What kind of marks d'you think you'll need?

[appianway]

What kind of marks d'you think people will need to score an A+? What scores do you think will equate to study scores of 50, 49 and 48? Our teachers told us you usually don't need full marks to attain a 50, so hopefully there's hope of a passable score out there...

[sam5454]

Last year was 62/75 for an A+. I really do feel this years exam was more challenging and that some of the questions were out of reach for students at our level. I think the median will be a considerable amount lower (about 5-6 marks lower) but I don't think the top bracket will change that much. I would suggest an A+ this year would be about 60 but I could be very wrong as the cohort that is studying English Language is vastly increasing and changing. As for scores of 48-50; it is even harder to tell as there is only some ridiculous number like 8 people who will score in this range and will literally depend on year to year. I would suggest a score of 72 or above would be needed (assuming very strong SAC scores) but will vary year out. I'm sure someone else will have some more insight into this discussion.

[appianway]

72 or above? My teachers said you could lose marks for a 50 though... :S

[ngRISING]

hope it scales up by at least 3. 25->28 would be gold!

[THem]

hope it scales up by at least 3. 25->28 would be gold!

25-> 26 would be funny.

[hyperblade01]

Nah, its still possible

25>> 23 would be funny (in a bad way actually...)

[sam5454]

Yes you could lose marks and get a 50; a 50 is the top 0.2% of a subjects applicants. Like I said it depends year to year because there is simply such a small number of students in that range. I would say it would be rare that with a score less than about 72; to be in for a chance of a 49 or 50. Remember that SAC's do come into account here and count for 50% of the study score. There are brilliant kids out there though. For instance our VATE 2009 practice exams were externally marked by an extremely harsh marker and the VATE 2009 paper was, to put it simply, way too challenging and a bit out of reach for students at our level. But we had a kid in our class get 74 (he got a 50 in methods last year) and the next mark down was much lower; I think it was 65 (he got a 48 in methods last year). So my point is that there are brilliant kids out there that can ace these sorts of papers and you often need to do extremely well to get the sort of marks around 48-50 but on the converse, these kids don't come around every year and the degree of difficulty changes every year and I do believe this exam was harder than past years so maybe you could be right.

[ngRISING]

a long ass statement

feels more comfortable!

[appianway]

I know that normally you'd need a score of around 72+ for a 49 or 50, but I was just curious as to what you'd need this year. My school has an exceptionally strong cohort (with numerous students who've attained 50s in the past and a lot who've topped the state in several academic pursuits) and we usually have a number of 50s (with quite a few 49s and 48s). However, a lot of the girls who sat the paper this year didn't finish, and those who did had less time to read over and refine their work. I'm not sure whether this is just suggesting that my school's going to get lower marks this year than in previous cohorts, but it seems as though a lot of top end students won't do as well as they'd planned. This would suggest that the A+ cut off (which generally reflects the top 6 or 7 percent) will drop considerably- I think most students will have lost a few marks in some of the extended response for not giving adequate explanations (even if they'd answered the question), and I think the standard of essays will be lower due to the length of sections A and B.

[sam5454]

Ahh, you must be a macrob girl. Some excellent points you've made; but I think you'll find that every year there are lots of people who don't go as well as they planned. I'm sure lots of people said the same thing last year as they walked out; there is always something a bit different about each new paper. I don't think this year will be much of an exception for needing 72 or more to get a 49 or 50. And I don't think the A+ cut off will be much less than 60 (maybe as low as 59 or even 58 but definately no lower I would say) in comparison to last years 62/75. But I do agree that this paper was more challenging (particularly section 1 and 2), and that the general standard will be lower; but in my opinion, I don't think as low as you have in mind.

[appianway]

I think it'll be a few points lower (probably between 57 and 60, and perhaps 5% instead of 6% of students), but I think it'll be a steeper bell curve because lots of the top students will score 4-5/6 for some of the longer questions because of the pressure of time. People do go out feeling worried each year, but the general response from the students (and from our teachers) was that it wasn't like anything seen before. Although there are students who are confident in their responses, I doubt the same proportion of students would've attained above 90% for spoken and written language - as I mentioned earlier, it's more likely that they haven't given enough explanation this year (due to the time limit and the sheer number of explanations needed).

Fingers crossed that my essay's better than I think it is...