Cohort

[Hodgeyhodgey]

Most likely a silly question, but what is a cohort?
I see people mentioning their 'cohort' in topics across every board. Is it just the people in your class? in that entire subject?

Enlighten me

[iNerd]

Your 'cohort' is all your VCE students.
Your 'subject cohort' is all your VCE students taking that particular subject.

The subject cohort is the main thing.

[dyaner]

I learnt the word 'cohort' from VCEnotes

[chrisjb]

I learnt the word 'cohort' from VCEnotes

me too, and now I use it everywhere. "Group" is now "Cohort".

[Eriny]

lol. It's a useful word!

[dyaner]

I learnt the word 'cohort' from VCEnotes

me too, and now I use it everywhere. "Group" is now "Cohort".

+1.

[Hodgeyhodgey]

That makes perfect sense

Now what's with all the talk I see on the forums about the top ranked people in the cohort getting lower-than-expected results, resulting in everyone elses' results being lowered?

[iNerd]

That makes perfect sense

Now what's with all the talk I see on the forums about the top ranked people in the cohort getting lower-than-expected results, resulting in everyone elses' results being lowered?

If you're Rank 1 in your subject cohort and you bomb out on your VCAA exam than everyone below you gets scaled down accordingly. Let's say you get 100% SACs Rank 1, and then go and get a solid B+ on a VCAA exam. VCAA has to assume your school gave you easy SACs and moderates your SACs down accordingly (at least I think so, some guy will confirm).

[Greatness]

That makes perfect sense

Now what's with all the talk I see on the forums about the top ranked people in the cohort getting lower-than-expected results, resulting in everyone elses' results being lowered?

If you're Rank 1 in your subject cohort and you bomb out on your VCAA exam than everyone below you gets scaled down accordingly. Let's say you get 100% SACs Rank 1, and then go and get a solid B+ on a VCAA exam. VCAA has to assume your school gave you easy SACs and moderates your SACs down accordingly (at least I think so, some guy will confirm).

Yeah i think that's about right. But they would have a look at the exam results of ppl who are ranked lower than rank1 eg rank2-rank4. And say if they got high exam scores A+ and As then VCAA will moderate the scores accordingly. <- Is this right?

[chrisjb]

That makes perfect sense

Now what's with all the talk I see on the forums about the top ranked people in the cohort getting lower-than-expected results, resulting in everyone elses' results being lowered?

well... now we're getting tricky. I will provide what is a little bit of a simplification of what happens because otherwise we would have to use equations and terms such as standard deviation and mean (which i'm no good at)- and also I don't know how to use latex.

Cohorts of a subject are not always equal. Lets use biology as an example. There will always be schools with very good biology teachers and bad biology teachers and there will always be schools with kids who are good at biology and schools with kids who are bad at biology. So it is nessicary to sort out who these schools are and make them equal. Because of the sac system, each school will end up with someone ranked first, seccond and so on. However because some schools are better than others, stuents will not always be equaly matched to their equaly ranked counterpart in another school.
Because of this the exam(s) is used to decide how one school's number 1 ranked student (and all other students) rank against the rest of the schools in the state's number 1 ranked students (and allother sutdents). by this measure, if one school is doing much better than the rest of the schools in the state, then their SAC scores should be pushed up as it is very likely that it was 'harder' to obtain number 1 rank in that shool than it would have been to obtain number 1 rank in another school, therefore the kid at that 'harder' school deserves to have his sac marks pushed up.

Real world example: My legal cohort this year was reasonaby good in the exam. This meant that my SAC scores which were originaly 92/100 and 91/100 got pushed up to 98/100 and 98/100.

note, this system has no impact on a studnet's EXAM score.

DANG! in after ATAR and swarley. Still posting cos it took me ages to write and it's from basics too.

[Greatness]

hahha good explanation chris. i think it's better if you dont look too deeply into this stuff. just make sure you hold a high ranking in your cohort and do well on your exams.

[Hodgeyhodgey]

I think I understand. Everyone has a basic concept of this that I know of except they explain it as "do good on your SACs and bad on the exam, your marks get lowered to match your exam result".

[Predator]

As said above just as long as you know the basics which have been defined spot on above that is all you need to know.
As long as you are ranked well in your cohort and do well on the exam you should be fine.
Good luck with it all this year too.