The Higher School Certificate (HSC) is a complex system that many student and parents struggle with everyday. So in light of that, here I am, a NSW HSC Survivor, shedding some wisdom upon you! There are a lot of things to consider, but there are two main points that come up most often. Number one, what’s the deal with units, subject selection and scaling? Number two, what’s the relevance of internal and external marks? And then, what is the point of this in the end?

Units and Subject Selection

Up until Year 10, you will have most likely experienced selecting electives. To a certain extent, those electives will determine what subjects you’re allowed to take in Year 11 and Year 12. For example, if you’ve never taken French beginners, you will most likely not be able to take French Continuers, unless you are applicable for special considerations or unique external circumstances. Additionally, if you’re school doesn’t offer a certain subject, most likely you’ll not be allowed to take it in your HSC years. That being said, sometimes there are exceptions, such as learning a language through the School of Languages, which is a whole different conversation!

If you’re not thinking of applying of these aforementioned special considerations, in Year 10, you will be prompted to select the subjects you would prefer to do in the remaining of your high school career (Year 11 and 12). Your school will provide you with a list of the subjects offered and you will have to select from this list. Each subject is worth a different amount of units, and the list will most likely indicate the unit number of your particular subject.

You are required to take at least two (2) units of English. Those two units will form a part of the 12+ units you do in Year 11. Some people opt for 13 or 14 units to give themselves options for Year 12. This is because, in Year 12, you may drop subjects to a minimum of 10 units (including English) but you cannot pick up Year 11 subjects again. A typical Year 11 Student might decide to take on these subject combinations:

Total Units: 13

Total Units: 14

Total Units: 12

Moving into Year 12, all 3 students are able to drop down to a total of ten (10) units, including their two (2) units of English. I urge you to think carefully about what to pick since this will impact your Year 12 subjects! For example, if you don’t pick Mathematics Extension 1 in Year 11, you won’t be allowed to take it in Year 12. However, if you take it on and then decide to drop it in Year 12, as long as your total units doesn’t drop below 10, that’s perfectly fine! Hence, it’s very important to think thoroughly about your subjects, giving yourself a bit of potential fallback room if you end up really disliking a subject you’re taking.

There are also subjects available exclusively for Year 12 students as long as you meet the criteria, such as Mathematics Extension 2, which is available to all students having taken Mathematics Extension 1 in Year 11.

Keep in mind, your final HSC results only take into account your top eight (8) units, and your minimum two (2) units of English. If we use Student A for example:

So, even though your Mathematics Advanced score is higher than your English Advanced score, it is not included since it’s not in your top eight (8) units, EXCLUDING your two (2) units of English.

Scaling

Now, the reason I mentioned selecting subjects you enjoy first, is because students often get misled and end up choosing subjects that they don’t enjoy to prioritise scaling. In all honesty, this is the worst thing you can do for yourself. I’ll explain why now. But first, a terminology side-track; a ‘raw mark’ is the mark you receive in an exam, before it’s be scaled or changed in any sort of way.

Okay! So, the whole idea of scaling is that different HSC subjects have varying difficulties. Essentially, the 90 a student scored in, for example, Standard Mathematics is not equivalent to a 90 someone scored in the highest mathematics course – Mathematics Extension 2! Now this it not to say Standard Maths in inferior in any way — you can think of it as a way to deter everyone from just choosing the ‘easiest’ subjects to obtain a higher ‘raw mark’.

That’s why, students who feel capable enough to complete subjects deemed a higher difficulty, are encouraged to do so. Like, if a student can get a 99 in Standard mathematics but a 95 in Mathematics Extension 2, the Extension 2 mark will end up getting scaled higher than the Standard Mathematics Mark. UAC, the University Admissions Centre, releases a summary of this scaling every year. You can see here, a mean mark of 41 in Mathematics Extension 2 was scaled up to a 43, whereas a mean mark of 39.4 in Mathematics (Standard), it scales down to 31.2.

