WHY HSC SCALING MATTERS .I\. TALENT100

BY RICHARD CHUA, FOUNDER OF TALENT 100 AND EDUCATION THOUGHT LEADER

In this article, Richard Chua explains how to target and achieve an ATAR Richard graduated from Sydney Grammar School with a UAI of 100 (ATAR equivalent 99.95). He currently works as a Strategy Associate for Google in Mountain View

Next week, H SC students will fina lly get the ir ATARs - four digi ts wh ch cou d determine what caree r s and prof essions they may be doing fo r the next 20 yea r s. Your ATAR Is your t icket to University, so Its important to know exactly how t his is calcu lated. At Talent 100, we·ve cons istent ly had more than a quarter of our students achieving A T ARs over 99. Last yea r, we had 7 students who achieved an ATAR o f 99.95. Th i s week I'm going to share w i th you the secrets to t heir success - how to brea k any ATAR down into smaller. m ore ach ievable g oals in each of your subjects.

WHAT IS SCALING?

Scaling Is the process of sta ndardising marks so that they ca n be compared across subjects. In scaling marks, the UAC will adjust the hig hest mark, median mark and st andard deviatio n so that al l subjects are directly comparable. The reason it is needed is that without scaling, it would be imposs ible to compa re a 95 in Economics with a 95 in Math ematics Extension 2.

ATARVSUAC

The UAC basically converts the ave raged HSC Assessment and HSC

Exam ination Marks to their own UAC score through a process o f scali ng to a UAC score. Eac h un it is converted to a score o f 50 and the best 10 units (Inc lu ding Englis h) are used to calc ul ate a score of 500. Most stud ents are unawa re that the r A TAR is calculated from th is base score o f 500. The ta b le below illustrate the relat onship:

Scaling Graphs

The most importa nt th ing to not e is that not all subjects are created o r scaled equally. Some subjects that a re conside red harder are obviously sca led h igher wh ilst some subjects i n wh ich i t is easy t o sco re hig h marks w i ll be sca led downwards.

The graph below (fig 1) gives you a good Indication of how su bject scales. From the previous t able. you shou ld be able to see If yo u wan ted to score an ATAR of say 99, you would need to score -45/50. Following those marks, you c an see that you would need to score i n t he top 56% of Ma ths Ext 2, the t op 23% of Maths Ext 1. bu t in t he t op 4% of Mat hs Advanced For simplicity 's sake we've shown w hat it takes to score ATARs of 95, 9 7 and 99 respectively.

W hat you now have are t he relative benchmarks for performance to score any ATAR Hence, suppose you were aimi ng for an ATAR o f 99.00: If you were i n the top 20% for Maths Ext 2 but in the top 20% for English t his g raph clearly ind icates that yo ur time w ill be bet te r spent in English, because an improvement t o the Top 10% i n Engl ish is going to delive r much bett er gains t han a sim ilar improvement i n Maths

HOW DO T HE DIFFERENT SUBJECTS SCALE?

A t Ta lent 100, we've exam ined the sca ling of categories o f subjects such as Ma themat ics, English, Science and th e Humanities. When you exa mi ne the scaling graphs. some clear trends emerge:

Scaling Graph (fig 1)

STUDY SMARTER, NOT HARDER

You now know what ranks you need in each subj ect to score any ATAR The next steps a re to ensu re that you achieve t hose ranks.

I f you a re in Year 9-1 2, Talent lOO's courses can hel p you do just that We've cons iste ntly had the best resu lts in t he industr y since 2008 Our courses will help you develop the three skills and resources you need to ace any exam:

1. Understand the theory: We teach i n sma ll g r o u ps of up to 13 to ensu re you understand every syllabus dot point.

2 Perfect e x am t e chni que: With regular tests and homework set in exa mination style, we he lp you trai n your exam t echn ique on a weekly basis

3 Online learning system: N eed extra help on a topic? Our c lasses are supported by the mos t advanced on li ne learning system ever c reated for HSC s tu den t s.

At Ta lent 100 we·ve helped 7000s of students ach i eve the ir dreams, and we d like to help you.

For a THREE WEEK free trial, simply call us on 1300 999 100 or you're welcome to v i sit www.talent-100.com au

Highest Decision Rules

Scaling Sub1ects

3Uand4U source: Report on the scaling of the 2011 HSC (UAC)

You should use this g raph to t arget the UAC score out of 500 you need to achieve your desired ATAR. Th is way, you can b e fa irly cert ain what ATAR you are head ing for well before you sit yo ur exams and adjust your st udy patterns accordingly. For instance. if you wanted to score an ATAR of 99, you wou ld need 449, or rough ly 45/50 for every su b ject.

3U and 4U Maths are by far, the highest sca ling subjects that are read ily accessible students Because of t heir high sca ling, you should take the highest level of malhematic,; t hat you are capable of. For Instance, to be on target for an AT/\R of 99+, you only need to be av,rage In 4U Maths, whereas you would need to be in t he top 4% of 2U Maths Advanced Where possible you should take at least advanced English The higher &Higher English as a group scale well above Standard English For instance, students who scored in the 25% of Advance receive scores higher than those students who score in the top 1% of standard Physic,;& Physic,; and Chemistry are the highest scaling sciences and scale Chemistry significantly better than biology.

Economic,;& Economics is t he best scaling humanity, and sca les j ust as well Modern History as Physics and Dlemistry. Apart from Econ omics, the other humanities scale significant y worse - you will need exceptiona l ranks to score an overal l ATAR if you choose humanities.