Year 12 Results

Well done.

My little brother doesn't find out until the very start of next year, like all IB kids. I remember having to wait the three weeks after all the regular SACE kids got theirs to find mine out back in the day.

 

Year 12 results?

For the non Aussie's - what are Year 12 Results?
What do they determine, and what are their implications to your future?
Is it like the United States "SAT Test" ?

regardless - congrats to max_attitude! It sounds like you scored well!

 

The score is a percentile measured against other students who've just finished the final year of high school. Higher scores mean a better chance of getting into a more "difficult" university degree.

You sit Year 12 exams when you're about 17 or 18. Is that the same for SAT?

 

Yeah, basically that is the same. Our SAT or ACT can be taken pretty much anytime, but most students take it in there senior year of HS. I know my sister took hers when she was in 7th grade because of something special...score a 21 on it if i remember right (which is really good for a 7th grader). The ACT tops out at 36 i do believe (might be 32, cant remember). I am n ot sure about the SAT as i never took it.

The higher the score the better (for both test). The better the score the better college you can get into...generally. certain scores plus class placement will get you money from a uni.

I did just fine on my ACT (not going to tell though) but i think that they are over rated in here in america and colleges put to much weight on your scores from those tests. My biggest problem is the reading and english section. My math and science scores are high but my reading and english bring everything down.

If only i could have my sister take the reading and english section and i take the math and science i could be in the 30ish range.

hope that helps

 

Here in NSW we all undertake in our final year of High School a number of different subjects (the only compulsory subject being English). Each of these subjects is given a certain "Unit" value, most often 2 but sometimes up to 4 depending on the difficulty and scope of the subject. The final mark given is called the Universities Admissions Index (UAI).

A maximum of 14 units can be studied in the final year with assessment based on assignments and internal exams (25%), mid-year internal exams (trials, 25%) and final examinations set by the NSW Board of Studies (the dreaded HSC, 50%). Exams are only taken in the subjects you choose, everybody does the two English exams but then you only get examined on the individual subjects you chose to study. There are a number of subjects that count towards a final Year 12 mark but not towards the UAI. These subjects are often the practical subjects and are used by school-leavers who most likely go into a trade of some sort, where the specific mark in certain subjects are vastly more important than the overall mark. However seeing as most school-leavers (we don't really call the graduates, you graduate from university, not High School and the whole thing is very low key, usually just a nice year-group dinner after a muck up day. Certainly no handing out of diplomas or caps and gowns or big school parties), go into a trade after year 10, these subjects are not as popular.

These results for the individual subjects (best 10 units) are then normalised against certain standards and then scaled according to the difficulty of each individual's chosen subject and how they performed in said subject compared to the rest of their classmates.

This final result is given out of 100 and represents the percentage of students who had a lower mark than yours. Because of the system there are usually about 10 who get 100 and it goes down from there. You get the final mark by either SMS text message to your mobile phone, on the internet or a week later in the mail.

I got 96.00 for my HSC back in 2000 which meant that my score was higher than 96% of the 65,000 students undertaking the exams that year.

The mark is used by universities to fill places in the courses the students have pre-selected online. The universities start filling places from the highest mark down until the places are full - the lowest mark in the course is given as the "cut-off mark" but is not actually a measure of the difficulty of the course, rather it shows the course's popularity.

Here we can go into medicine and law straight out of high school (they are given as part of a double degree, so law students would graduate after 5.5 years with an LLB and a BSomethingelse, Med students often graduate with an MBBS and a BA or a BSc). We don't have to do a big application for any universities as they select students (for most courses, Creative Arts is often different) based purely on their marks. So for those wanting to go to uni right after high school - a reasonable number but quite a lot take the Gap Year off and go travelling - the HSC results are the most important results.

 

What books are Australian high school students reading in their final year English classes? As an American high school English teacher, I'm eager to compare/contrast.

 

It's changed a good deal since I finished - no film or multimedia components for me. Here's a link to the reading list
Reading List Word Document.

In my final year I did 3 Units of English (means I stay after school and drink coffee and eat chocolate biscuits whilst studying). In the main 2 Unit course we read Othello, In The Skin of a Lion, poems of Coleridge and Gray (Aussie poet), the play "Cosi" and also did a number of critiques and creative writing.

In the 3rd unit we studied Twelfth Night and As You Like It in a Shakespearean Comedy section and "1984," "The Handmaid's Tale" and Thomas More's "Utopia."