confused about scaling !!

[stressedyeareight]

hey everyone!
say i am doing high scaling subjects latin and spesh but i'm also doing low scaling ones like  health, geography and theatre studies.

would i NEED to get latin and spesh in my top 4 to get its maximum scaling? at the moment I'm worried I might accidently perform better in say health or geography (meaning they will go to my top 4 while latin and spesh only contribute a small percent to my ATAR)


if this is the case, would you recommend PURPOSELY trying to do worse in say geo and theatre studies for the sole purpose of getting spesh and latin in the top 4

OR should I play it safe in the event that I do badly in say spesh or latin and still put in effort for the lower scaling ones.

 my main question is
"should you try to get a higher mark in your high scaling subjects to make sure they get into your top 4, and if you don't manage to - will this impact your ATAR".


Mod edit: Combined your two posts that were identical into one (in future please just post in one place ) & moved to the most suited part of the forums. Good luck with your studies! - Bri MT

[Owlbird83]

Hi stressedyeareight!

You should try to get the best mark in each of your subjects no matter how they scale. Excluding English, the subjects that go in your primary 4 will be your top 3 based on scaled study scores. It would be disadvantageous to try and perform worse in your subjects that scale down, that would only result in a lower overall mark.
>If you do perform better in health/geography but the scaled scores are lower than the scaled scores of spesh/latin, they'd still take spesh/latin for your top 4.
>If you perform a lot better in health/geography and after scaling down their scaled scores are still higher than the scaled scores of spesh/latin they'll be taken for your top 4.
Basically you'll automatically get the highest aggregate possible based on your scaled study scores so please don't worry about it too much!
Edit: there's nothing stopping you from putting more effort into higher scaling subjects if you want to, but don't think that 'accidentally' doing better in your lower-scaling subjects will lead to a lower ATAR.
Let me know if you still have questions!

[The Cat In The Hat]

You should do your best in all your subjects.
Try and have balance in them: you don't know how it will actually go.
I only did one subject that scaled up much (Methods). All the others either stayed around the same or scaled down.
If Latin/Spesh is not in your top four, they'll still get scaled as normal, just they'll be the 10%.
And thus:
Do not purposely do worse in any of your subjects.
If a higher-scaling subject, after scaling, is lower than a low-scaling subject, you'll still do better having the low-scaling subject there.

Try to get as high a mark as you can, in all subjects. Though scaling is useful. And work intentionally - if you're finding that just a bit more work would significantly boost your scores in one subject, do it. (Case in point: I didn't learn probability until the weekend before the Methods exam. I suspect I got most of the marks for the questions I had time for, and thus significantly boosted my marks. However, this did mean I neglected other subjects more for a time during the exam period.)

Just do your best, I suppose.