Are statistics showing that is it getting more competitive?

[kenhung123]

wow really? so 2010 vce is really competitive?

[appianway]

Not really. It's just that across Australia, there seem to be a lot of higher performers in our year level. Take the 2009 IMO team - 4 of the 6 were in year 11 (you'd expect the majority to be in year 12), and this year almost all of the science olympians at the ASO scholar school were from the class of 2010 (usually there's more of a mix).

[NE2000]

Could it be that it's simply because you know more top end students in the class of 2010 than the class of 2009, or the class of 2006 or 2004 for that matter? Given your school, you would know some very intelligent students. But I would be willing to say that those at your school two years ago knew some exceptional students as well. And, if anything, the class of 2009 had four students achieving the feat of five 50s, which doesn't happen very often (for comparison, Synesthetic's analysis and quppa's study score thing show one student achieved this in 2008). The point you make about the national maths olympiad team is interesting and supports your view the most. However, I'm not sure about interstate students, but out of the three Victorians to make the national olympiad teams last year in the three sciences, all three were in year 12.

However I'm not dismissing your view. In fact consider me more curious (especially given the maths olympiad fact), what sort of other competitions do you mean?

[superflya]

Could it be that it's simply because you know more top end students in the class of 2010 than the class of 2009, or the class of 2006 or 2004 for that matter? Given your school, you would know some very intelligent students. But I would be willing to say that those at your school two years ago knew some exceptional students as well. And, if anything, the class of 2009 had four students achieving the feat of five 50s, which doesn't happen very often (for comparison, Synesthetic's analysis and quppa's study score thing show one student achieved this in 2008). The point you make about the national maths olympiad team is interesting and supports your view the most. However, I'm not sure about interstate students, but out of the three Victorians to make the national olympiad teams last year in the three sciences, all three were in year 12.

+1

[EvangelionZeta]

I'm going to have to disagree with appianway's view.  Qualifying for National Olympiad teams doesn't necessarily correlate to VCE success; Andrew Elvey-Price, ranked near the top of the world in the International Mathematics Olympiad last year, got 43 in Spesh, whilst Alfred Liang (Silver Medalist) got 45 in Methods (in year 11).  From observing year 11 scores on the whole (yes, I confess to looking to see the "top performing" year 11s...), they seem to be more or less the same as last year's.  

This part is going to be controversial, but from personal experience I also think that 2010 isn't going to be particularly competitive.  I would objectively consider myself socially widespread, and it got to the point where I accurately predicted around a dozen of the 99.95s from last year.  My social network within the 2010 isn't necessarily as far-encompassing (in my mind), but from what I've seen we're not particularly "better" than that year within a VCE context in any sense.

Sorry if the second part made me sound somewhat pretentious/conceited.  :p

[NE2000]

it got to the point where I accurately predicted around a dozen of the 99.95s from last year.  

It did help that seven were from your school (including two of the four people that got five 50s)

and dw, you don't sound conceited/pretentious imo

[vexx]

So basically since 2009 was less competitive then the previous year (cutoffs scores were lower, where some people got a whole ENTER point higher in the high 90's then they would have in previous years), would this indicate that this year could possibly maintain this level of competitiveness or perhaps decrease? I would personally love it to stay/decrease! hah.

[NE2000]

So basically since 2009 was less competitive then the previous year (cutoffs scores were lower, where some people got a whole ENTER point higher in the high 90's then they would have in previous years), would this indicate that this year could possibly maintain this level of competitiveness or perhaps decrease? I would personally love it to stay/decrease! hah.

See imo, which could be wrong of course, it was no less competitive than the year before. The only difference is that the scaling of subjects like spesh and many LOTEs dropped so much that the aggregates required for particular ENTERs would drop in turn. Otherwise there would have been a trend for the last three years (aggregate-ENTER scores have reduced each year for the last three) of reduced competition which doesn't make sense to me. If there is such a trend, we have to ask ourselves what could cause this trend? In the absence of any answer, I just believe it's the scaling that's causing the change.