You will notice that most subjects scale down — that’s normal. However, the ‘harder’ your subject is, the less that scaling down will be, and it might even scale up. Now, this scaling changes a bit every year. If more people do well in a subject, the less scaling there will be. But don’t worry yourself too much with this — scaling is general the same trend every year. Certain subjects will always scale better than others.

However, this does not mean that you should just go picking the subjects that scale the best! The simplest way to put it is if you don’t do well, you will still be scaled down. Performing well in an easier subject will still result in a better scaled mark in compared to performing really poorly in a well scaling subject. Hence, the best way to make a decision as to what subjects you’d like to take on is a combination of what you enjoy and what you feel like excel the most in.

What does NESA do?

In Year 12, you will hear your classmates and teachers reminding you that your marks start to count. This is a bit misleading. To simplify the process, NESA, the New South Wales Education Standards Authority, doesn’t actually look at your internal marks. Rather, they look at your internal ranks. Let’s have a look at three students below who hypothetically all took the same subject, Subject S.

Lets say, before they complete their final HSC, there are their marks and their ranks.

NESA also needs to take into consideration the difficulty of your school’s tests. If everyone in a particular grade receives 100%, it wouldn’t be fair for other schools who provide their students with more difficult exams. To oversimplify this process, essentially, NESA takes the RANK you are in that course rather than the actual mark. After your HSC final examinations, let’s say the previous three students achieve the following results:

With everyone’s external marks, NESA has a better idea of how proficient you are at your subject. To break this down, even if all the students in School A achieved a mark of 90-100 in their internals but were in the 50-60, it wouldn’t be fair for them to receive a higher internal mark than School B which might’ve achieve a mark of 80-90 in their internals, but achieved in the 90-100 range in the final HSC. Just because a school provides their students with more challenging examinations, it wouldn’t be fair for that school’s cohort to be penalised. The final HSC examinations, which everyone takes simultaneously, it a better measure for how students from different schools perform relative to each other.

The mark for each subject in the final exam you sit some time from October – November each year will be recorded as your ‘External Mark’. However, to calculate your actual internal marks, NESA uses your external mark and the external marks of your peers to gauge the difficulty of your internals and scale them accordingly. The system takes your rank (e.g. 2nd) and they will give the mark of the student whom was the same rank in their final HSC external examinations. To display this, look here:

• Student B who ranked 1st both internally and externally would receive their own external mark for their internal mark as well.
• Student A who ranked 2nd internally received an internal mark from Student C’s externals, since Student C ranked 2nd externally (final HSC exam).
• Student C who ranked 3rd internally received an internal mark from Student A’s externals, since Student A ranked 3rd externally.

There are additional scaling factors involved to ensure that the process is fair and as accurate of a judgement of your academic performance as possible, but it will be too statistical if I get into it here! If you hear someone note that “For the HSC, your cohort is a team”, it’s because if everyone in your cohort performs phenomenally in the final HSC (external) examinations, everyone’s internal marks will also be phenomenal – since all NESA takes from your internals are your ranks. Externals are what actually determine what mark you are allocated.

Now, that’s why my advice is – even if you feel like you performed poorly in your internal marks, don’t throw in the towel just yet. Your final exam counts for 50% of your own mark, and hopefully your peers will work hard and your whole cohort’s marks will be scaled. Things will work out.

University Prerequisites and Early Entry

One last thing! If you have an idea of what you’d like to pursue in higher education, universities often have prerequisites for their courses. Though some may seem obvious (do Physics in high school if you want to major in Physics), I urge you to check still. Most university courses now demand at least some level of mathematics education. There may be hidden prerequisites — you don’t want something like that standing in the way of you obtaining the course you dream of.

Talking about universities, to shoulder some of the HSC stress, universities often offer Early Entry programs that are extremely simple to apply for. My recommendation is to apply for as many as you can, you can never have too many back-ups. Do your research early, especially if you’re aiming for any sort of scholarship. Do keep in mind that they may review your marks from Year 11. However, don’t let this deter you. I always encourage my students to shoot their shot, it can’t hurt!

Credits

This blog was written by our Maths tutor, Emma Feng! You can find her profile here