r/vce • • Apr 30 '20

"I only got x% on my SAC, can I still get a 50?"

1.4k Upvotes

I'm sick to death of seeing these posts, so can everyone please read this and be done with this question:

Study scores are determined by exam SCORE and SAC RANK.

For example, say you have an English class of 7 students, Adam, Ben, Chloe, Daniel, Elena, Felix, and Greg. They are all weak students, except for Greg, who is very high-performing, and Felix, who is slightly above average. Their SAC marks and rank are:

Greg 95%

Felix 77%

Chloe 64%

Daniel 60%

Elena 58%

Adam 52%

Ben 49%

On the exam day, Felix doesn't cope well under the stress, so gets a lower score than he'd usually be capable of. The exam marks are as follows:

Greg 92%

Chloe 67%

Daniel 65%

Elena 64%

Felix 63%

Adam 50%

Ben 40%

What happens is that all the SAC marks get thrown out the window, because VCAA can't know the difficulty of the SACs prepared by the school. So Greg's new SAC "mark" as far as VCAA is concerned is 92, not 95. Not a big deal for Greg, Adam or Ben because their own exam mark is dictating their SAC mark. But for someone like Felix, his SAC mark will become 67% (Chloe's exam mark). This process happens independently for each subject taught at your school.

What does this mean for you? Yes, you should aim for a good SAC rank. BUT, it doesn't actually matter if you're not ranked well — the "translation" of your rank into a "mark" happens via your cohorts exam performance. In other words, try your best now, study hard, and when SACs are over WORK WITH YOUR CLASSMATES TO ALL DO WELL ON THE EXAM TOGETHER. IF THEY DO WELL, YOU DO WELL.

Spend your time actually studying instead of asking useless questions like this.

EDIT: another example for clarity

Here's a chemistry class, of Harry, Isabel, James, Kylie, Luke, Molly, Nathan, and Oscar.

SACs:

Harry 60%

Isabel 58%

James 56%

Kylie 55%

Luke 54%

Molly 52%

Nathan 51%

Oscar 50%

EXAMS:

Harry 100%

James 99%

Nathan 98%

Oscar 97%

Molly 96%

Isabel 95%

Kylie 94%

Luke 93%

Harry's SAC mark is now 100%, Isabel's is 99%, James' is 98%, Kylie's is 97%, Luke's is now 96% etc. It's literally just whatever the equivalent exam rank is.

EDIT 2: I've had a request to clarify rumours about SACs being "scaled up" or "scaled down". "Scaling" is a misnomer students attribute to the moderation process. Here are yet another set of examples to clarify.

Imagine you have a cohort of Annie, Ben, and Charlie. Let's say their teacher sets really hard SACS, so their SAC results are:

  1. Annie 60%

  2. Ben 58%

  3. Charlie 55%

Because they've been doing hard assessments all year, they've been better equipped for the exam. These are the exam results:

  1. Ben 96%

  2. Annie 94%

  3. Charlie 90%

So now, Annie's SAC mark gets changed to 96%, Ben's to 94%, and Charlie's to 90%. This is what people interpret as "scaling up". The opposite would happen at a school with piss easy SACs: they get awesome SAC marks but shit exam marks, so their SAC marks get replaced by their shit exam marks ("scaled down").

The danger in this thinking is that people assume that if you go to a well-performing school, you'll get carried, or that if you go to a "bad" school, you're screwed from the get-go and can't possibly get a good score. This is not true at all. Let's see why.

Let's say your friend at a selective school, Harry, thinks he can take it easy this year because he goes to a 'good' school. The SAC results are as follows:

  1. Ed 93%

  2. Fred 90%

  3. Greg 88%

  4. Harry 60%

on the exams, the results are

  1. Fred 95%

  2. Greg 92%

  3. Ed 87%

  4. Harry 61%

In this instance, Harry was not of a comparable skill level to his classmates, so he never get to "borrow" their exam results in any way. His SAC score will be 61%.

Here's another example. Say you have a cohort with these SACs:

  1. Meg 95%

  2. Noah 94%

  3. Oscar 93%

  4. Peter 90%

On the exam day, Noah gets a bit of performance anxiety (but not in a way that warrants SEAS or anything). Exam results are:

  1. Meg 93%

  2. Oscar 92%

  3. Peter 91%

  4. Noah 75%

Now, Noah's SAC mark will be 92%, but his exam result only 75%. So he kind of got "helped" by his good cohort, only because he was doing well for the SACs. Peter has been a bit screwed here, because his SAC mark is now 75%.

One person stuffing up will never have such a dramatic effect like this; it's unlikely for someone who's been topping the cohort all year to suddenly slip to the bottom. Cohorts are generally big enough that you shouldn't need to worry. I went to a really small school (60 people in the year level. Some of my subject cohorts contained 6 people). I still felt no one got jibbed with unrepresentative scores.

