What do you mean when you say your cohort is strong?

[TommyLie]

Hey lads, can someone please explain to me the ins and outs of how VCE actually works.

I hear people say stuff like, "this year our 'cohort' was strong at my school so we got scaled well", what does this mean? do you get scaled better if your school (Or class) has on average better grades or something?

Cheers
Tommy

[samad]

broadly speaking, for any subject, there are two types of assessments that count to your study score out of 50: sacs + exams.
sacs are made and set by ur school, whilst vcaa sets the exam

the school tries to set the sac difficulty to a level where they can get a good spread (ranking of students). If the sacs are too easy for the cohort, too many people will get near to 100% and there wont be a good spread. the opposite happens when the sacs are too hard, also resulting in a poor spread.

Everyone in the state sits the same exam so it acts as a standard to whcih everything can be compared. Vcaa looks at your school's average exam marks and other stats, and then compares them to your sacs. If overall, the cohort performed worse on the sacs (i.e the sac average<exam average), the sac marks are scaled up.

Now to answer your question: A very strong 'cohort' will blitz the external (vcaa) exam so the exam average is very likely to b much higher than the internal sac average. This means the sacs are scaled up big time. Hence having a 'strong cohort'= more scaling, generally.

[Special At Specialist]

If everyone in the class is really smart, then you have a strong cohort.

SAC marks get scaled depending on how well your class performs in the exam.
For example, if everyone in your class is scoring 100% in SAC's but only 50% in the exam, then the VCAA assumes that your class was given easy SAC's and takes away marks.
If everyone in your class is scoring only 50% in SAC's but 100% in the exam, then the VCAA assumes that your class was given hard SAC's and gives you extra marks.

[pi]

If everyone in the class is really smart, then you have a strong cohort.

Not exactly. If your SACs are easy, then many people may appear to be "smart" and you may think that your cohort is "strong". So this definition doesn't really work.

If your cohort sits tough SACs and then aces the exam (like an A average for the cohort), then it is strong, as its exam average is better/higher than its SAC average. Hence, the SACs will scale up in most cases (MHS spesh this year is one exception I can think of, there will be more odd ones out there too) to match the exam performance of the cohort.

[Special At Specialist]

If everyone in the class is really smart, then you have a strong cohort.

Not exactly. If your SACs are easy, then many people may appear to be "smart" and you may think that your cohort is "strong". So this definition doesn't really work.

There is a difference between someone who appears to be smart and someone who is smart.
I stand by what I said:

If everyone in the class is really smart, then you have a strong cohort.

Moderator action: removed real name, sorry for the inconvenience

[pi]

There is a difference between someone who appears to be smart and someone who is smart.

You don't understand my point. People who are "smart" are labelled as such because they "appear" intelligent to others in comparison. If all you have to compare with is "easy" SACs, then a person will suddenly become "smart" in that class if they get the best grades. And if you're getting 50% whilst everyone else is getting 100% then you'll say that:

everyone in the class is really smart

You may call someone in your maths class "smart" (for example), but if you think about it, you are always comparing them to someone. Whether than be yourself or to the average person in that class. If you compare that person to a genius such as Steven Hawking, then maybe you won't think that they're so "smart" any more. But would that comparison help in determining whether your cohort is strong? Compare the brains of Mac.Rob's spesh cohort with the mathematical brain of Hawking or Yamazaki, and you will find that none of them are "smart". That doesn't mean that the cohort isn't good, it's actually one of the best!.

It isn't particularly helpful in finding out if your cohort is strong or not by telling someone that you need to have people who ARE smart in your class, as "smart" is a subjective term based on comparisons.

ANYWAY, even if you had a cohort of geniuses (non-subjective term, I think that you were trying to aim at this effect for you sentence) sitting easy SACs, then your SACs will not be scaled up anyway. So it's not really about the level of intelligence in your cohort (as genius does not equal top VCAA exam marks, and I actually know a maths genius of sorts and he never got in my class' top 5 for spesh or methods). It's all about how the cohort does in the exam and how that result compares to SAC results that determines scaling of SACs, and hence, strength of the cohort. And you don't need the top students (by raw intelligence) to make your cohort strong, you just need hard-workers who are willing to improve

Moderator action: removed real name, sorry for the inconvenience