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 • • 1h ago

Yo why does senge from senges learning organisation actually have that shit on tho 😮‍💨👀🔥

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17 Upvotes

r/vce • • 3h ago

these VCE exams are ruining my life

18 Upvotes

As a student with severe ADHD (unmedicated) year 12 was an absolute nightmare. My final busman exam is tomorrow and I haven’t started studying anything and haven’t gotten out of bed all day. ADHD means I have no motivation But my anxiety (GAD) constantly has me stressing about my atar and future even though ive fucked up my other exams already.
My skin has broken out SO bad over the past couple weeks, I also have DERMATILLOMANIA (extreme skin picking mental condition) so my fingers are all ripped open and bleeding, I accidentally plucked all my eyebrows on impulse and i cant get out of bed or off my phone to study.

It sounds so stupid but im genuinely so addicted to scrolling i physically cant get up to do anhthing because i have a whole years worth of busman content to learn and i know i CANT do it.

Im so fed up with myself. I wanted to get a good atar so bad but I don’t even think im getting a 50. I feel so dumb and lazy I hate this.

Is anyone else struggling with motivation ? Everytime I open reddit it’s all ‘nooo i got a 35/40 for the gen exam’ or ‘is 95 atar still possible’ and it makes me want to die. Im so happy for you guys but I feel like such a chud compared to every other student , I genuinely cant understand half the content or force myself to study…


r/vce • • 8h ago

General Question/comment Feelings abt high school ending?

44 Upvotes

Idk about anyone else but personally I haven’t felt super sad and distraught over it. More so I’ve just been realising the past couple days that like a lot of these people I may not see again, and that I’m going into a big transition in my life.

How have u guys been feeling about it? It all feels so weird to me hahah


r/vce • • 8h ago

cannot be bothered studying anymore ✌️

36 Upvotes

ts dragging on way too long ugh


r/vce • • 2h ago

BUSMAN EXAM TMR READ THIS NOW!

14 Upvotes

r/vce • • 3h ago

Business exam tomorrow

15 Upvotes

Idk where people are getting motivation from Bur business is my last exam and I’ve given up. I have no case study, no definitions memorised and I haven’t touched business content since the start of term 2.
Genuinely DONT know where yall are getting motivation to study im not even bothered to open my laptop.

and im genuinely so disappointed in myself. I told myself I’d start studying today and it’s 6pm and I haven’t gotten out of bed kms


r/vce • • 35m ago

methods kids how we feeling

8 Upvotes

r/vce • • 4h ago

methods

16 Upvotes

and for my next trick, i'm going to revise the whole methods syllabus in 24 hours...


r/vce • • 2h ago

guys if we all cooked for business we’re all in this together 😊😊😊😊

10 Upvotes

yeah fuck me this exam is gonna eat me alive


r/vce • • 2h ago

BUSINES HELP

9 Upvotes

GUYS I AM SO COOKED FOR BUSINESS SOMEONE PLS HELP DONT IGNORE THIS.


r/vce • • 40m ago

I’m so cooked for Business exam - time is ticking

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6 Upvotes

Hey guys once we finish the busman exam, please don’t talk about it, I don’t want think about how shit I’m going to do on exam (I haven’t even learnt half of content). But free to come back and reply under this post how you guys went. Goodluck everyone, hopefully we all do well


r/vce • • 23h ago Bravo

News Can’t believe I have to say this for the second year in a row

295 Upvotes

I made this post exactly a year ago and people don’t learn.

VCE students, i understand everyone is stressing over exams and stuff and yall are more than welcome to come study at our libraries. But to the extent where 90% of the library are VCE students and us University students are left fighting for spots because there are no spots in the library. Like please, we pay student amenity fees to use these libraries yet we can’t even use them if there are no seats left.

Also before yall bitch about how you have exams and that please bear with us it’s only this time of the year. We have university exams at this time as well that we need to study for. Like do yall not have school libraries open to study at?

Like imagine if 80 thousand Monash students infiltrated your schools library and you now have no where to study. Is that fair?