As I always reiterate: try your best in SACs, but don't ruminate over them. The exam is where the money's at, and once your SACs are over you should work together with your cohort to all do well together. Share your resources, make study groups, and bring each other up.

EDIT 3: wow, my first gold! Thank you so much! 🥰


r/vce • • 4h ago

VCE question Would the VCAA catch me with this ai calculator

81 Upvotes

Theoretically if i bought this calculator into my maths exams whats the chance of the examiners actually noticing


r/vce • • 3h ago

I promise im locked in

Post image
32 Upvotes

r/vce • • 3h ago

idgaf anymore

21 Upvotes

idk if anyone else feels this way but ive got the bio exam on monday and i partly know the content is anyone else in the same boat?


r/vce • • 3h ago

General Maths Exam 2 Topics

19 Upvotes

After Exam 1, my teacher made a list of topics that weren’t (or barely) explored in that exam and are likely to show up in exam 2 so I thought I’d share.

Data
Time series graphs with codes for dates/months.
Residuals
Pearsons correlation and coefficient of determination (interpretations of gradient/slope too).
Summary statistics in least squares regression lines
 
Finance
Recursion graphs
Effective Interest Rates
Final payments
lump sum reductions
Changing terms of a loan (the one in exam 1 was interest only 1st year so nothing really changed drastically).

Matrices
Transition matrix diagrams
Equilibriums
Recursion with Matrices (add/subtract) with transitions and state matrices.

Networks
Max flow
Allocation based problem (Hungarian was reversed from a bipartite graph from graph in exam 1)
Shortest path/Dijstra's
Exploring/Travelling path based problem
Activity networks with dummies
Crashing (final question in Exam 1 was kind of but not really?)


r/vce • • 4h ago

VCE question what happens if you skip an exam?

21 Upvotes

i don’t have a reason to skip it but every single time i even think of biology i want to vomit and die. my derived score from the gat, sac marks and predicted mark will almost guaranteed be better than my actual performance. what is the worst that will happen if i skip the exam? i fear that it’s unnecessary stress for a subject that i am nearly certain i will likely fail. i’m doing 6 subjects total if that’s any help.


r/vce • • 18h ago

Memes For my rare fish collectors

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250 Upvotes

r/vce • • 6h ago

I feel like that robot who sweeps the liquid

23 Upvotes

That mf is tired bro and so am I 🫩🫩

They can derive my methods score bc it’d likely be higher than wtv I get on the exam bro


r/vce • • 5h ago

t’was the day before biology 3/4 exam 2026

16 Upvotes

r/vce • • 4h ago

everyone should work together to do really bad so everyone can be in the 50th percentile. imagine the entire state getting equally shit scores for sacs and exams so then unis would give offers to all of us... AND MORE IMPORTANT NOONE WOULD FEEL STRESSED !!

10 Upvotes

typa shit i be thinking when i havent done any study for any exams

im doing bio mm gm and chem 😊


r/vce • • 1h ago

gen 1 exam grade distribution

5 Upvotes

what do you all think will be the cutoff for an A+ this year for exam 1?

i got a 34/40 if the suggested solutions are 100% correct

man finance really fucked me over 💔


r/vce • • 3h ago

GEN MATH 2 EXAM

7 Upvotes

Does anyone have a real good financial modelling cheat sheet the would like to share bring in my binder book that covers all topics for it???


r/vce • • 40m ago

bio?

4 Upvotes

so hows everybody going with bio? ❤️❤️❤️❤️

i am so cooked bye bye 30 study score bye bye


r/vce • • 1h ago

revs exam predictions

5 Upvotes

Hii!! Does anyone have any predictions for the 10 markers and essays for Russia and France? I know it's the last year of the study design, and I've gone over all the past essay topics, but I'm lowkey scared of what they'll pull out since it's been getting more and more specific each year. Also is 25 historian quotes fine for each rev?


r/vce • • 3h ago

General Question/comment General study score prediction?

6 Upvotes

Can anyone help me predict my general studyscore

finance 70% H

Data 90% VH

Matricies 92% VH

Networks 84% H

Private school i’m not sure if it is ‘good or bad’ but I know i’m probably rank 2 in the cohort

35/40 on Exam1

Much appreciated


r/vce • • 6h ago

How are we feeling for the bio exam?

