Is the HSC a Game?
You may have heard people call the HSC a game, or liken it to a game. Well there is an element of truth to this view, depending on how you look at it. In order for the HSC to be fair in ranking students for the purposes of University entry, a comprehensive system of HSC scaling is used, hence why we have the UAC and the notion of ‘scaling’ and ‘scaled marks’. The scaling process itself is firmly justified mathematically, and is technically fair (to those who understand the mathematics of it – first-year statistics anyone?). This is also PART of the reason why English is a compulsory subject (because the HSC scaling process relies on having a common subject taken by all HSC students as a sort of ‘parametric variable’ to enable comparison). Now, without going into how scaling works (read our HSC scaling explanation for more info), it’s a given that this scaling system has a HUGE effect on your final result – your ATAR. Obviously choosing subjects that have scaled well in the past would h
