SAC Mark Affect Study Score If Rank 1?

[Omarrr_2163]

Hello,
I'm currently in a below average cohort for Further Maths. I was told that if your rank 1, the cohort doesn't affect your study score. Can someone confirm this please? Additionally, if my cohort does not score really high in SACs however I am rank 1 (Lets hypothetically say I average 89%), and ace the exams (Lets say I lose 1 mark on the first exam), what are possible study score ranges?

[Sine]

Hello,
I'm currently in a below average cohort for Further Maths. I was told that if your rank 1, the cohort doesn't affect your study score. Can someone confirm this please? Additionally, if my cohort does not score really high in SACs however I am rank 1 (Lets hypothetically say I average 89%), and ace the exams (Lets say I lose 1 mark on the first exam), what are possible study score ranges?

Rank 1 + dropping 1 mark would be 49-50 depending on how the state goes

[Lear]

This is at times intriguing for me too. I’ve read often that, as rank 1, you are the sole driver of your score. I’m just curious how this ranking takes into account the actual scores of people. For example, let’s take Person A and Person B. Person A is an outlier in an extremely weak cohort where the sac averages was ~60% while he himself as Rank 1 averaged 75%.  On the other hand, Person B is in an extremely strong cohort where the average is ~80% and him being rank 1 he averaged 98%.

If both of these students were to lose 1 mark on the exam, how is it fair for them to both receive a 49-50?
If ranking was the sole factor behind a study score what is the use of grade distributions for GA1?

[PhoenixxFire]

This is at times intriguing for me too. I’ve read often that, as rank 1, you are the sole driver of your score. I’m just curious how this ranking takes into account the actual scores of people. For example, let’s take Person A and Person B. Person A is an outlier in an extremely weak cohort where the sac averages was ~60% while he himself as Rank 1 averaged 75%.  On the other hand, Person B is in an extremely strong cohort where the average is ~80% and him being rank 1 he averaged 98%.

If both of these students were to lose 1 mark on the exam, how is it fair for them to both receive a 49-50?
If ranking was the sole factor behind a study score what is the use of grade distributions for GA1?

This is why people often say that actual marks don’t matter. In this situation VCAA would probably just assume that person A’s class had a much harder SAC (keep in mind it’s actually more complicated than this).

[Lear]

Surely there are more processes that eliminate such uncertainty. It could be possible Person B actually had more difficult SACs but just had a strong cohort which could perform at a higher level.

[Sine]

This is at times intriguing for me too. I’ve read often that, as rank 1, you are the sole driver of your score. I’m just curious how this ranking takes into account the actual scores of people. For example, let’s take Person A and Person B. Person A is an outlier in an extremely weak cohort where the sac averages was ~60% while he himself as Rank 1 averaged 75%.  On the other hand, Person B is in an extremely strong cohort where the average is ~80% and him being rank 1 he averaged 98%.

If both of these students were to lose 1 mark on the exam, how is it fair for them to both receive a 49-50?
If ranking was the sole factor behind a study score what is the use of grade distributions for GA1?

If you are rank 1 you are the "sole driver" only if your score if you score the highest score in your cohort. If not you are relying on someone else's exam score to correlate to your sac grade.

Rank 1 + same exam score (given it's the highest in each cohort) would yield  both students would score the same SS
However there is an advantage for the rank 1 in the stronger cohort they have so much more stability in his sac scores since if he chokes in the exam some other strong student will fullmark or get close. If the student in the weak cohort chokes it's unlikely that someone will be able to cover his exam score and thus decreasing his sac scores and hence SS.

Surely there are more processes that eliminate such uncertainty. It could be possible Person B actually had more difficult SACs but just had a strong cohort which could perform at a higher level.

what uncertainty do you mean?

[Lear]

Basically whether person B had tough SACs or just a low performance cohort. Like you said if they are rank 1 they would both get same study score. How does this take into account their performance in SACs? Can someone technically  be in a cohort where the average is 50% and be rank 1 with 60% and still somehow fluke the exam and get a 50? How does this balance with another rank 1 person in another cohort where the average is considerably higher but so are the SACs ? Is it not true that the second person had to probably work harder for their score than the first?


I may be confusing my self here not sure

[PhoenixxFire]

I mean I really, really doubt someone would be able to do significantly worse than someone else on their SACs and then fluke the exam well enough to get a 50. I've heard there's some sort of checking process if someone's results are unexpected (I think it had to do with their GAT results) but I don't know if that's true.

[Sine]

Basically whether person B had tough SACs or just a low performance cohort. Like you said if they are rank 1 they would both get same study score. How does this take into account their performance in SACs? Can someone technically  be in a cohort where the average is 50% and be rank 1 with 60% and still somehow fluke the exam and get a 50? How does this balance with another rank 1 person in another cohort where the average is considerably higher but so are the SACs ? Is it not true that the second person had to probably work harder for their score than the first?


