There’s been a lot of chit chat on the forums recently about the extent to which bad SAC marks could prevent you from getting that dream score. Whether you’re angling for straight 50s in everything, or you’re just looking to pass and fulfill certain prerequisite subjects, it’s natural to have the occasional freak-out over how well your year is going so far.
By this stage, you will have received at least a couple of pieces of assessment back for most of your subjects. And if you’ve been studying smart thus far, hopefully those results will be meeting or even exceeding your expectations. But we can’t all be so lucky. Sometimes there’s just that one subject that’s giving you grief. Sometimes there’s just one topic that dragging down your average marks. Sometimes you just have a bad day, get a tonne of bad questions that don’t cater to your strengths at all, and get bad SAC marks to round it all off.
Firstly, your definition of a ‘bad’ mark may differ from other people’s. And although VCAA are obsessed with standardising you against the rest of the state, it’s important to have your own perspective as well.
For some people, a C+ is an incredible achievement that’s a testament to all the effort they put in. For others, a low A+ is a painful reminder of the silly slip-ups they’re making.
Your attitude may even change depending on which subject we’re talking about; I know that when I was in Year 12, getting a B+ in English would’ve been a nightmare. But if I managed a B+ in Methods, I would’ve photocopied that SAC and plastered my success all over the fridge as a reminder of my mathematical genius!
So for our purposes, I want you to consider what bad SAC marks mean to you. Keep your definitions realistic, and be honest, but optimistic about what you’re trying to achieve. Only then can you start to build on those results and bump up your scores.
Look at the big picture
Let’s just say you royally screwed up your first English SAC. You tried to write a Text Response essay but ended up forgetting all the useful quotes, and you had no clue how to structure things. Your teacher gave you some pity points, but ultimately, that mark was nowhere near what you know you’re capable of, and nowhere near what you were aiming for.
But, really, that Text Response SAC was only worth 30 marks for Unit 3. That means it’s worth 30% of one quarter of your study score.
(Technically, it’s even less than that because your Unit 3 and 4 SAC scores will be moderated, and your exam is worth more anyway!)
As such, the difference between an A+ and a C on that one SAC is hardly going to bring you down from a potential 40+ SS to failure territory.
What WILL harm your study score, though, is if you don’t learn from your mistakes! (but more on that later!)
Luckily, understanding how the system works can be a great source of comfort. If you know a little bit about the breakdown of marks or how VCAA scales SAC results, then you can console yourself with the knowledge that the system is designed for you to recover from bad results! They don’t want bad SAC marks to hold back students who would otherwise achieve awesome results. That’d mess with their pretty bell curves, and often these little slip-ups are so common across the state that it’d be unfair to penalise everyone.
This is especially true in Semester 1 when the vast majority of students are still working stuff out. And I mean that both in terms of actual content (i.e. ‘how do I graph this equation?’ and ‘what’s the function of a neutrophil?’) and study skills (i.e. ‘how many hours can I study before getting bored/tired?’ and ‘do I learn better by highlighting notes or writing my own?’)
In Semester 2, many SACs are worth more marks, which means that if you’re still making the same mistakes, you may negatively impact your study score. But even then, the weighting of exam results (for most subjects anyway) will balance out any small or occasional errors.
So yeah, you might have lost a few marks here and there, but in the grand scheme of VCE, that won’t be catastrophic.
And in the even grander scheme of leaving school and entering university or the workforce, the sheer number of alternate pathways available to you means it’s basically impossible for a single study score (or even your entire ATAR) to hold you back.
Learning from bad SAC marks
But right now, all you can think about is that one blemish on your otherwise perfect record (or perhaps that series of blemishes that you can’t seem to get rid of). How can you put all that behind you so you can focus on doing better next time?
It’s simple. Don’t.
You should obsess over the mistakes you make, but you should NOT focus on the score you got. Instead, focus on where you went wrong and what you need to do to improve.
