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March 28, 2024, 11:57:40 pm

Poll

Having a smaller cohort:

will not affect your SS
2 (9.5%)
will only affect your SS slightly
13 (61.9%)
will significantly affect your SS
6 (28.6%)

Total Members Voted: 20

Author Topic: Having a Smaller Cohort - Positive or Negative?  (Read 2500 times)  Share 

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Snow Leopard

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Having a Smaller Cohort - Positive or Negative?
« on: October 19, 2019, 07:44:37 pm »
0
Hey,

I was wondering, if having a smaller cohort would affect me in any way (positive or negative) as my 3/4 subject next year will have less than 15 people.
Thanks :)
« Last Edit: June 27, 2020, 01:43:01 pm by Snow Leopard »

jkay__

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Re: Having a Smaller Cohort - Positive or Negative?
« Reply #1 on: October 19, 2019, 08:56:17 pm »
+4
If everyone tries hard and does well - that's a bonus. However, they could drag you down if they didn't do well. SACs and rankings will matter much more though, so you'll need to try extra hard
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PhoenixxFire

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Re: Having a Smaller Cohort - Positive or Negative?
« Reply #2 on: October 19, 2019, 09:38:29 pm »
+3
A small cohort could be a good thing or a bad thing. There's less luck involved in having a large cohort - it means that if you have a bad day on one of your sacs or your exam it's probably not going to affect your study score quite as much because you'll have people of a similar ability to you. For example, if you're in a small cohort and are rank 1 but are doing far better than everyone else and then have a bad day on the exam, your ss is going to take quite a hit, but if you're in a large cohort and have people doing almost as good as you, you'll still get a decent mark for GA1 and GA2 because of others exam scores.

It really just depends on how your cohort is though - if you're in a small cohort but have others who are scoring similarly to you then it won't be much different to being in a large cohort.

You'll probably get more attention from your teacher given they don't have as many students to deal with, but if they're not a good teacher you won't have any other teachers for that subject to ask.

There's positives and negatives, so it's not really possible to say which is better. Your rank is definitely more important than if you were in a larger cohort though.
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Snow Leopard

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Re: Having a Smaller Cohort - Positive or Negative?
« Reply #3 on: November 02, 2019, 10:49:06 pm »
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In terms of the strength of our cohort (LOTE subject):
- Most other students try hard and do reasonably well
- Only a few students take this subject as a bludge and don't do well

Considering that the dynamics of this cohort remain as mentioned above, how would I be affected by this cohort?
« Last Edit: June 27, 2020, 01:40:30 pm by Snow Leopard »

Sine

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Re: Having a Smaller Cohort - Positive or Negative?
« Reply #4 on: November 02, 2019, 10:58:43 pm »
+5
In terms of the strength of our cohort (LOTE subject):
- we've got one student who was born and lived in a country where the LOTE was spoken as their First Language, but they moved to Australia when they were like a toddler. Nonetheless, he's really good with speaking skills but average-good at everything else
- Most other students try hard and do reasonably well
- Only a few students take this subject as a bludge and don't do well

Considering that the dynamics of this cohort remain as mentioned above, how would I be affected by this cohort?

Personal circumstances and individuality matter for very little in terms of cohort strength - because as the name suggests it is about the "cohort" not a single person- all VCAA sees are the marks obtained (not how they were obtained).

If the sacs are good and everyone performs to their ability no one should be negatively/positively impacted by sacs.
Problems only start to rise when high ranked students bomb the exam or someone underperforms in sacs (hence low ranking).

Also by "underperforms" I don't mean someone thinking they could do better or should've studied more earlier in the year - it would be someone who is on a normal day getting 90% but for some reason they get 70.

Snow Leopard

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Re: Having a Smaller Cohort - Positive or Negative?
« Reply #5 on: November 02, 2019, 11:39:00 pm »
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Personal circumstances and individuality matter for very little in terms of cohort strength - because as the name suggests it is about the "cohort" not a single person- all VCAA sees are the marks obtained (not how they were obtained).

If the sacs are good and everyone performs to their ability no one should be negatively/positively impacted by sacs.
Problems only start to rise when high ranked students bomb the exam or someone underperforms in sacs (hence low ranking).

Also by "underperforms" I don't mean someone thinking they could do better or should've studied more earlier in the year - it would be someone who is on a normal day getting 90% but for some reason they get 70.
Thank you for the explanation!