any post-VCE or university students/graduates still upset about their ATAR?

[pi]

Idk, just something I picked up on from the atmosphere of this thread.

In addition to the above (edit: 'above' doesn't work when it's on a previous page -_-) post, I think it's also worth noting that the atmosphere of the forum is (sadly?) one of people with "high ATARs", so regardless of what opinions are being expressed, there's no doubt this thread will display that inherent bias

[99.90 pls]

You could probably find 10 posts of mine where I say something similar. Heck, maybe even 20 posts.

But in retrospect, I don't think it's a helpful or necessarily true thing to say.

In an ideal world, no one would care. We'd move from year 12 to uni seamlessly just worrying about when the next toga party was on. But the reality is that many people do, especially towards the start of uni. Some are vocal about it (there was a dude in second year looking up 40+ lists during a lecture haha), some aren't (I wasn't vocal). I think instead of suggesting that "those worth hanging around don't care" and belittling those who do care as lame social outcasts with no life (not that you made that implication in your post!), we should instead help these people make the transition and understand why they feel the way they do.

We all deal with disappointment in different ways. Some are lucky to be happy with how they went in school and can transition with next to no regrets, others not so. I think we have a duty of care for this second group of people.

Just my 2c.

Downvoters can fuck right off - pi is being honest and candid here, yet salty people insist on holding onto their superficial moorings, afraid of being pulled into a deeper, more meaningful discussion which tackles the core of the issue. This fear of being labelled inadequate because of your ATAR stems from a commonly held mindset which prefers to shame the needy and disadvantaged, rather than providing them with the help that they so desperately need. Let's see...

I can't emphasise this enough. No. One. Cares. About. ATARs. At. Uni.
At least, those worth hanging around don't care.

A university student with self-esteem issues "cares about ATARs" and uses it as a significant/sole scale to measure people's worth, as this inflates his own perceived worth since he did well in VCE. Using this same scale, he looks down upon his peers who scored lower ATARs than him as this inflates his relative worth.

Now, you, the reader, enter the scene. You are someone who is 'enlightened', aware of the multi-faceted worth-scale which extends beyond academics (or are you merely adopting the viewpoint of the majority, which mightn't necessarily be objectively true?). At this point, you have two choices.

(a) Befriend him, even though he may be reluctant, and show him, by genuinely engaging with him as a human being, the merits of your view. Will you show him the value of non-academic pursuits and the fulfillment you think they bring and in doing so, diversify his life and in turn, make yourself a kinder person?

(b) Reject him as an outcast, and persuade others to leave and isolate him because "he's not worth hanging around", so that the probability that someone who might stray from the norm and choose option (a) decreases day by day, as the people around him dissipate. Convince yourself that your own value has now risen, since an outcast has fallen beneath you, crushed by the cold, iron society. Late at night, you wake in a lukewarm puddle of cold sweat and scalding tears as you have just seen him timidly raise his foot across the iron girders of the Westgate bridge and lose his balance... and you realise - too late - that all along, he was just a human. Like you.

[CH3ezEC4KE]

Does come into my mind occasionally, if I'd studied for exams could I have got 90+, could I have then applied for scholarships, got into other courses etc, but end of day once you're in uni noone cares about it, and you move on and realise that getting into a course straight up isn't always the most fun thing anyway and transfers can be made. Atar notes is a forum which does have a lot of high achievers and are in awesome degrees, but you can't compare yourself to others, a lot who haven't or won't have to work through uni to support themselves. At 18, three year degree takes you to 21/22 and boom, youre into the workforce before you know it. I went to a pretty average public school in Berwick and can say a lot of the guys in my year level who had 60/70s atars all have accounting/IT/science degrees with quite a few having HD averages while a few that scored 95+ are now doing part time uni or have taken gap years.

[brenden]

#bestcommunity

[achre]

Not my atar, no, that wasn't a huge concern of mine throughout the year. Individual study scores are what I cared about, and even though I care way less now than I did in the weeks and months after results, my score for lit still bugs me sometimes.

Edit: after reading the thread I thought I might add that my atar was 91 and all my study scores were in the 30s. Maybe you think that's high, or that's low, but that's where I'm coming from anyway.

[strawberries]

Thanks everyone for all the replies/support

The main purpose of this thread, was to, I guess, (other than rant,) wonder if other people still get upset about it as they grow older or if it was just me.

Right now, seeing everyone going back to school just makes me feel sad. I wish I could go back and do it again, but there's nothing I can do about it now.

And seeing everyone (not just people on this forum but IRL) get super high ATARs/study scores just makes me feel worthless. All of my family friends/parents' friends' children all got super high ATARs, and my parents would talk about it all the time before (not now, though). I understand that they would most likely have worked much harder, and literally I was pretending in the second half of the year that I would do well when I knew I really wouldn't (if this makes sense lol)

I might get criticism for saying this, but to be honest, yes, I am kinda an academic elitist, and when I was younger and didn't completely understand how the VCE system worked, I would 'judge' people who got low scores but now that I've done the VCE, I am one of the low-scoring students.

