Impact of a low rank

[dermite]

I'm currently rank 243 / 263 in my school. I know, its absolutely crap.

How badly will this affect my ATAR?
Is it worth the effort to put in, when I can easily use that effort to keep my top 5 ranks in other subjects?
Can I count on my other subjects to carry my ATAR? Or will English have a catastrophic effect on my ATAR?

[jamonwindeyer]

You will definitely benefit from getting your English results as strong as they can be. It is never worth abandoning a subject, especially English which is guaranteed to count so yes, it is worth the effort, and no, your other subjects won't carry your ATAR. That said, if you get really strong results everywhere else and the English result is decent, that English result won't matter so much, if that makes sense?

So don't stress, but don't give up on it either

[dermite]

But still, the amount of work I need to put into English just to get to rank ~200 is far greater than the amount I need to keep my top 5 ranks in all other subjects (except math extension, where I'm 12th).
Will english (where my average is around 65% per test) impact my ATAR so tragically that i won't even get an ATAR in the 80s?

[jamonwindeyer]

But still, the amount of work I need to put into English just to get to rank ~200 is far greater than the amount I need to keep my top 5 ranks in all other subjects (except math extension, where I'm 12th).
Will english (where my average is around 65% per test) impact my ATAR so tragically that i won't even get an ATAR in the 80s?

I really can't (nor could anyone) say, "A mark of ___ in English will have exactly this effect on your ATAR. All I can say is that, from all the people I've seen do their HSC in my time doing it myself and the years I've been with AN, people tend to do better when they do the best they can in every subject. To throw away two units that are guaranteed to count is shooting yourself in the foot!

Certainly, your ATAR is going to be significantly lower with a mark of 65 in English and Band 6's elsewhere, than it would be with identical marks but with a 75 in English. In the 60's and 70's a few marks can actually make a huge difference, because you are starting to get close to the mean mark for Advanced, which is usually high 70's, and so you get a fair bit of "bang for your buck" so to speak.

tl;dr -> Giving up on English is selling yourself short. I promise you that giving up a subject doesn't free up the time as much as you think. By all means don't invest a tonne of extra time, but don't give up - Keep chugging along