Please Share Advice for 2015ers (1 Viewer)

swagmeister

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First of all congrats everybody on getting your ATARs and finally being fully fully done with school!

Some of us, such as myself, still have one year left and would love to hear some advice on what worked for you and what didn't over the past year whether it was how you took your notes, how you studied in general or for specific subjects, how you found motivation or anything other advice relating to the HSC now that you have finished it and know how you did.

I'm sure all of us 2015ers would really appreciate it :)
 

tyzzefloro

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Don't study 24/7 it will wreck you. TRUST. LEAVE FUEL IN YOUR SOUL FOR THE HSC AND SMASH IT.
 

rated

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Make notes or just use someone else's notes as soon as possible.
Stay organised by completing homework and assignments on or before due date. That way you feel more at ease and have more free time to touch up on other subjects!
Don't focus on one subject a day. (This was a mistake I made during my HSC, I just devoted all my time towards Economics and still ended up with a B5!!!! This meant I have left other subjects such as Physics, Chemistry and English to minimal study time)
Basically study all your subjects and touch up on weaknesses and don't devote to much time to your strongest subjects (like I did...)
Eat healthy (exception: Half Yearlies/Trials/HSC exams) and exercise regularly, 30mins max a day.
Relax or study on the weekends but make sure you have a day where you can relax and of course sleep!
Don't worry about what lies ahead so you can remain focused on task at what you need to do.
Also, HSC is full of surprises!
 

enigma_1

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As NotCricket said, consistency is important. Especially if you go to a crappy school like me, your internal could drag you down so by doing consistently well in all of your tasks you can ensure you have a good rank.
 

enigma_1

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Have no social life.....












Jks jkss

You can have it, but just limit it.
 

emilios

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like others have said:

- consistency>intensity
- discipline>motivation
- don't tell people your goals. it's proven to make you less likely to achieve them (there's research on this, ceebs to google it)
- maths 5 days a week, for like at least an hour.
- english is a rote fest. ignore your teachers who tell you to "explore your text". read them and analyze them but you've gotta walk into that exam hall basically already knowing what you wanna talk about
- 2-3 hours of study a night for 5-6 days a week.
- everyone thinks they're immune from burnout. they're not. i was a motivated mofo in term 4 2013. come graduation time i was having to basically drag myself into school. i was miserable. it was the combination of shitty sleep patterns, bad diet and stress. chill. the world rewards those who work hard.
- rankings are everything, but don't let them sour your relationships. i found that being on good terms with everyone really boosted my morale.
- success builds on success. confidence builds on confidence. start conquering your subjects early and you'll steamroll through the year. get off to a shaky start and you put yourself in an uncomfortable position. i had my disappointments too. they got to me. the key is to push through until you reach another success. smash your half yearlies and you'll be golden.
- when i say walk into your exam room with confidence, i don't mean the feel-good, pseudo, bullshit type "fake it till you make it" confidence. i mean confidence gathered from familiarizing yourself with the styles of questions they can ask you, the style of answering questions (essential for sciences), an impregnable knowledge of the syllabus and skeleton responses for common types of questions.
- past papers are everything. don't 'save' them until the hsc. trust me you won't get time to do them.

the hsc is a game. learn how to play it. for god sake go learn everything you can about aligning, scaling and all that stuff like right now.

when people speak of the hsc they tend to do so in abstractions and platitudes. be realistic. you can stick up that "99.95" on your wall and pray to it everyday but true success comes in the short term. time flies past. what have you done today to advance your HSC journey?

that's all for now kiddies. if you need anymore i can do this all day
 
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BLIT2014

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Do pastpapers/questions and hand them into teachers to mark..
 

BLIT2014

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As NotCricket said, consistency is important. Especially if you go to a crappy school like me, your internal could drag you down so by doing consistently well in all of your tasks you can ensure you have a good rank.
Even decently ranked schools internals can drag you down heaps...
 

miamiheat

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spend less time on forums and more time studying. For sciences, I feel having a very solid knowledge on the basics is very important. I struggled a little with this and found it a little harder to grasp more challenging concepts later on in the syllabus, but maybe that's just me. ask questions if you don't understand or are not sure because those questions could reveal major flaws in your understanding of a topic which you might not have realised. good luck. everybody will need it.
 

emilios

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spend less time on forums and more time studying. For sciences, I feel having a very solid knowledge on the basics is very important. I struggled a little with this and found it a little harder to grasp more challenging concepts later on in the syllabus, but maybe that's just me. ask questions if you don't understand or are not sure because those questions could reveal major flaws in your understanding of a topic which you might not have realised. good luck. everybody will need it.
can confirm this given statement is untrue huehuehuehu. breaks yo. not everything is study 24/7
 

Erique

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All of my subjects were humanities. I can't really say much about the sciences!

Do some extra reading. If you want that extra edge, I recommend you read widely so that you grasp the writing style of academics (historians, critics). For English, read some novels over your summer break. You don't have to read like day-in day-out e.g I'd read in the toilet/15 mins before bed... I mean like, unless you're totally engrossed by what you're reading. Good places to start are academia.edu (usually free PDF articles) and jstor.org. JSTOR lets you read 3 journal articles for free (not all are free), but they only expire after about a fortnight. I had multiple accounts so I could save articles for Romanticism, History Extension, Frankenstein, and Hamlet. I can't stress enough how helpful (and interesting) these entries are.

