Hi,
I've just recently completed my half yearlys and we've gotten our marks back. Lets just say those marks weren't what I expected and were pretttyyy terrible, and I'm currently freaking out about whether I can still get a 98+ atar, even if I put in the effort for the rest of the year. Is it still possible?
Hey! Everyone here has pretty much touched on everything, one mark isn't going to affect your overall score if you work hard and improve your rank. That being said, improving your mark/rank isn't always an easy feat. Being tasked to improve, when as you said these marks were quite unexpected, is hard because you may not know where you need to improve to begin with, especially if at like many schools, your teachers are wary of giving too much feedback. With that in mind, I really really really encourage that you utilise some of the resources on this site - in particular the essay marking services. I know this may seem really preachy and biased coming from a moderator, but ignore that and think of this as coming from a 2016 graduate instead (as I am one of those also
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Last year my half yearly rank for English was 22/69, and my mark was 80%. Now I am in no way saying that that was a bad rank/mark, and at the time I was pretty happy
However, Trials comes around. I don't change my study habits, and I don't study any more than I did for half yearlies, the only thing I do differently is I have all of my essays and my creative marked on here by Jamon and Elyse (If I remember correctly Brenden marked one as well!). From the half yearly exam to trials, My rank jumped from 22nd to 2nd, and my mark was a 90% overall (Paper 1 was 96%). This put me in a really good overall ranking position (the previous two ranks were the assessment task ranks not the overall rank, but the jump is still pretty similar), which landed me band 6 for my final HSC mark
Even if I had just worked super hard, before getting my essays marked here, I didn't have any direction. I didn't know how to improve. Getting everything looked over here showed me how, and I know that I could never have received those final marks without getting Jamon, Elyse and Brenden's feedback.
So basically TL;DR, if you work hard you can most definitely improve your mark/rank and one assessment is never going to be the be all end all - but take any opportunity you can to get better/make your study easier!
Susie