A trial exam is a school assessment task
Schools choose and mark trial papers under different conditions. A 78 at one school is not automatically equivalent to a 78 at another. Your trial result may affect your school assessment rank, but the raw trial percentage is not sent straight to UAC for scaling.
What happens before scaling
For most examined courses, NESA combines an HSC exam mark with a moderated school assessment mark. Moderation places each school course group on a comparable scale, keeps the assessment rank order and reflects the relative gaps in the submitted marks.
UAC scales raw HSC marks supplied by NESA, before alignment to performance standards. These are not the aligned HSC marks on your results notice. Your best two eligible English units and next best eight eligible units form the scaled aggregate, subject to UAC eligibility rules.
What to take from a trial result
Use the trial to identify your current rank, weak topics and exam execution. Do not paste the raw trial percentage into an ATAR calculator and treat the result as a prediction. A school specific rank based range is still uncertain, but it avoids pretending the trial mark is already an HSC mark.
Sources and editorial notes
Founder of ATAR Forecast. These guides explain school ranks, HSC results and the assumptions behind the forecasting tool, with links to NESA and UAC sources. These guides explain the process; NESA and UAC remain the official authorities.
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An experimental estimate, not an official ATAR calculation.