Speaking from someone who goes to a selective school, the school you go to does not make or break you. Plenty of people get amazing atars which is beyond their expectations in a school with an 'average cohort' while plenty of selective school students do not meet their expectations. If you go to a low performing school chances are your marks may be scaled down, but many people defeat these odds. The main reason the people around me chose to go to a selective school is not because of vce (most of us didn't know what vce even was in Year
, but because of the opportunities we get. Usually selective school cohorts either don't scale or scale up, but that doesn't mean every single student peforms great and gets 40+ study score. Suzanne Cory's median study score is like 35 raw and MacRob is like 37-39. In the end it's about your hard work. I see a lot of selective school students becoming lenient at the start of Year 11 with their first 3/4 because they think that they will score well because they are in a strong cohort. Sure, a strong cohort can lift you up a bit, but in the end it's about your own hard work. Don't worry about scaling in selective schools vs normal schools.
Hard and smart work is what separates you from the average, not the school you go to.