Once again, thanks everyone for the replies

#bestcommunity

[DeezNuts]

Trust me strawberries, ATAR is nowhere near indicative of your worth. The system simply doesn't take into account of so many things. (e.g. what if you aren't the type of person who has surgical like precision when it comes to not making silly mistakes or if you don't know how to word an answer to please an examiner?, how well you perform on the particular day, etc)

Just saw my GP today and he went on one of his usual spiels (he is quite old, and I guess that fits the stereotypical 'old man rambling' role  ) about one of his son's friends who ended up with a low to mid 90 ATAR.. Initially he was trying to be a medical student, but couldn't pass the GAMSAT, so he focused his efforts elsewhere for the time being. In fact it was a blessing in disguise, as he found where his true passions lay  and ended up being the now leading specialist in a field he created himself. Not only that, he became a Rhodes scholar (like only 4 are awarded in whole of Australia or something like that ), sold patents to BP (oil company) and now has Harvard begging at his feet to work with them (I think Harvard ended up shilling out 30 mil to help him set up his own lab and stuff).

Moral of the story?
ATAR means sh*t all
Focus, passion and determination is everything

You don't need to be a genius to do great things

[Darth_Pepe]

Thanks everyone for all the replies/support

The main purpose of this thread, was to, I guess, (other than rant,) wonder if other people still get upset about it as they grow older or if it was just me.

Right now, seeing everyone going back to school just makes me feel sad. I wish I could go back and do it again, but there's nothing I can do about it now.

And seeing everyone (not just people on this forum but IRL) get super high ATARs/study scores just makes me feel worthless. All of my family friends/parents' friends' children all got super high ATARs, and my parents would talk about it all the time before (not now, though). I understand that they would most likely have worked much harder, and literally I was pretending in the second half of the year that I would do well when I knew I really wouldn't (if this makes sense lol)

I might get criticism for saying this, but to be honest, yes, I am kinda an academic elitist, and when I was younger and didn't completely understand how the VCE system worked, I would 'judge' people who got low scores but now that I've done the VCE, I am one of the low-scoring students.

Once again, thanks everyone for the replies

Your ATAR gives you keys, keys to open doors, doors that open into courses. Some people will get to choose from a wide range and variety of keys, but we all have at least one. Use that key to get into your course. Once you open the door into your course, do you keep the key? No why would you need it again? You have moved on.

Your ATAR means zilch after a while.

[heids]

[Promise I won't preach any more in this thread after this post...]

Right now, seeing everyone going back to school just makes me feel sad. I wish I could go back and do it again, but there's nothing I can do about it now.

And seeing everyone (not just people on this forum but IRL) get super high ATARs/study scores just makes me feel worthless.

I feel that I'd like to go back quite often myself - maybe not for the same reasons though

But you've got into your course, the actual functional role of hte score.  VCE is only important as a way of 'ranking' people because we've made a lot of hype around it.  If no one knows your ATAR, it's not going to affect how other people think of you, only how you think of yourself.  You'd be foolish to think that VCE is the be-all-and-end-all of life, it's a very important step on the way but it's only a step at the start of the journey.

I get why you'd feel worthless when you feel that other people are smarter and more hardworking than you (ignoring the fact that their outer facade is probably not the actual truth about them).  But that's why you've got the whole rest of your life to change that!  How ridiculous would it be if one number representing one facet of one year early in life defined who you are for the rest of your life.  You're not going to stay the same, you're going to change as you face a whole series of different events that will seem far more important at the time than VCE - and it's up to you whether you grow or shrink with those.  If you feel worthless right now, surely you can work harder through uni, your social life, your character, and grow to become more worthy. 

Staying stuck on this thing in the past that you can't change is only going to ensure that you continue to feel worthless rather than growing.  To tell the truth, I only value people that are willing to make mistakes and grow from them.  The mistakes in themselves don't matter to me at all (hell, I make more than my fair share of 'em meself), unless the person uses them as an excuse not to grow (and make more ).

I know how easy it is to compare yourself with other people, but honestly, you can't tell what other people are actually, really like - so you're just comparing yourself to your perception of other people, rather than something that actually exists.

I might get criticism for saying this, but to be honest, yes, I am kinda an academic elitist, and when I was younger and didn't completely understand how the VCE system worked, I would 'judge' people who got low scores but now that I've done the VCE, I am one of the low-scoring students.

I know what you mean, because I'm ashamed to admit that I did the same, and I still do it subconsciously sometimes (I hate that sort of judging but it just comes naturally to stack people in neat little labelled boxes, so we know how to deal with them).

P.S.  I suspect your definition of low-scoring is very different from mine lol

[Joseph41]

I have read this thread with great interest. Thank you to Strawberries and all subsequent contributors.