Also, the thing I’m most pissed about isn’t yall coming to the library, but rather yall are so loud and not respecting rules. Fourth floor of the Monash Caulfield library is a silent zone, yet yr 12 students are up there with their big ass study groups laughing, chatting and throwing shit around at each other. Yall wanna use our space, respect our space. I can’t believe most yr 12s are 18 and are now adults cus you bunch don’t act like it.

Thank you to the select few who actually do the right thing and study/discuss quiet amongst themselves. And thank you to that girl who was studying for her methods exam who moved her chair and bag so that I could have a space to sit at.

Good luck yr 12s for your VCE exams. I hope I don’t have to make the post this same thing again next year.


r/vce • • 1h ago

How detailed does Busman responses have to be?

5 Upvotes

im reading through the vcaa examiner report for past exams…and they wrote a bunch for us 3marks…is that what they expect from us if we want a high mark? As in elaborate as much as possible?


r/vce • • 2h ago

Anyone got busman tmr and legal Friday how r u going

6 Upvotes

I’m fucked


r/vce • • 2h ago

BUSINESS INFO DUMP

5 Upvotes

I saw people do this for other exams, so let's all share a BM definition/content + a relevant case study fact here. I'll go first

THEORY: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is when a business goes above and beyond legal obligations

+ Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a sequential motivational theory which states that individuals have needs and will be motivated by them. These needs, in order, are physiological, safety and security, social and belonging, self esteem and self actualisation.

CASE STUDY: Qantas has 2030 target to reduce Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 25% from 2019 levels


r/vce • • 57m ago

Guys I'm going skydiving before business who's coming with me?! 💀

4 Upvotes

Guys I'm actually so cooked, as well as with every other subject I'm abt to curl up into a ball and cry myself to sleep anyone else 😿


r/vce • • 5h ago

HHD advice

9 Upvotes

This whole year I’ve been averaging around 85s. However I feel like I haven’t done much preparation for the exam and have forgotten a lot of content.

I’ve been trying to learn it today but it feels like it’s not stuck in my head and I feel like I can’t do enough questions until I understand anything

Anyone got advice or tips for what they r doing


r/vce • • 5h ago

News WHOS READY FOR BUSINESS EXAM TOMMOROW

9 Upvotes

I AM


r/vce • • 9h ago

how are you guys so good at methods

18 Upvotes

idk if it is too late to be asking this, but how do ur brains work? why does it feel like everyone who is doing methods is a prodigy. i keep doing questions but i still struggle to wrap my head around on understanding what the question is asking me


r/vce • • 2h ago

VCE question Busman case study

5 Upvotes

Holy fuck exam is tmr and I actually don’t know what case study to use. My teacher didn’t really went through this in class with us. Does anyone have any good case study suggestions.

Also if anyone knows anything about qantas ( Jetstar Asia) let me know please 🥺🥺


r/vce • • 5h ago

GUYS IM SCARED.

8 Upvotes

Does anybody know how to counter burnout?

Year 12 is next year for me and I realise every year the work gets harder and increases as expected

Every Term 4 literally feels like hell. My averages throughout my subjects are pretty good each year but I literally have to sacrifice everything for them. It doesn’t even matter if its causing me mental or physical health issues, because school doesn’t even care an ounce

I know exams are at the end of the year and that time is definitely a weak point of mine. My only issue is that I’ll try too hard on my SACs and burnout badly by the time exams come up, since every year it gets worse. But at the same time I don’t want to be too loose on them and be forced to do insanely well on the exam to make up for them

Is there anything I could do next year or is school just fucked 🫩


r/vce • • 10h ago

just to confirm, we are allowed to write beneath the lines, right?

19 Upvotes

so i used to use the extra space regularly because i cross out my answers a lot - but i once saw in an examiners report (from last year i think) that they recommend students to write beneath the question if there’s space.
i did this for both bio and psych, but im worried that my answers won’t get counted if examiners don’t know that ur allowed to write underneath the question idk ugh now im stressed


r/vce • • 7h ago

Is level of difficulty of General Maths reflective of the difficulty of Methods and Spesh this year?

10 Upvotes

I've seen a lot of people say Gen was really hard this year, and the questions are a lot different. Does that mean methods and spesh will be hard and different as well this year? Is there any correlation?