1. You are not really competing against your classmates
You’re not really competing against your classmates as much as it appears. I know that the SAC (School Assessed Coursework) marks are ranked but how well your school does on the exam gives you a better idea of what sort of study score you can expect to achieve.
As an extreme example, you could be ranked #1 at your school but everyone scores 10% or below on the exam. That #1 SAC mark doesn’t mean all that much anymore and you’d be lucky to get a study score of 20.
In contrast, you could be ranked the lowest at a school where everyone scores above 50% in the exam. This could equate to a study score of 30 (or around 35 as a scaled study score, which puts you in the top 26% of the state).
It worth knowing the previous year's average Maths Methods study score at your school. (You can google something like "VCE School Ranking" if your school doesn't have the information, here's the data from 2021 from The Age). It's not perfect, but it gives you some indication.
Comparing your SAC mark to other students in your class give you some idea and is worth doing if you get a mark you are unhappy with. Mainly because some schools have extremely hard SACs, and while you may have only got 40%, this could actually be a decent mark.
Ultimately, you want everyone at your school to perform well and it's more about how well you score compared the whole state, rather than people in your class.
2. You are competing against your yourself
How well your classmates perform is far less important than you think. Your score has much more to do with how well YOU perform.
So instead of competing against your classmates, compete against yourself.
Take every increase as a win. And remember, the tests this year are generally a lot harder than previous years, so getting 50% could be the same as scoring 70% or higher.
Competing against each other can help boost each other’s performance, but this is a personal thing and isn’t for everyone. Compare yourself with yourself and aim to get a better score each time your have an assessment.
3. Let yourself win!
It's important to see where you improve, even if it is just by a little! If you increase your study time by 5 minutes from last night, that's great! If you got 0 on your test then got 1 mark, awesome! Keep going!
Many students aim for large improvements (such as going from 30% to 70% or 70% to 90%) and feel deflated when they only get a small increase. If you do better, that is a win. If you do worse, work out what habits you need to change and change them.
Give yourself a pat on the back for every small improvement. It means you're going in the right direction.
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