Added: 1/11/05
This guide will hopefully help future students obtain those elusive HD's.
The cutoff for an HD is usually 85. Whilst in HSC terms this may not seem so difficult to attain, when you get to uni you will realise exactly how hard this is. In some subjects, even with 200+ people doing them, 0-2 students will achieve this high grade.
This guide is more for social science, business, humanities, arts etc related subjects and not for maths. It more details essays as a main assessment tool and will not provide extensive examination success strategies (as these are relatively common sense).
I will also provide attachments and excerpts from my own submissions to show the standard that is required in various facades.
I will not complete the whole guide yet, but will rather progressively add in parts when I have the time.
I will also brag about any high marks that I obtain making you feel as a homosexual at a wood-cutters convention. Actually, I take that back. Gay people love to cut wood. By wood i mean penis. And by penis I mean erection.
I will primarily refer to my FOundations of human resource management essay for this guide. Please also note that I didn't receive an HD for it (got 25/30 = 83.33%). I made one vital mistake which cheated me of that elusive mark, however the way I approached it is exactly what was needed to be done.
Step 1: Analyse the question
Ok, so you get a sheet with the essay questions that you can choose from (or a prescriptive essay depending on the assessment mode). Make sure you look at EXACTLY what the essay question says.
For example, in the HRM essay:
'Australia has to date not legislated for paid maternity leave, unlike most other countries. Assess who should take responsibility for paid maternity leave.
Explain the reasons for your response.'
So what is this question asking? It is already telling you that Australia has not legislated for paid maternity leave (PML). Thus, you do not need a historical background to the PML issue.
It's simply asking who should take responsibility for PML and to explain the reasons for this. How do you assess who should take responsibility? You do this by looking at different sources (which you will find in databases, which will be explained to you when you start uni) that assess who should ideally be responsible (Not who is currently responsible). So you document these approaches and will also obviously need to take a certain stanse for the essay (it's not good enough to say that writer A says govt should be responsible, B says employers should be responsible etc).
More to come...
