finding the exam challenging, it must be remembered that your peers are often not too far in their abilities to you. And hence if you find an exam easy it is likely so did everyone else. Since study scores are essentially your ranking within the state, it can just come down to who found it ‘the easiest’ and did super well. These people would receive the highest study score while those who found it just ‘easy’ may in reality not perform as they had expected.

The same is true for ‘hard’ exams where, if everyone finds it hard, it will come down to who found it relatively ‘less hard’ and who found it ‘slightly more hard’.
It’s all a system of ranking.