At the time, I was happy with my ATAR. It got me into my course, and that's all I had really aimed for at the start of the year. But over the following weeks, it started to hit me that I hadn't scored perfectly. There were people out there who had done better than me. Maybe that meant I failed?! Did I waste the entire year?! Did I let down my friends and family?!

The ATAR does matter, of course, but only for a very short period of time. I sort of lost sight of that, and spiralled into a disgusting and hurtful process of self-doubt and regret. Over time, I realised how truly irrational and unappreciative I was being, but the fact remains that that is how I felt at the time. I was upset about my results.

I think that's the hard thing with VCE. A lot of people put absolutely everything they have into it. Some less so. Some not at all. But at the end of the day, there are thousands upon thousands of students who want to do well. There are finite 99.95s and 99.90s and whatever else to hand out, so of course some people will be upset and angry come results day (or the following days, in my case). It's so easy to forget that ATARs are not a reflection of you in your entirety. They do not make you 'better' or 'worse' than anybody else.

Anyway, I didn't really begin this post to speak about my ATAR experience. Rather, I wanted to speak about a related albeit slightly different one. If this thread were titled Any university students/graduates still upset about the level of prestige associated with their university degree? it would be right up my metaphorical alley. I think this is related insofar as different ATARs and different courses are weighted differently in terms of prestige or status or whatever. Some of this is just social bullshittery, granted, but that doesn't really help.

I did Arts, I loved Arts (I think I've made this clear in some of my more recent posts), and I would recommend Arts to a lot of incoming students. But:

- My brother studied Laws;
- My best friend is studying Science; and
- My girlfriend is studying Medicine.

No matter what I do, or what marks I get in Arts, there is always a part of me that devalues my own achievements. Seeing these people close to me go off to work or have countless hours at uni, compared to my five contact hours (lel), makes me feel truly insignificant and unworthy. Bangali was saying earlier in the thread how she feels similarly compared to people on this forum, and that holds entirely true for me, too.

It's not that I'm 'upset' about my degree, as such, it's just that I'm typically surrounded by people doing these other things - these useful, valued-by-society things.

To answer the OP more directly, I don't think it's strange or uncommon to feel as you're feeling. I obviously don't know your full situation, but I really think it will just dilute in time. Helpful? Not really, but I think accurate. I hope everything goes well for you.

(Also, side note: to assume that anybody hasn't experienced failure based purely on their VCE results is, I think, pretty ridiculous. Not a single person do I know that has had lived a perfect life. Not a single person do I know that has not experienced failure.)

[Darth_Pepe]

I did Arts, I loved Arts (I think I've made this clear in some of my more recent posts), and I would recommend Arts to a lot of incoming students. But:

- My brother studied Laws;
- My best friend is studying Science; and
- My girlfriend is studying Medicine.

No matter what I do, or what marks I get in Arts, there is always a part of me that devalues my own achievements. Seeing these people close to me go off to work or have countless hours at uni, compared to my five contact hours (lel), makes me feel truly insignificant and unworthy. Bangali was saying earlier in the thread how she feels similarly compared to people on this forum, and that holds entirely true for me, too.

It's not that I'm 'upset' about my degree, as such, it's just that I'm typically surrounded by people doing these other things - these useful, valued-by-society things.

Come on bro.
With your 86 or so WAM you are eligible for a CSP place in the JD program at monash. Even so with you 99.65? ATAR you get a place in Bachelor of Laws, even more a place in Science. I'm telling you this so you don't forget that you have the absolute capacity to do whatever you want. If you wanted too you could do Law, but you havent chosen to take that path. Instead you have succeeded in another.

 

[DeezNuts]

^ +1

I agree. Being someone who also has an interest in Arts it pains it pains me internally to have such a degree 'looked down upon'. It is to my great annoyance that this applies to both other people and myself. It must be a product of our upbringing that has society has embedded us with this inherent shun of the Arts, but moreso, it really pisses me off that it makes Arts students 'devalue their own achievements' as if they are not adequate. It's simply not acceptable...it's almost like a lowly form of bullying haha

Somewhere along the line the Arts got heavily stigmatised against, and society has needs to be eradicated of these misconceptions.

[99.90 pls]

Your ATAR gives you keys, keys to open doors, doors that open into courses. Once you open the door into your course, do you keep the key?

Darth Pepe the wise, such wise words of wisdom you speak. I bow before your wise wisdom.

[spectroscopy]

just chucking this out there also - a few first year things at uni like committee positions and shit will ask you for your atar in the application process. this is mostly just bc you might not have a meaningful uni average yet and it is their best gauge of your academic ability at the time

[keltingmeith]

just chucking this out there also - a few first year things at uni like committee positions and shit will ask you for your atar in the application process. this is mostly just bc you might not have a meaningful uni average yet and it is their best gauge of your academic ability at the time

... Why the hell would a club committee care about academic performance?