So how far away from the rest of the cohort would someone have to be to be an outlier?
atm I'm in a mostly highly competitive Legal Studies cohort of 17 but there are a few in the class that are just consistently about 10% below the rest of the group and I'm worried they would drag the scope of internal marks down and affect my mark in the long run.
Realistically, what you are talking about is a few people in the class getting, say, 80's instead of 90's? They definitely aren't outliers - 10% below the rest of the cohort is just, like, normal spread. We can't all be in the 90's, aha
from what I've read, outliers would need to be significantly below everyone else, for example, a mark of 30 in a class of 80's and 90's.
A handful of people sitting just below the upper tier of a class isn't going to drag anyone down either. In your class of 17, say 12 were on 90 and 5 were on 80. That puts the average mark at 87ish. I know it isn't based on just average marks, but that should demonstrate how small of an impact we are talking about here.
If you were concerned though, perhaps use it as an excuse to help bring them up to where the rest of you are sitting! I'm sure you'd both benefit from that exchange