Class of 2011: ATAR and SS Discussion Thread

[Russ]

but if we were to cap it at 209, like thushan said, there is a potential for more than .05% of the VCE population to obtain a 99.95, and that would just mess up the whole percentile thingo, won't it?

The bell curving of subjects is a really bad method and the only reason it exists is because there's no financially viable alternative.

[thushan]

But this sort of thing may not apply as much to students studying the humanities subjects

It applied to me...that's why I never did humanities subjects!

[aabattery]

Especially when it comes to maths, for some people, no matter how hard they study, they would still be unable to wholly comprehend or grasp the concepts in specialist maths

That was me...
hence why i never touched specialist, physics or the sciences...!
I believe i am thushan's antithesis to a mild degree...

[Greatness]

Thank you to both Menang and thushan. I need not to explain anymore. pi can keep harping on about ignorance or whatever the f**k he likes, I can't be bothered explaining when it has been so nicely laid out by the two posters above me.

They're arguing about how it is unlikely to get a 99.95 without doing a lote or spesh. Yes, it is unfair but vce is a system. If you want the 99.95 that badly then play the system. What's wrong with a 99.90?...
All the same to me, you'll still have a god like status.

Also a correction - it's not unlikely, it's impossible

Isnt it possible if a proportion of students who do the mega scalers dont do as well? So their aggregates are lower? And the humanities students do extremely well?
Idk, like i said it is unfair but their isnt much you can do to change how vcaa view the situation.

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[thushan]

Actually...not entirely true. They could be taking Further as their maths. Also Bazza that's a bit shortsighted of you ;P

[Quppa]

Clearly languages are humanities subjects.

Joseph Moore's 99.95 was very impressive:

2011:
Classical Societies & Cultures: 41 (43)
English: 50 (50)
History - Australian History: 50 (50)
LOTE Latin: 41 (53.2)
Literature: 50 (50)

2010:
History - Revolutions: 50 (50)
Philosophy: 44 (45.2)

[Russ]

Since you've consistently ignored when I posted this, what about the humanities subjects that have small class sizes and allow perhaps a dozen students to score over 40 each year. I can't think of any science subjects that do this. Look at classical history from 2 posts above; getting full marks on the exam doesn't guarantee a 50, because with a cohort of ~500, the percentage of 50s allowed is 1. This is not the only problem with humanities subjects, but it's one of the worst.

Science students are technically on the unfair side of the +5 to language scaling, but when you look at the system as a whole, saying that they're disadvantaged is ludicrous.

How can anyone be completely a humanities student (without science, language, math?) it would have to be

English
Literature
Revs
International
Studio ARts

or something ridiculous like that. Fact of the matter is most "humanities" students do a math or science or language and this receives the most unfair scaling of all (+5). So it's redundant to refer to humanities students as being disadvantaged as so few really are.

Aside from the fact that that's a terrible definition of a "humanities" student, I know plenty of people with subject choices like that. Also, obviously since they're a minority, we clearly shouldn't care about them being disadvantaged... (seriously?!)

[pi]

Thank you to both Menang and thushan. I need not to explain anymore. pi can keep harping on about ignorance or whatever the f**k he likes, I can't be bothered explaining when it has been so nicely laid out by the two posters above me.

Calm down mate, I am entitled to my opinion, as are you and everyone else. You don't convince someone by resorting to swearing, that lowers your stance on an issue and shows that you don't really know what you are "harping" on about  (ie. debating101). Good to see you're trying though, keep it up 


I'll add a bit more because I just finished my book:

So far, all recent posts revolve around the following premise: "That the current VCE scaling system is flawed and is not perfect, nor can it ever be perfect". That premise was in the earlier posts and has been repeated in many posts since then.

Ok, with that in mind, there is a side to this debate that is rightly claiming that the "99.95" is not accessible to all students, as those without LOTEs or Specialist Maths are unable to achieve this. However, you should also recognise (with the above premise in mind) that no-one is forcing ANY student to do ANY particular set of subject. Furthermore, with the system being inherently flawed, it is up to student to use to array of subjects at hand to their own advantage (ie. 'playing the system') to achieve whatever aims they want for their ATAR. As we are primarily focusing on the 99.95-ers, I'm sure that if they had this score in mind at the end of year 10 (or earlier), and being the brightest minds in the state, would 'play the system' as if it were second nature and hence, would only choose subjects to achieve that 99.95. Being bright minds, many would inevitably succeed (that's why we have 99.95-ers today).

The other main point is how this is somehow "unfair". Well, I think that with the premise in mind, its as fair as possible with the current system in place. Everyone has a CHANCE to get 99.95, whether or not they do comes down to the state-wide perceived difficulty (ie. via scaling reports) of the subjects they decide to do. If they DECIDE to do 6 subjects that scale down (ie. state-wide perceived "easy" subjects), then they KNOW they won't be able to get 99.95, and hence, don't really have a ground to complain about it. Personally, I don't think someone excelling 6 state-wide perceived "easy" subjects should get the same score as someone excelling 6 state-wide perceived "hard" subjects, it's just logical.

As for "easy" and "hard" 50s (something snakke was attempting to hammer me for), I should have made my position clearer. Look how many 50s Spesh gets (and look how hard those people worked to learn and practice the course work - in hours) compared to a subject like Methods, I think you'll see what I mean by "hard" and "easy" 50s.

