LAT Results 2018

[FutureLawStudent]

H Everyone!

2018 LAT results are out on http://latreg.acer.edu.au/

Personally, I only scored 1 more mark this year (82), however, the ogive shifted pretty radically, meaning that my percentile score improved by ~15%.

Sorry if this is a dupe thread, had a look but couldn't find any others.

Here's my take. They only use your raw score for admissions, and the percentiles mean nothing. Furthermore, to the best of my knowledge, they do not scale scores between years because they likely believe that since it is standards based, the worse performance this year is likely due to a worse cohort. If this is true, I do not know, but I personally think it was marked harder/was a harder examination, nonetheless, here are my predictions for the median for entry this year.

In 2017, using the 2016 LAT, the median for admission was a mark of 74 raw. This equates to a percentile of 67-68%.

In 2018, using both the 2016/2017 LAT, the median for admission was 80. This equates to a percentile of ~65% in the 2017 LAT, and a percentile score of ~75% in the 2016 LAT. If these are weighted 75% to the 2017 LAT and 25% to the 2016 LAT (given that some candidates would have scored a higher score in 2016 (I reckon this is relatively unlikely due to the higher scoring in 2017) but also that some 2017 candidates would have been in Year 11, and thus would not have counted it) [This is a complete guess, but its purpose will become clear], I would say the rough weighted percentile score would be circa 67/68%.

This, in my mind, is probably not a huge coincidence. Rather, I think its a byproduct of the score combinations and weighting where the median entry score would be roughly around the bottom of the 3 tercile. They of course do not weight it, but the reality is that some people will use 2017 scores for admissions this year, so the percentile score you have will be slightly devalued.

If you take this to be true, and lets face it, it could be utter garbage. I would then estimate, that, using the same weighting for  (0.25% to 2017), that the median for entry this year would be the (0.25) the 67th percentile score in 2017 + (0.75) the 67th percentile score in 2018. This brings me to a total of 78 (roughly). This makes sense to me, as the difficulty did change a fair bit, bringing the mark needed down a little. So, unless there has been a huge change in the cohort strength, that wasn't accounted for in marking, I would conservatively say, a score of 80 and an ATAR of >98.2 should have you in a relatively good place in terms of admissions.

However, this is relatively junk analysis.

So, having realised this, I'm not mad that my score only increased by 1. The relative value of that score has increased significantly, so, while it was only a 67~ percentile score last year, my new mark lies in the 81st percentile. If I weight these using my own formula, this gives me a percentile score of roughly 75, which is significantly above the percentiles in almost every year of admissions.

If you resat the LAT this year, congrats if you got a better mark, don't worry if it wasn't a huge jump. And if you got a better mark last year, good on you! You still completely deserve that mark and for it to be counted.

If you got a crap mark, oh well, plenty of people do transfer, and there's certainly no shame in having to, especially as it will get you into good habits in first year, as you have to work hard to get a good WAM (not that the direct admits won't).

Good luck to you all!