i've been looking at the atar requirements for some courses i think i'm interested in and they're looking pretty competitive, all 99+. i'm just wondering if anybody knows any techniques to do well (without studying 9 hours a day, and still being able to manage my job and social life)
i was someone who studied like 5-7+ hours a day sometimes on weekends/holidays in high school, but tbh i had to catch up on a lot of years of schooling where i didn't learn much + changing curriculums from moving interstate etc, so i don't think u really need that
now that im in uni i think these are the main things that really help:
- stay on top of everything (or ahead if you're struggling). it's really common to leave all the boring repetitive work until the weekend or something like that, but by far the best thing is to do the assigned work within 1-2 days of learning something. like if you learn a a topic in maths, straight away u should do the textbook questions on it, that will solidify what you've learned and also challenge what u think u know well
- active study - yeah this has been said a million times but notes aren't really studying. it's important to make notes, but if you want to actually study then you really have to be doing questions or working on problems. exception for some subjects like bio or english where there's a lot of memorisation, but if you're doing something like physics, maths, computing etc, almost all of your time should be doing questions
- don't leave a subject behind - almost everyone hates english but yeah u gotta do it, so try to enjoy it (or other subjects u dislike) and try really hard, it'll make it less stressful when exams come around if you're confident in your skills rather than ditching the subject because u don't like it
- figure out how to study - also been said a million times but i mean that you need to find your limits - how many hours can you devote to studying without getting burned out? for me nowadays it's usually 3 hours, maybe less, but tbh the number doesn't matter. it then becomes about maximising those hours, so make sure you can sit down (including breaks) and put in your maximum effort during those hours - doing tough past papers for example. on top of that you really should have another hour or so just to do notes or other passive tasks, but that isn't as mentally straining and i think everyone can spend an hour copying stuff from their book, it's boring but it has to be done sadly
- actually use classtime - another really obvious one... but especially now that im in uni its super important. ok everyone taps out from time to time but if you can be active in class (which usually is easy because you're in a schooling environment), you already save time later as you're not gonna have to revise stuff as heavily. that reduces the amount of hours of self study, which reduces the amount of stress you have and frees up time for focusing on weak areas or other things outside of school
also one really important thing - hold yourself to a high standard but don't destroy your wellbeing. doing so will only make you perform worse, and just leads to problems later. i definetly have a much healthier relationship with studying in uni than in high school, spending way less hours, but im doing better at uni than in high school and i think it's true that spending your time wisely really helps (though, you also have to put in a lot of hours)
