i find the criteria for making it into the Top 10 in level for Year 5 during the Founder's Day Academic Awards Presentation rather unfair...
this is because they calculate the absolute score, or aggregate percentage of all 6 subjects, out of 100%...
this gives science/math students an unbelievable advantage because it is actually very possible to score near-full marks in these subjects, while we arts students are highly handicapped because the nature of our subjects (like history, economics and most of all English A1) do not permit that kind of scoring... no matter how high one can get, there is always this 10% that is Permanently Lost because it is a sin to give such scores for essays etc...
thus, as an Arts student with 42 points, i feel utterly robbed of an Award...
it doesn't quite matter 'cos its the final IB score at the end of this year that i'm working towards, but it still sucks that i'm not getting the recognition...
i'm just saying, isn't it relevant to use IB scoring as the criteria for ranking students? it makes sense, since this is how our eventual scores will be calculated...
whatever the case, it happened last year as well, so i shouldn't harbour any hopes that this would change any time soon...
but just to illustrate how wrong this method of calculation is -
in the Top 10, at least 6 are PRC scholars, and as is their nature, they take Science/Math subjects, and since these are concentrated in the intact classes, at least 7 of the 10 are from intact...
Yan Ming, who is ranked first with a percentage of 88.1, would have otherwise been ranked third because he only got 41 points, while Dong Liang, who got 42 points, is relegated to 7th place under this calculation system...
Tim, who is now ranked 10th on the list, would not even have been in the top 25 since he lost 3 IB points in one of his SL subjects...
it appears the only ppl who would have remained on both lists in more or less the same positions are Judith and Ian, who have both a high percentage and 41 points each...
but i guess i'm complaining because with 42 points and being one of 2 arts students (i'm assuming Ian takes arts since he's in point.15) in the top 10 if IB scores were used, it seems weird that the ranking now is even more dominated by the Science ppl who have this strange advantage...
