Academically weak cohort - will this affect my scores?

[TheIllusion]

I will be attending school next year with a year 12 cohort of approximately 25 students. The school I attend is ranked below 300 on the VCE school ranking. With the exception of  3-4 students (myself included), the entire cohort seems to perform poorly in most areas of study. From a school low in academic achievement, will this in any way affect my scores next year?
I wish to study software engineering at RMIT, which requires an atar (as of 2018) of 90.05 and a study score of 30 and 25 for English and methods, respectively. Atars of over 90 and study scores of over 40 are very rare at my school.
Are these scores realistic and achievable for a student with a weak academic cohort?
Additionally, I have enrolled at Distance Education (with previous experience) to study units 3/4 revolutions and software development.
Will this be of any help?

[Sine]

I will be attending school next year with a year 12 cohort of approximately 25 students. The school I attend is ranked below 300 on the VCE school ranking. With the exception of  3-4 students (myself included), the entire cohort seems to perform poorly in most areas of study. From a school low in academic achievement, will this in any way affect my scores next year?
I wish to study software engineering at RMIT, which requires an atar (as of 2018) of 90.05 and a study score of 30 and 25 for English and methods, respectively. Atars of over 90 and study scores of over 40 are very rare at my school.
Are these scores realistic and achievable for a student with a weak academic cohort?
Additionally, I have enrolled at Distance Education (with previous experience) to study units 3/4 revolutions and software development.
Will this be of any help?

Yes it's still very possible to do well in schools that historically don't do too well and are ranked low. Ultimately, the school can only impact your score so much and a lot of your end score will be dependent on the individual student. The most important thing about going to a lower ranked school is that SACs are so important (they are still important at higher ranked schools but you can get away with a relatively low rank sometimes). Ideally, you would want to get rank 1 for the subjects then your final score will only be dependent on how you personally go in all the assessments and final exam. Otherwise, your score could be negatively impacted by your weak cohort.

Distance education would mean that you are in a separate cohort from your school for those subjects but all the same principles apply.

[Bri MT]

There are heaps of examples on here of students going to underrepresented / weak cohort schools and getting high ATARs

Personally, at my school we hadn't had a 90+ ATAR in years but in my year level 3 people got a 95+ ATAR.

The main thing is that you get rank 1 (best scores on SACs for people doing that subject in your year level) and work hard to get good exam results

Good luck

[brynstar]

As others have said, if you're rank 1 in your subjects, it's not likely to affect your scores at all on paper although it could affect you indirectly, eg. if all the other students in your class distract you by being disruptive.

Personally, I was in a year 11 and 12 combined class for literature where none of the other students really put in much effort and I got a 50. If you're not getting support from your teachers, I would recommend tutoring if that's something you're able to afford.

Distance ed subjects could go either way, I know people who dropped out of distance ed because they didn't have the organisational skills and fell too far behind but I really enjoyed it. If you keep on top of the work and revise the content regularly, it's a valuable learning experience. It's harder to see what your cohort's like but that didn't seem to affect my score too much in the end.

Good luck!