Strong cohort? Weak cohort?

[I_I]

Hey guys,
I was just looking through the forums and the words 'weak cohort' and 'strong cohort' seems to come up a lot in the discussions.

I was wondering, how would you rate your school? I can definitely see that a school like Macrob will be a strong cohort but I go to a public school that is not even top 100 in all schools in Victoria.

Does this mean that my school has a weak cohort? I just wanted to get an idea that if I'm not top 1 or 2, I may not get the study score I want...

[grannysmith]

Generally, a higher ranked school indicates a stronger cohort. However, I think the most important thing is a strong group of students at the top of the cohort. The closer to rank 1 you are within your own cohort, the better it is, irrespective of how well the cohort as a whole performs.

You can go to a extremely low ranked school and yet if you are rank 1, it doesn't matter. You still have the same chance of obtaining a 50 as another student who attends a top tier school. The strength of a cohort largely comes into play the further away you are from rank 1, as this means your scaled SAC score can be quite unpredictable despite how well you do in the exam. This is especially true with the Englishes where your (scaled) SAC scores comprise 50% of your study score.

This is just my superficial understanding of rankings/moderation and I'm sure there are better, more detailed explanations in this forum (I know for a fact :p).

[Zealous]

Don't worry about it too much. The school I went to was ranked like 360 or something, which puts it in the bottom 30% or so of schools in the entire state. But even though the majority of people at school weren't the highest of achievers, I didn't let that affect me when I was tackling my own goals.

People are usually worried that if you're in a weak cohort your SACs are going to scale down, but as Grannysmith said, if you place rank 1 (or close to rank 1) and do well enough on exams, there's really no way you can be pulled down by your cohort.

[I_I]

Thanks for your answers grannysmith and Zealous, it makes a whole lot better sense now!

[coconut stripes]

Do exam marks get scaled down due to weak cohorts?

[odeaa]

Do exam marks get scaled down due to weak cohorts?

Nope, exam scores stay the same no matter what