Trust me, a slightly different spesh vs further thread

[tea.squaredd]

Hey guys,

So currrently Im in a spesh class and my teacher is .. average (with a weird personality)
I havent had a class with him yet but i hear he isnt very good.
Also, I tutor with derrick ha atm but it wont be any use with the SACs from my school (dha teaches spesh maths well, except my school takes it wayy too deep)

So I'm thinking, If i can get a good further teacher, should I switch over?
I enjoy maths but I dont feel like getting bad sacs and doing alright exam.. when I can do better in sacs in further, and do well in the exam.

Anyone been in the same situation or can shed some light?

My other subjs: eng, chem , bio , methods

[riv]

If you don't require Specialist or maths for your uni course, I'd recommend taking further. I did all 4 maths subjects(methods(46),further(47),spesh(40)and uni maths(h2a)), my spesh and further scaling were close. Mind you I did no trials for further and I didn't pay attention in class. I guess if you try hard, you'd get a high score, possibly 50. Moreover, you'd have more time to study for other subjects.

[John President]

That depends on what your tertiary plans are. Because here's a tip - If you're planning to do a maths subject at Melbourne Uni (or probably any uni, I don't really know much about Monash, etc) in first year, then doing Spesh would be a super idea - the non-Spesh students are at a clear disadvantage from day one.

At Melbourne Uni, not doing Spesh means that before you do any other maths you have to do a subject called Calculus 1 (which is basically Spesh condensed into a semester). Doing Spesh allows you to skip into Calculus 2 - or even Accelerated Maths if you do well in it.

Since you're being tutored by DHa and judging by your study score aims you seem very smart, I think you there is a good chance you should be able to overcome having a bad teacher.

On the other hand, Further is extremely light and will give you more time for other subjects whilst not requiring too much effort to do exceptionally well in - the main problem is guarding against silly mistakes.

Good luck with your decision - be sure to consider carefully!

[tram]

What do you mean by your school taking it 'way too deep' ??

[tea.squaredd]

Im sure your school did it too, MHS makes the SACs way too hard for spesh. I'm sure anyone who has done it would agree.
Atm, I'm leaning towards further.

[tram]

If you are 45+ in spech materiel according to your aims, you will be bored shitless ^in further, if you are doing outside tutoring, I think you should be fine, while sacs from schools like our are much harder, they simply require higher among of analytical thinking rather than more knowledge, if you are aiming for 45 ^in Spech, you will need the analytical skills hard sacs force you to acquire anyway.
Spech is much more interesting and doing well ^in any Maths subject is about working hard yourself anyway, no matter what type of teacher you have.

[Mao]

You should understand that a good SAC score doesn't mean much. The more important thing is your ranking in your cohort and the performance of the cohort. At a high-performance school such as MHS, the SACs are ridiculously hard because the cohort is very competitive, and the school need to be able to separate the 50'ers from the 45'ers (thus need very very difficult questions to separate the extremely brilliant from the brilliant).

Example scenario:
In a high performance school, half of students achieve 40+ (A+ in all three GAs). The SAC scores themselves don't mean much, but the ranking is important. Let's assume the SAC scores turn out to be a symmetrical distribution with an average un-moderated score of 60%. That means if you scored 60% or higher in a SAC (which, is quite a low score for many people), you will still be ranked above the middle of your cohort. Which then implies you are in the group of students who will achieve 40+, and that 60% un-moderated score will scale up to A+ from statistical moderation (assuming the cohort doesn't collectively do horribly on the exam).

If low raw SAC scores is the only thing holding you back, here's a few things to think about:
-How do you compare to the rest of the cohort? Where do you think you would rank?
-Compare yourself to the people who are ranked below you. What SS do you think they will get? (if it is a bit hard to predict, have a look at the performance of the cohort last year)
-Compare yourself to the people who are slightly above you, what SS do you think they will get?
-Your actual performance will be somewhere between these two numbers.

I re-emphasize, the raw SAC scores doesn't matter. It is your ranking that determines what your moderated SAC scores will be. If you are similarly ranked with other high-achieving students, then even if your raw SAC score is at a petty percentage, so long as the other high-achieving kids have similarly petty percentages everything will work out just the same.

[chuck_norris]

Sif you'd drop Spesh for Further..

45+ in further is quite hard as it is so easy to lose a few marks (like 5-7 marks for 45) which will go down to 44

Whereas, 44 scaled in Spesh is lower risk. I got 43.5 (36 raw) last year with a moderated B+ in SACs and losing ~17 marks in exams..

I would say do Spesh no matter what..

But as EZ said in another thread:

So yeah, in my opinion, if you just want the top score, want to be able to focus on other subjects AND don't really care too much about maths/don't have the time for spesh, go Further.  If you genuinely want to learn and would rather have a relatively easy "solid" score instead of a potentially easier "perfect" score, then go spesh.

[dc302]

If you understand the concepts then I don't think the SACs would be 'too deep'. But I guess that does also depend on how quickly you can adapt to new situations (ie. questions that are a little different to what you're used to).

I'd say stick with spesh!