Upset About SAC Marks? Read This.

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If you’ve recently received SAC marks and you’re disappointed, this is for you.

Firstly, it’s okay to be disappointed.

It doesn’t matter if you scored 25% or 99% – disappointment is disappointment. People might say stuff like, “oh, you shouldn’t be disappointed with [whatever mark]; that’s so good!” But like, if you’re disappointed, that’s not going to help.

So now that we’ve established that whatever you’re feeling is totally valid, let’s be sensible about this. Here are some things to consider.

1. YOUR SACS MATTER, BUT MAYBE NOT IN THE WAY YOU THINK.

For most subjects, your SACs make up a decent chunk of your study score. So of course they matter to a degree. But the reality is that SACs have little influence aside from determining internal rank – that is, where you sit compared with the rest of your cohort. Rankings, scaling and whatever else are pretty complicated systems – so they’re not really worth worrying about. But if you’re interested, you can find a useful guide right here.

To cut a long story short, though, your raw marks might not be as definitive as you think. Comparing your marks to friends’ from other schools is pretty fruitless; your school’s SACs may be very much harder – or very much easier – than other schools’. At the end of the day, it wouldn’t be a fair comparison either way.

The basic point is that whilst it’s true that your SACs do matter, they need to be considered with perspective. And that leads me to point #2.

2. QUANTITATIVE FEEDBACK ISN’T VERY USEFUL.

This is all about attitude – and it’s extremely important in my eyes. There are two approaches you can take after a disappointing SAC mark.

The first: “I scored 80%, but I totally deserved 90%. Look here – you marked so harshly! As if I didn’t even get a single mark for this question!”

The second: “I scored 80%. I think I deserved more than that, but I guess marking is consistent, so it doesn’t really matter. Say, what could I do in the future to get that extra 10%?”

The first option gets you nowhere – trust me; I’ve tried. There’s really very little point arguing over your mark, because as we’ve established, VCAA simply doesn’t care. The difference of an extra mark or two will more than likely be negligible – if there’s any difference at all. I totally understand the temptation, because I was a consistent mark-arguer. “But I fully addressed the question,” I’d whine. “Why did this only get two out of three?!” I’d demand.

It’s one of my biggest VCE regrets. I fundamentally wasted both my own time and that of my teachers. At the end of the day, I didn’t really benefit – and they certainly didn’t.

The second option, though, is smart. It’s okay to feel as though you deserved a higher grade – that’s probably natural. But looking for qualitative feedback rather than feeling cheated of quantitative marks is important. This way, you work out precisely how you can improve for the exam. That’s one of the fundamental purposes of SACs.

3. THERE’S TIME TO IMPROVE.

I don’t care when you’re reading this. Unless you’ve finished your very last VCE exam, there’s time to improve. That’s particularly the case at time of writing (Term 1). We’re not even a quarter of a way through the year.

Whilst that might be daunting for some, it should also be comforting. It’s definitely not the case that your entire SAC performance is contingent on one SAC. In fact, most subjects will have numerous SACs throughout the year – and that’s a good thing. It means that even if you haven’t been happy with your SAC marks thus far, there are still several opportunities to nail it throughout the year.

And I believe in you.

It’s all about confidence, and confidence comes from preparation. If you feel unorganised, read this. If you struggle to remember content, read this. And if you think you’re just inherently bad at writing, read this. I like this extract in particular:

“EVERYONE starts off somewhere. No matter where you are right now, if you work hard… well, what you achieve is up to you.”

Trust me – you can turn it around.

4. PERSITENCE PAYS.

And that builds a natural progression into my final point: consistency is crucial.

If you’re disappointed about SAC marks, that’s totally cool. But you have to ask yourself: if nothing changes, why would my marks change?

Consider why you didn’t do as well as first hoped. Then, set yourself small goals to address that issue. Didn’t prepare quite enough? Aim to study five minutes more per day. Tense up under test conditions? Simulate those conditions before the SAC. Once you’ve identified the issue (and this is where point two is crucial), it doesn’t take much to address it.

Start now. You can very easily get stuck in the “I’ll do it tomorrow” loop – but the sooner you start, the better you’ll be.

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