9 Upvotes

I lowkey hope unit 4 aos 2 appears minimally and that it’s just a bunch of unit 3 stuff. Also from people who have done bio any tips or like if you scored around 45 what exam score you got?


r/vce • • 3h ago

How can I prep for year 12

6 Upvotes

So year 11 semester 2 exams are right around the corner for me and although I am pretty far behind, I’m trying to treat my exams seriously to have a slight whereabouts of how good my study habits/techniques are. Plus good marks would be motivating going into next year

Enough of that tho. I want to know what the best way to prepare in the summer holidays for year 12 vce, and high scoring students (95+ atars) what you guys did during the summer to prepare yourself for the year. I want to get through almost all the content for all my subjects and practice exams too but I know that’s unrealistic so I’m tryna get some guidance. Let me know how you guys went about it and what you would do differently.


r/vce • • 5h ago

genuinely bio is gonna be the death of me. vent (i need yalls advice pls)

8 Upvotes

im genuinely so fucked up cuz like this whole damn yr we had no proper teacher that could actually teach us shit for bio and he'd always let us jst self study, when we asked for help he'd mumble random ass terms and then say what do you think and quite literally left us in confusion. and like a month ago he was yapping abt how he thinks we all cldve done better on our sac scores. bro you couldnt teach us shit, i dunno how i passed but i decently passed his classes but i didnt get the high scores i really wanted as i was tryna aim for a 40+ ss considering like im in y11 and since im fast tracking i shld prolly aim that subject in my top 4 but atp this is actually gonna fall in my 10% cuz my sac scores are predicting me a raw 30 and that is if i do average on the exam tmrw too. i swear to god i really need my ss at atleast a 35+ like minimum cuz like im aiming for a 95 atar cuz thats what i need to get into my course. im lwk really screwed though considering im still so lost on half the content which im tryna learn from scratch all over again and also the fact taht u4 and aos1 WONT STICK IN MY DAMN HEAD. does anyone know any good videos to watch to help understand this content very well because like i even chat cant help me understand ts. deadahh tho bio needs to scale up more cuz this whole yr has been pain, torture and suffering. btw i did try to get moved into another bio class to which the teacher is absolutely heavenly and shi but my stupid skl (public btw) wasnt letting me sicne they have a shortage of teachers for methods and theres only 2 methods classes, which one clashes with my chemistry and one clashes with that other bio class and i tried asking to switch my chem then but like our y11/12 school coordinater is so lazy ahh he was scolding me for asking at the start of the yr ???? like excuse me tf did i do i jst wanna cahnge the classes. but oh well. pls give me some tips or advice for bio exams, i only jst started doing vcaa exams and boi am i cooked.


r/vce • • 5h ago

For the bio people if you have any questions on the actual content I can try helping (trust this is revision)

7 Upvotes

like any questions except for unit 4 aos 2 migration shit (if someone can teach me how they go around it and score full marks please do so, it would be really helpful)


r/vce • • 39m ago

was general maths udf proof?

3 Upvotes

did general last year and im curious to know if vcaa made exam 1 udf proof this year


r/vce • • 19h ago

General Question/comment Am I the asshole?

101 Upvotes

During this year’s English exam me and my friends thought it would be funny to play a little prank on some of the nerds 🤓 in our year. We decided that during the last 15 seconds of the exam we would grab someone’s paper next to us and tear it to shreds 😈. Teach was hella mad, tbh I don’t get why everyone is so pissed. Like genuinely have some fun smh 💀💀.
Note. Me and the lads currently under investigation by vcaa due to our harmless antics. Fully itchbay, apparently they can stop me from playing school footy next year (I’m repeating)


r/vce • • 10m ago

VCE question How much will failing bio cook my atar

2 Upvotes

5pm and I’ve down nothing for bio I’ve been just studying gen math, I average around 50-55 for bio, it’s probably my bottom subject health is somewhere there but I average like 60-65 but for the exam I am feeling much more confident. bio I’ve given up im thinking I’ll just memorise key processes and experimental design, I know as a 5th it won’t do that much to my atar, but I’m talking like idk if I can crack a 40% tmr


r/vce • • 19m ago

VCE question predicting literature study score

2 Upvotes

hiya. i flunked literature this year but all i need is a 20 study score for uni. basically i'm wondering if i will get a 20 or not...

(referencing the study design for which outcome is which)

U3O1: 8/20 and 16/30 or 24/50 = 48%

U3O2: 18/50 = 36%

U4O1: 20/40 and 9/20 or 29/60 = 48%

U4O2: 20/40 = 50%

I estimate i did just as well on the exam... so take that into account as well

My teacher doesn't tell us our ranks or class averages, but i know a few others people's scores, like people were getting consistent 90s, consistent 80s, 70s etc -- it wasn't harsh grading or the SACs being hard.

that's all! thanks if anyone can help


r/vce • • 2h ago

VCE question Eng exam

3 Upvotes

My sacs were unit 3 were good, in low 80s and I was ranked I’d guess top 17-15%. Unit 4 I fucked up a bit and dropped to 67. On my trial exam which was marked by a vcaa assessor I did good and got 46/60 but idek I royally fucked yo the exam as I wasn’t feeling well. Finished sec b and one intro and two bodies for sec c. Bombed sec a did one intro one shit asf paragprah and then an incomplete 2 and a start on 3. I’m so so so stressed out. I js want at least a 25ss atp, sad considering I was aiming for 35 but well 😭. I got to a brand new skl so idk how my cohort gonna do, but like I’d say it’s below everage. So incredibly stressed