I may be confusing my self here not sure

the exam scores of each of the cohorts are used to standerdise the sac scores to make them comparable

it's not like they are changing the rules halfway you know you will be graded on your ranking not actual scores.

[Lear]

the exam scores of each of the cohorts are used to standerdise the sac scores to make them comparable

it's not like they are changing the rules halfway you know you will be graded on your ranking not actual scores.

That makes sense to me definitely. But does this mean the SAC scores of even the person at rank 1 deserves to be moderated? If so wouldn't this render their 'rank 1' to be worth less than a person who scored pretty high for SACs and also had a strong cohort thus further increasing their sac score?

[Bri MT]

That makes sense to me definitely. But does this mean the SAC scores of even the person at rank 1 deserves to be moderated? If so wouldn't this render their 'rank 1' to be worth less than a person who scored pretty high for SACs and also had a strong cohort thus further increasing their sac score?

I'm not sure what you're proposing.

For this situation (letter reps a school, number reps a student of that rank):
A1: 90%
A2: 70%

B1: 90%
B2: 85%

Do you think that students A1 should get a lower study score than B1?
To me, this just seems like a measure that would  disadvantage students for going to an underrepresented school


Or are you suggesting that VCAA manually looks at each SAC and assigns a "difficulty index" (which would be subjective)
  The big problem I see with this idea is that it doesn't control for how teachers prepare their students for the SAC. Eg. teacher 1 may give them basically the same questions as a practice whereas teacher 2 may give them a SAC where they haven't been taught everything yet and have to figure it out in the test. (Not to mention that this would be difficult logistically)

Or are you suggesting something else?

I know that the system atm isn't perfect but I don't think any system would be and it's better than just plugging the percentages in

[Lear]

I'm not sure what you're proposing.

For this situation (letter reps a school, number reps a student of that rank):
A1: 90%
A2: 70%

B1: 90%
B2: 85%

Do you think that students A1 should get a lower study score than B1?
To me, this just seems like a measure that would  disadvantage students for going to an underrepresented school

I don't think A1 should necessarily get a lower score than B1. I'm just curious why your cohort does not affect rank 1 as it does for all those under. Lets say A3-A20 in school A all averaged around 50% on the exam. I'm assuming this would mean that the SAC scores for the cohort would go down for school A.
On the other hand, B3-B20 all average around 83%. This could mean that SACs for school B stay around what they were originally or possibly go up.
Should this not affect the SAC scores of even those sitting in rank 1 thus leading to a difference in study scores despite the same exam score?
I agree this is likely flawed as a bright student in an underrepresented school will definitely be disadvantaged. But since the start of VCE students have been told that the cohort performance is what determines the change in SAC scores post moderation not individual scores.

[PhoenixxFire]

From what I've been told it's not so much your cohort that affects the way your SACs are moderated but rather the difference between SAC performance and Exam performance.

For example at one school they average 85% and then average 85% on the exam. Great! Their SACs are the right difficulty so they don't get moderated.

Another school averages 90% on SACs but averages 50% on the exam - obviously their SACs were easy so they get scaled down.

I would argue that your cohort doesn't really affect your ranking. If the rank 1 person gets 100% on everything & a study score of 50, rank 2 really isn't affected. The only time that your cohort affects your performance (I believe) is if you don't get the same rank on your exam as you did on your SACs (e.g. SAC rank 2 but does 5th best on exam out of your class).

[Sine]

From what I've been told it's not so much your cohort that affects the way your SACs are moderated but rather the difference between SAC performance and Exam performance.

For example at one school they average 85% and then average 85% on the exam. Great! Their SACs are the right difficulty so they don't get moderated.

Another school averages 90% on SACs but averages 50% on the exam - obviously their SACs were easy so they get scaled down.

I would argue that your cohort doesn't really affect your ranking. If the rank 1 person gets 100% on everything & a study score of 50, rank 2 really isn't affected. The only time that your cohort affects your performance (I believe) is if you don't get the same rank on your exam as you did on your SACs (e.g. SAC rank 2 but does 5th best on exam out of your class).

85% on the exam doesn't mean 85 in sacs.

The scores you get will not be the same but the standerdised scores will be the same (i.e. taking into account the means and standard deviations)
As an easy example take VCE biology the top mark in the state for some years would be something like 106/110 that is 96% but will yield a 100 for the sacs since it was the highest or close to it. So In generaly if you are rank one and score well enough on the exam to be high 40's/50 (your actualy exam score maybe anything) your sac score will be 100 (or extremely close to it)

[MAGGOT]

And how does the gat come into play