Does knowing your rank help?

[FrankieDens]

Hi everyone!

Just wanted to know if knowing your rank in the Biology cohort helps in anyway? In my school, it is a policy for students not to know their ranks (if you try asking you will get shut down immediately). This is because they want to not put any pressure on their students, which I understand but it seems other schools tell their students so I'm just a bit confused.

Thanks guys! 

[PhoenixxFire]

Nah, it only helps you to get a sense of how well you're doing (although this can also be misleading as rank 1 at one school can be doing very differently to rank 1 at another school).

[hawkrook]

Knowing your rank is absolutely essential to having any sort of idea of how you are going and what study scores you will end up with. A raw SAC score without any idea of your ranking is meaningless. With a rank and some idea of your cohort's strength, you can calculate your GA1 and GA2 scores relatively accurately by looking at the grade distributions from previous years.

Knowing your rank leads to better outcomes for everyone. For instance, if you are aiming for a 40, and you find that you are ranked in the middle of your cohort at an average school, then that is going to be a problem and you will need to work harder. Similiarily, if you are stressed about English and aiming for a 30, but you find that you are at the top of your cohort, then that stress can be relieved and you know that you don't need to work as hard.

I suggest you press your teachers to reveal your rank - hiding it from you sabotages your VCE

[Sine]

Hi everyone!

Just wanted to know if knowing your rank in the Biology cohort helps in anyway? In my school, it is a policy for students not to know their ranks (if you try asking you will get shut down immediately). This is because they want to not put any pressure on their students, which I understand but it seems other schools tell their students so I'm just a bit confused.

Thanks guys (and sorry if this question is not supposed to be here - I can't seem to find the general VCE questions board lol)

Hmm it really depends on the individual on whether it will help.

There will be some students who will take a low rank as motivation in order to work harder and obtain a higher rank later but it can be bad in the sense that certain students will lose hope about getting a good study score and entirely give up resulting in worse scores. Also not knowing is really one less thing to waste time thinking about but that only works if you continue to try to do your best.

Personally I liked to know where I was - I think I knew my ranking for all my subjects either through the teacher telling or just seeing what others scored - only English was hard to judge since they only gave out the range of the score you received. E.g. 27-30/30 gets a very high but couldn't really compare on the actual score.

Knowing your rank is absolutely essential to having any sort of idea of how you are going and what study scores you will end up with. A raw SAC score without any idea of your ranking is meaningless. With a rank and some idea of your cohort's strength, you can calculate your GA1 and GA2 scores relatively accurately by looking at the grade distributions from previous years.

Knowing your rank leads to better outcomes for everyone. For instance, if you are aiming for a 40, and you find that you are ranked in the middle of your cohort at an average school, then that is going to be a problem and you will need to work harder. Similiarily, if you are stressed about English and aiming for a 30, but you find that you are at the top of your cohort, then that stress can be relieved and you know that you don't need to work as hard.

I suggest you press your teachers to reveal your rank - hiding it from you sabotages your VCE

Probably not a good idea to continue pressing the issue if they have already reinforced it is something they won't be doing - Teachers mark your sacs so they could be disadvantaged.