The Importance of my cohort?

[Cammmeron!]

Hey guys, I just have one question that I wanted to ask and its been bugging me for a while now. Can someone please explain to me why its important or why I'm affected if my cohort is weak/strong? I really don't understand why the marks of anyone in any of my classes should affect my end of year results. So could someone explain to me why my cohort affects me?

Thanks Guys

[BigAl]

Not important for some subjects..like spesh.. I was second in a fairly average cohort..but got the third highest ss in the end...by just one point

[TimmyC]

In for answers on this!

[KevinooBz]

You do a subject and get sac scores. When you complete all your sacs for the year your teacher will add them up and rank you according to how well you did compared to everyone else in your school in that particular subject. Rank 1 means you got the highest sac total at your school and your teachers will eventually have everyone ranked. This information gets sent to VCAA eventually. You do the exam and VCAA get some examiners to mark it. They then change the sac marks from your school according to how everyone performed on the exam. Rank x gets the x highest exam score. Example might be rank 1 at your school bombs out and gets an E. If the highest exam score was an A+, they would get A+ sacs and an E for the exam. The reason this happens is because different schools set different sacs. Some schools set easy sacs and students can get very high marks. Other schools might set difficult sacs and the students might not get marks as high in comparison. Come exam time, the school with the difficult sacs will most likely perform better and their sacs get moderated so they reflect the exam performance. The school with the easy sacs might perform average, so their sacs might scale down to reflect their exam performance. Scaling is just a process to make the playing field fair, so that is how your cohort can affect you. The only people who don't get affected by the performance of the cohort are the people who are ranked first. So to really answer your question, if you get a bad ranking in a weak cohort you might be in a bit of strife as your sacs will most likely scale down as it is expected that your cohort will perform poorly on the exam. Of course this isn't always the case as your cohort might get spectacular exam results which in effect, bump up your sacs marks. Getting a bad ranking in a strong cohort will not be as bad because their sacs will most likely scale up.

[Shenz0r]

If you're rank 1 in your cohort, then it won't affect you that much. But if you're not, then it can be make a pretty big impact on your score.

You're ranked by your school according to your SAC marks. VCAA has to adjust your SAC grades because every school writes their own SACs - some may be easier, some may be harder.

Everybody in the state sits the same exam - and this is when ranking is important. The person who is Rank 1 in SACs will take the highest exam mark in your school for their SACs. The person who is Rank 2 will take the second highest exam mark in your school for their SACs...and so on.

Example from Paulsterio's thread:

Student          Exam    SAC (scaled)
Thushan (1)     100          100
Paul (3)           70             20
Dan  (2)           20             70

(Damn - beaten)

[michak]

If you're rank 1 in your cohort, then it won't affect you that much. But if you're not, then it can be make a pretty big impact on your score.

You're ranked by your school according to your SAC marks. VCAA has to adjust your SAC grades because every school writes their own SACs - some may be easier, some may be harder.

Everybody in the state sits the same exam - and this is when ranking is important. The person who is Rank 1 in SACs will take the highest exam mark in your school for their SACs. The person who is Rank 2 will take the second highest exam mark in your school for their SACs...and so on.

Example from Paulsterio's thread:

(Damn - beaten)

You are right but i was one of the few that got screwed over by my cohort even though i was ranked one.
In pe i only lost 7 marks in the exam and this year like most years you can lose around 20 marks in pe and still get an A+.
My sacs though got pulled down though to very low A+s because of my cohort. Ended up with 43.

So yeah just my little rant, doesn't happen to everyone.
Generally if you are rank 1 you want have a problem and it is also a safety net for you if you don't do so well on the exam your sacs wont be affected hopefully that much.
Just do the best you can.

[paulsterio]

How to Predict your own Study Score - A Guide
Guide to how Study Scores and ATARs are calculated!

I suggest you read those above articles first because you've asked a very general question which can't really be answered without understanding the basics of how study scores are actually calculated. If you have any more queries after reading, of course, post them here again or in the above threads and I'll try my best to answer them.

In summary though, cohort affects you because the smartest guy at Scotch isn't exactly equal to the smartest guy at some other not-so-great school, for example. That's in a nutshell though.