ATAR Notes: Forum

VCE Stuff => Victorian Technical Score Discussion => Topic started by: spursy on May 12, 2019, 01:07:56 pm

Title: how do SACS work?
Post by: spursy on May 12, 2019, 01:07:56 pm
Recently someone told me that the SAC marks are more important than the exam marks. They said that if you rank number 1 in the SACs then you will get the marks of the person who got rank 1 in the exams. I'm really confused because this doesn't sound fair at all. Could someone just clarify if this is correct or just bs
Title: Re: how do SACS work?
Post by: Bri MT on May 12, 2019, 02:08:10 pm
Somewhere there has been a miscommunication.

Your exams marks are yours. The actual grade you see (and that goes to your study score) will depend on how well you did on the exam compared to the rest of the state. Exams are important - often more so than the SACs.

Your SAC marks on the other hand are a bit more complicated. Because each school's SACs are different it's not as simple as comparing your grade to other students grades. Instead, the SAC component of your study score is based on your rank within your cohort and how well your cohort performs on the exam.
For example, if you are rank 1 in the SACs your SAC grade will be your cohorts highest exam mark. Note that this doesn't mean if you are rank 2 your SAC score will be the 2nd highest exam mark; SAC score calculation is complicated but basically just do your best and keep in mind that your SAC grades are subject to change based on the exam.
Title: Re: how do SACS work?
Post by: Joseph41 on May 13, 2019, 01:03:48 pm
As per Bri's post above, whatever you get on your exam is yours. Nothing changes that. Nobody else takes it away, and you don't take anybody else's exam score.

Your SAC ranking also doesn't change. What can get moderated is the scale of your SAC marks. Again, as Bri has pointed out, different schools have different SAC contexts, so we can't just say that 85% at School A is better than 70% at School B.

Feel free to ask any follow-up questions you have!