(I'm not going to comment on the +5 for LOTEs, as I'm not overly knowledgeable in that department and only know the basics. All i know is that the +5 is a government incentive to encourage studying of LOTEs, and the only problem I have with this is that such incentives are not given to subjects like spesh, which I believe should also be encouraged. Just my two cents though, meh)

Finally, QED.



I'm not going to further debate this with ssnake, as I don't want to get further insulted, and our last attempts have resulted in you either being banned or losing significant amounts of respect points. So, I'd rather not (and don't PM me either). If it makes you feel better and stops your rage, you "win".

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[Jdog]

How can anyone be completely a humanities student (without science, language, math?) it would have to be

English
Literature
Revs
International
Studio ARts

or something ridiculous like that. Fact of the matter is most "humanities" students do a math or science or language and this receives the most unfair scaling of all (+5). So it's redundant to refer to humanities students as being disadvantaged as so few really are.

why is this ridiculous??

[REBORN]

^^ lmao pi, are you serious? Obviously we get to choose our own subjects but now the year 11s (i.e. - my year) have chosen their 3/4s and they're not going to change their 3/4s because VCAA fucked them up midway through December by telling them 99.95 is now 210.8

Essentially your saying let the 2012'rs deal with it and then students from then on have a "choice" of whether to get 99.95 or not by not taking Spesh or Language --> and that is somehow a "choice" even though some people may love language/spesh and some people may hate it, thus clearly advantaging those who love those two subjects. interesting perspective :S

A 50 is a 50. A 50 in Further or a 50 in English. In the end the 50 contributes the same amount. There is no such thing as easy/hard 50's. I'm talking after scaling of course, a 50 RAW further is obviously less than 50 RAW Spesh.

And as for my swearing, you labelled me ignorant and if you don't expect a reply than, well, your naive and just weird :S. Meh, my stance is supported by two posters already, I need not explain however if you continue to denigrate me, I will reply.

re:Jdog - IMO +5 to languages is perfectly fine.

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[chocolatedaddy]

Maybe VCAA want us to learn steet smarts. E.g. "play the system". In the real world people play the system. Teaching you a valuable lesson through scaling. Who would have thunk it?

[pi]

Maybe VCAA want us to learn steet smarts. E.g. "play the system". In the real world people play the system. Teaching you a valuable lesson through scaling. Who would have thunk it?

My opinion exactly, but that must be wrong according to ssNake's wisdom.

^^ lmao pi, are you serious?

It's seems that I am. You are completely right and I am completely wrong. None of my points are at all logical and could never match up to yours, which are in fact, far superior. Apologies for trying to contradict you in any way and furthermore, I extend this apology to your feelings which I seem to have hurt in my few posts. Moreover, I shall refrain from speaking my word or opinion whist in threads that you involved in, as my opinion must inevitably be wrong in comparison to yours, which is so true that is great enough to find flaws in the any of mine.


pi apologises for any inconvenience caused. 


*bows down to the great ssNake and his superior points and argumentative skills*

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[REBORN]

Maybe VCAA want us to learn steet smarts. E.g. "play the system". In the real world people play the system. Teaching you a valuable lesson through scaling. Who would have thunk it?

that's fine - at least don't label it as [fair]. It's [unfair] and that's my only point - everyone will deal with it obviously, doesn't make it fair.

Thanks pi. Glad you finally saw sense :p

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[Menang]

Ok, with that in mind, there is a side to this debate that is rightly claiming that the "99.95" is not accessible to all students, as those without LOTEs or Specialist Maths are unable to achieve this. However, you should also recognise (with the above premise in mind) that no-one is forcing ANY student to do ANY particular set of subject. Furthermore, with the system being inherently flawed, it is up to student to use to array of subjects at hand to their own advantage (ie. 'playing the system') to achieve whatever aims they want for their ATAR. As we are primarily focusing on the 99.95-ers, I'm sure that if they had this score in mind at the end of year 10 (or earlier), and being the brightest minds in the state, would 'play the system' as if it were second nature and hence, would only choose subjects to achieve that 99.95. Being bright minds, many would inevitably succeed (that's why we have 99.95-ers today).

Finally, QED.

pi, it's all well and good to say "everyone can choose to do languages or spesh if they so wish" if you're good at languages or spesh. But the system, ideally, should really try to allow everyone the chance at full marks by choosing what they love, not what scales up most.

That paragraph just reminded me about the classic anti-homosexual argument that says "but gays can marry too! they just have to marry people of the opposite gender!" - it just doesn't work that way.

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[pi]

pi, it's all well and good to say "everyone can choose to do languages or spesh if they so wish" if you're good at languages or spesh. But the system, ideally, should really try to allow everyone the chance at full marks by choosing what they love, not what scales up most.

That's the key word here, and the fact is (see my 'premise') that the system is not ideal for everyone, and can never possibly be ideal for everyone. And as we all agreed earlier in this thread, the system (the scaling system) is inherently flawed, and therefore, it is up to us to make the best of it as it is very unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. All of my points revolve around that premise.

My post wasn't saying the system was "correct", it was just saying that there IS an opportunity for everyone to achieve the highest score with this system, and that if we want more people wo be given access choosing subjects that they "like" to achieve this score, then we'd need a system revamp. And this isn't going to happen.

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