Just wondering though, has anyone who has completed their VCE and is probably already at university/graduated that are still upset about their VCE results/ATAR?
Now I wonder why I even bothered trying in the latter half of the year, if I already knew I wasn't going to do well. There's a saying which goes 'if you're not gonna do it properly, don't do it at all'. It wouldn't make a difference anyway as I knew I wouldn't get a 'super high' ATAR anyway.
How can I even 'succeed' or do well in university if I couldn't even pass basic high school concepts?
And yes, I know that ATAR is not a measure of intelligence but I'm not like a 'street smart' or 'social' person anyway.
But I can so imagine if I ever have kids and they will ask about how I did in high school and blame me for all their issues etc
I can't emphasise this enough. No. One. Cares. About. ATARs. At. Uni.
At least, those worth hanging around don't care.
It's still been bothering me for the past few weeks, idk if I'm the only one. I'm basically embarrassed to be alive right now, and barely done anything useful these holidays.I want you to know that no matter what, you're not not not the only one. Everyone puts on an outer mask to make themselves look to everyone else more secure, in control, and smart than they actually are. Because we only see the actual truth (of insecurity, dishonesty, fear, dumbness, awkwardness, weakness etc.) in ourselves, we think we must be much worse than everyone else.
on a forum of such hardworking, high-achieving individuals(and again, this sums it up - do I appear to you to be one of the hardworking, high-achieving individuals? I tell you, I don't feel it. I tell you that I'm even currently feeling bad about what people might think about this post. That's how you're labelling the people on the forum, but they don't necessarily feel that way about themselves)
Very brave of you to post strawberries, I'll be honest here and share some personal experiences and thoughts. Might also be offensive to some people, but this was genuinely how I felt at the time, and I'm not going to apologise for that.
Yes... and no. How I did in school isn't something I reflect upon much these days, perhaps I reflected more when I was your stage, but it still bites at times. Sometimes, reading posts on here and formulating my own replies with advice, I wonder what would have happened if I had done X, Y or Z, or tried harder and took A, B or C more seriously. I think it was only a couple of years ago where I found myself procrastiworrying during exams by plugging in a few numbers into the ATAR Calc to see what I could have done with my VCE. Now I have moved on, but it took some time.
Ultimately, I don't think these thoughts are anything to be ashamed about. The way I see it, if you felt like you under-performed and then were able to brush that performance away like it wasn't a big deal, then that would be a sign that either you have an extremely good willpower to forgive yourself, or you didn't care. Often I see on the forum people, myself included (probably), comment that "the ATAR doesn't really matter much after offers are released" or that "no one cares about ATARs after school". Honestly, at the time after graduating my own VCE, I didn't really agree with either of those. That's because I saw the ATAR as a culmination of 13 years of academia, and that was honestly a really big deal to me, especially because I felt I didn't do very well. Sure, there are ways to get to a course with a lower ATAR, but why would someone want to take that longer pathway when a shorter one is available? Sure, once you make the ATAR for your desired course the number itself doesn't matter according to VTAC, but I wasn't VTAC? I judged myself on how my ATAR was because in terms of academics, it was the only thing that had really mattered for so long.
However, I don't think that beating oneself over it is 'healthy' for one's well-being. It happens, but it's not productive and doesn't achieve anything.
I don't know if it will help, but I think you did the right thing by trying.
And you know what sucks? I knew that 3-4 months into the school year last year that I wasn't going to do well due to not-so-great SAC marks (yes, SACs do matter) and even before the year started I knew I would fail, despite wanting/aiming for a 'high' ATAR.
Now I wonder why I even bothered trying in the latter half of the year, if I already knew I wasn't going to do well. There's a saying which goes 'if you're not gonna do it properly, don't do it at all'. It wouldn't make a difference anyway as I knew I wouldn't get a 'super high' ATAR anyway.
Yes, I did get into my desired course, but obviously far from a scholarship (I know you can get scholarships later in uni but you have to like work hard for one year = 1 year of fees gone). I know ATAR doesn't matter if you get in to what you want to do, I know, and I know it's not a bragging right (I'm not the type of person to brag about my accomplishments either). However, in this part, I still feel like I failed. How can I even 'succeed' or do well in university if I couldn't even pass basic high school concepts? I know there are people who don't do well in high school but succeed in uni, but that depends on what you're doing. Considering VCE and university are both largely academic too.
I've heard stories of people who've bounced back from low ATARs, but I'm not one of those 'successful' people. I know employers don't care about ATARs either. I know that.
I haven't even told anyone about my ATAR (only my parents and a couple of people on here know), and even if I did do well and wouldn't tell anyone either. But I can so imagine if I ever have kids and they will ask about how I did in high school and blame me for all their issues etc
there is enough marks to go around in uni and i know lots of kids who got sub 60 atars and after a couple years of transferring up from vu-> la trobe -> melbourne are now getting solid 90+ (which is RIDICULOUS btw) in every subject.
I do not mean no offence at all, so please, PLEASE do not get this the wrong way.
It is actually really not surprising to me that most (not all) of the people replying saying that ATARs do not matter and that no one cares, are actually ones with the highest ATARs. Maybe because they have not tasted failure?
Idk, just something I picked up on from the atmosphere of this thread.
Idk, just something I picked up on from the atmosphere of this thread.
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.
I can't emphasise this enough. No. One. Cares. About. ATARs. At. Uni.
At least, those worth hanging around don't care.
#bestcommunity
Thanks everyone for all the replies/support :)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.
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 :)
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 :P
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).
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.
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?
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
bump...so it's been 1.5yrs since I made this post and been out of high school (not posting this for 'sympathy' or trying to get attention)This is what people mean when they say it doesn't matter. Everything I want to reply to this post is written in the image below:
I still can't help but think about it all the time :'(
Even most of my uni classmates have super high ATARs (I haven't actually asked them ofc, but ik this is stalkerish but I've searched them up and stuff), and a lot of them are doing law doubles as well...(even though I never wanted to do law in the first place, but I was just using an example)
I'm also struggling in uni and I feel so worthless, and this is probably because I "failed" year 12 (even though I'm averaging better in uni than in high school, I'm still not where I'd ideally like to be)
(also what's great at my uni is that no one is judgemental if you do an arts degree, so I've never received judgement from others)somewhat offtopicIk people say ATAR doesn't matter but looking at some jobs they do have an ATAR requirement and such...and also, it feels sort of offensive when people who say "ATAR doesn't matter" cos that sorta devalues the hard work of those who actually did work hard and do well in year 12?
again, it is completely my own fault for my VCE failures...
especially because I had no excuse...I went to a fairly good school, I didn't any severe personal problems that affected me during VCE
so this is to anyone who's currently still in high school (whether you're in year 12 or year 9):
please do not take your opportunities for granted...
you may regret it in the future
in the future, you may look to yourself and keep thinking 'what if?'
life is short, so try filling it up with happy memories
do you want to be that kid who looks back in 5 years time, upset and remorseful because you just didn't try harder?
don't stop working
strawbs
(probably without intending to), I feel like this post sends the message (or at least implies or encourages the way of thinking) that ATAR is a very defining thing, such that one should just push the limits because they may have pervasive regrets in the next 5-10 years. ATARs doesn't equate to intelligence or your value as a person.I get what you're saying.