Imagine one of your friends came up to you and said: “Hey, I’m super stressed out with Chemistry and I think I might fail. And you know how you’re a super-awesome-Chemistry-wizard? Well, could you help me out?”
And you say “of course! What are you having trouble with?” because you’re a lovely person.
And they say “EVERYTHING! I only got 8/20 on my SAC.”
You: “…that sucks, but where did you lose marks?”
Them: “EVERWHERE! I got 0/3 for most of the short answers and only picked up 4/10 in the multi-choice.”
You: “…okay, what was the topic? Did you know what the questions were about, or were you able to answer some of the basic ones?”
Them: “idk, I lost marks everywhere and I only got 8/20.”
You: “So… where are you at in class right now? Are you on top of the formulas and the stuff from Units 1&2?”
Them: “No, but I really want to do better in this next SAC; I’ve gotta lift my average since I want a 40+ study score.”
You: “Right, so what do you want to go through? What do you want to cover?”
Them: “EVERYTHING! I don’t want to get 8/20. I want to get 20/20.”
You: -.-
Hard truth time: change won’t happen just because you want it to. Going from an 8/20 to a 20/20 isn’t possible UNLESS you evaluate the mistakes you’ve made. Here’s what you need to do:
Go through your work, and be hyper-critical of everything you did wrong. This can be kind of excruciating at first, but trust me when I say that it’ll serve you well in the long-run. If it helps, imagine you’re assessing someone else’s work – it’s usually easier to criticise something that’s not your own.
Get a teacher or peer to go through your work too. Get them to check for errors in your working, or for issues with the clarity of your expression. A second opinion can help raise a whole bunch of problems you may not know you had.
Sit down with your teacher, and get their input. Have them explain to you why your answers are wrong, or why you’re losing marks. Then, see if they can show you what a better response would look like (e.g. a sample 10/10 essay, or a worked solution for a short answer question).
If you’re teacher’s no help, come chat to us instead! One of our many subject experts will happily explain how you can fix those mistakes and prevent bad SAC marks in the future.
Re-test yourself, and repeat.
If you obsess over the numbers → you won’t be able to get to grips with new content → you’ll make the same mistakes in the next SAC.
If you refuse to evaluate your performance and just ignore bad SAC marks → you won’t know what mistakes to avoid in future → you’ll end up with the same undesirable results.
BUT if you go back over your SACs and tests to find qualitative things to improve upon → you give yourself proper goals to aim for in your next assessment task.
What do qualitative goals look like?
It’s easy to say ‘don’t stress about the numbers,’ but what do you concentrate on instead?
Well, qualitative goals look different for each subject, but the underlying focus is always the same: how can you turn your current answers into high-scoring ones?
For Maths subjects, for instance, you might say:
Okay, in my last SAC, I got decent marks for my working out, but usually lost that final mark for the overall answer because I made dumb mistakes like substituting the wrong value or forgetting to convert it to the proper form. So next time, I’m going to set aside thirty seconds after every question I finish where I go back over my solutions and make sure the answer I’ve written is what my teacher wants to see.
By contrast, in English or essay writing subjects:
My structure was pretty good, but I lost marks for not explaining my evidence properly. For the next week, I’m just going to focus on writing practice paragraphs that go through a step-by-step explanation of my examples. Then I’ll get my teacher’s feedback and try writing a whole essay afterwards.
You can even make things more specific for Science or Humanities subjects:
In my last Bio SAC, I couldn’t label my diagrams properly because I wasn’t able to visualise things, so I need to revise that section of the course. And I didn’t have enough case studies in my last Legal SAC, which is why I lost marks for my extended response. I also got confused between the ‘dimensions’ of health and the ‘determinants’ of health, so I need to go over both of those and remember to highlight the key words in the question.
See how these kinds of attitudes are far more constructive than simply saying ‘I’m averaging a B and I need to get full marks next time!’
It may take a bit of adjustment, and I won’t pretend criticising yourself is an easy process. But the best, most efficient way to turn bad SAC marks into ideal results is to search and destroy all those little errors holding you back.
