ATAR Notes: Forum
VCE Stuff => Victorian Technical Score Discussion => Topic started by: Mao on March 01, 2008, 05:18:20 pm
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A bit of background information here:
My school this year has a specialist math cohort numbering TWO.
That would indeed make an excellent bell curve.
In my teacher's "innovation", he has contacted MHS and is joining our cohort with theirs for SAC rankings...
but obviously we're not doing the same SACs (i'll die, the other guy would most likely die with me), so...
how is this going to work? I have no clue, i'm guessing that our SACs are going to be significantly easier than MHS, will our rankings be equally significantly impacted then as well?
I feel like it would've been better if I had less competition for the rankings...
our cohort joining with MHS, good thing? or bad?
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I'm not really sure. I think your SAC marks will be comparatively worse next to the rest of the MHS lot, but I think you will be boosted up at the end of the year by their good SAC marks. Not sure where the exam results would come into this.
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Is this even allowed? If it is allowed, surely you would have to do the same SACs as them. How else would they fit you into their rankings without disadvantaging the MHS students?
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thats strange, you would have to do the same sacs i believe
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thats strange, you would have to do the same sacs i believe
which, in that case, you might be screwed at the standard of the sacs :o
not saying you're not smart enough to do it, just that it's probably a big step up to the mhs spec sac standard without practice beforehand
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Lol, I've taken a look at some of these famed MHS impossible spec sacs. They're quite a bit more difficult than a lot of other school's SACs, but they are by no means the impossible behemoths that complaining students make them out to be.
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but, taking into account that our spesh teacher is by no means (and no offence to him) teaching at the standard of MHS, i believe that will be a significant handicap on my side if we were to do the same SACs
and if we do different SACs, i wont be suprised that MHS is going to significantly scale us down
either way, we are kinda at loss,
the only bonus is at the end of the year with the MHS awesome spesh exam scores we'll hopefully get our SAC marks boosted up a bit, but that'll probably just counter what we lost (being most optimistic, it may be a lot less than that)
:(
ps i'm not scared or anything, maths is rather enjoyable, but i'd rather not have to put in the extra effort and focus on getting a better english mark :P
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We have joined another cohort for a humanities subject - we do not have to do the same sacs, however they are cross examined. Ie the teacher from the other school has to agree with the mark my teacher gives me. Then at the end of the year we are slipped into their cohort. Pretty much it is in both their interests to place us in the correct order - so they will do it well. I guess with a maths subject it might be difficult. However I know at my school there is a person doing physics from a different school and I am pretty sure she does different sacs to our school.
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Wow, that is strange of your teacher to join the 2 of you with mhs. I have heard LOTES having to be joined with other skools but not maths. Why, out of all the schools in victoria did he choose mhs. Why not another school of eqaul caliber? I mean its the most competitve school in victoria. Its crazy.
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It's most likely a GOOD thing, don't worry. Both my German and music classes had 3 people in them, so we joined with our other campus for assessments. We didn't have the same SACs so I have no idea how they ranked us.
MHS people are, well, the elite, no? So look at it this way.
- Join with a crap school with dumb students. For some reason (and it happens more often than you think) you stuff up a couple of SACs and one of their students is ranked higher than you. Then they do shit in the exam, and you're dragged down with them. You'd have to be ranked no.1 or 2 and ace the exam to get a good study score.
- Join with a school like MHS and their students are ranked higher than you are in SACs. Since they're freakin geniuses (I know I'm generalising, bear with me) they kill the exam, and your whole cohort gets pulled up. To get the same SS you'd get if you were ranked no.1 when joined with the crap school, maybe all you'd need is around no.15 ...
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mmm thats a good point
well, i dont know the exact reason why we joined with MHS, but i do know that last year cohort of 4 joined with Berwick Secondary college, and the results were BAD (nothing over 30)
i suppose our teacher want to try other possibilities
and the reason why this is happenning to our maths is, as our school is so GREAT (yeh), we only had 4 out of 6 people pulling out of spec, and have to join with other schools anyways....
but then i suppose my school teacher will try to rank us as high as possible, and MHS will try the opposite, it's a battle of the will (and prestige?) =S
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but then i suppose my school teacher will try to rank us as high as possible, and MHS will try the opposite, it's a battle of the will (and prestige?) =S
I really think both teachers will try not to do that. Ultimately it is in their best interest, the schools best interest and the kids best interest to place you in the correct rank order. If they get the order wrong, it can seriously stuff the cohort. And as Ninwa says: even if you are the bottom of the cohort, your marks are going to be pushed up by MHS's anyway.
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The only bad thing I can think of is that if your SACs are easier than MHS's, even if you get 100% on every SAC, you'll be less likely to rank number 1 because the teachers may reason that you only got 100% because it's easier - you wouldn't be given a chance to prove that you could beat the scores of the MHS people.
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I suppose you can take comfort from the fact that you will be ranked amoungst a school who had 49 kids with a study score of 40+ for specialist maths!!! So in theory if you can slot into the top 50 of the MHS cohort you will most likely be looking at a 40+.
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As long as you're not placed above me I'm fine.
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As long as you're not placed above me I'm fine.
i will make sure i do just that :P
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As long as you're not placed above me I'm fine.
i will make sure i do just that :P
ooooh competition
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You would think SACs become easier after you've finished the subject on which they're examined.
MHS SACs are only difficult when you're still learning about the subject at the time.
I don't see any disadvantage by being ranked with MHS. If anything, as long as you post a good SAC score in your own school and perform competitively in the exams, it could be argued MHS will do the rest for you by scaling everything up.
At least, that's the theory.
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but, taking into account that our spesh teacher is by no means (and no offence to him) teaching at the standard of MHS
The teaching standard in general at MHS is not that great, though the maths department is definitely one of the most - if not the most - awesome departments in the school.
I'm still a bit sceptical on how this 'cohort merging' is going to work. Also it seems strange that MHS would agree with this plan, seeing how they already have enough maths students. Having previously studied at MHS, I have to say that in order for the SAC rankings to be fair, you guys should need to do the same SACs as MHS students. If this does not occur, and assuming that your SACs will be easier than MHS spesh SACs, it would only be fair for you to be ranked lower than most MHS students - as MHS SACs are considerably more difficult than an average school's spesh SAC.
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I have absolutely no idea why MHS would ever do this and seriously doubt that it's happening. The idea of merging cohorts is that smaller schools are able to join together to discount statistical anomalies that would arise by virtue of having a tiny number of students performing any given subject. MHS has well over 150 kids studying Specialist Maths each year and by no means has any incentive to increase the size of that cohort. Maintaining two sets of SACs would just add another level of complexity and bureaucracy that no teachers want.
kingmar: I'm not sure how it was in the subjects you did that I didn't do, but with regards to the ones we had in common (i.e. Methods and English) the SACs were laughably easy relative to the ones we had to do for Specialist.
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exactly right. we were rejected last week :P
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exactly right. we were rejected last week :P
So what will happen?
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exactly right. we were rejected last week :P
So what will happen?
we'll find another school.... :P