Quotes and techniques first (until mid years), generic essays second (trials and HSC). Get the hang of flexible thinking with ideas and snippets of evidence before you walk in with a prepared essay that you can't even mould to the question. Your integration of the question will look seamless after a few practice runs. This personally worked for me.

Do 2-3 hours of study a weekday, including homework. 5 hours for Saturday and Sunday. Yes, you will still have time to socialise. Some people like to separate homework and study, but they're pretty much the same thing. Leave Friday as your break.

Don't spite a subject because you flopped in one assessment task. You just need to pick yourself back up and start again. Each assessment task usually had a 15%-25% weighting. You still have other opportunities to pick up your rank.

Finally, as someone mentioned above, competition is healthy in moderation/ You can't forgo friendships, no matter how nihilistic your perception of 'fleeting highschool friendships' is, because you need a healthy and coherent learning environment in order to succeed. Don't make enemies, because you're all in this together. /cue HSM
 
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britaker

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There's no "right" way to study, how long to study, etc.

People told me to drop and I was 'too far behind' when I hadn't written my MW during the summer holidays. I eventually wrote it (with no repercussions) during the first few weeks of term 2.

A different person told me that doing 3 extension subjects for the HSC was ATAR death. Perhaps for some, but you have to trust your own abilities and choose your subjects accordingly :) No one is a better judge of your potential than you are.
 

vladn

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Hand write your own study notes using textbooks, online sources and other peoples notes (I did this for sciences&maths and felt that both the act of writing your own notes and doing it by hand had tangible benefits)

Do a shit tonne of exercises for mx1 and mx2. Like, do a lot, then do some more. This older girl who did well told me to do 50 Cambridge-length questions (i.e. the equivalent in length and difficulty of 2-3 Cambridge exercises, taken from a variety of textbooks) per sub-topic. I reckon I did more (it helped that my maths teacher refused to acknowledge the existence of other subjects and gave us an impossible workload) and every last question was worth it.

If you're not naturally talented at English, rote learning essays works fine. Hell, I know some English talents who memorise essays anyway. Just make sure you know how to adapt your essays to the question. Also, ideally you'd want to make sure your pre-prepared responses are top band material, and a good way to do that is by writing your first draft as soon as possible and getting lots of feedback from your teacher or tutor. Write revisions, submit them for more feedback, don't stop until you're gold.

Surround yourself with highly motivated people. It's one of the best ways to keep yourself motivated, even if you have a strong desire to fulfill your personal goals. Conversely, encourage people around you who don't work hard. If that doesn't work, make sure you don't get tempted into slacking off like them. Seriously, I've seen friends tempted into laziness by other friends. A couple guys would rather game instead of study, some other guy thinks it must be okay and doesn't study either, none of them end up fulfilling their potential, it's a sad thing.

Form a study group. You don't need to actually meet up outside of school, you just need 2-3 hard working people to sit next to in class, keep in constant contact via Fb or Skype messenger to ask questions & share notes, and generally attach yourself to. It helps if they're a bit smarter than you so that they can pull you up (but not too much smarter since obviously you don't want to be a complete burden on them -- although god knows I was :(). I guess this strategy is only viable at a decently ranked school -- less viable if you're at a low ranking school & trying to leave the rest of your cohort in the dust to improve your internals.

You can listen to music while grinding maths/science exercises but as soon as you feel your train of thought is starting to go in circles, take off the headphones and do your study in silence. It can get boring, but it's worth it.

Take constant breaks, like every hour or so, unless you're doing a past paper in which case you should do the whole paper at once. Also, if you need to clear your head, try tea. I must have been drinking 3-4 cups a night at my peak. Great for studying late at night.

Leave enough time to have a hobby/go jogging/hang out with your friends every so often. However, study and sleep are your priorities. Go home, eat, study, play around if you have the time, and be in bed by midnight. If you want a romantic relationship, consider long distance. I worked like 4 hours a week night (mostly maths) on weekdays and maybe 5-6 on weekends. Prior to trials, my study hours jumped to like 6+ on week nights (2 past papers) and every waking hour on weekends. After trials, I was able to pace myself a bit more, because there was so much more time and no classes. Do less, do more, it entirely depends on your personal needs. If you're struggling with a topic or even a subject in general, throwing more study hours at it is an acceptable remedy.

Also, keep in mind a realistic picture of where you are, versus where you want to be. At the start of each term, I blutacked a sheet of paper onto my wall. It summarised my marks in each exam, my ranks, my ATAR estimates, and a personal evaluation of my performance in each subject from the previous term i.e. "great", "good", "meh" or "shit". Constantly keeping both your failures and successes in mind is very useful, I think. Learning from your mistakes and all that. I screwed up some exams in my HSC year, but I never screwed up on the same subject twice. By the time the final HSC exams come around, you want to have finished screwing up and be ready to kill all of your exams.
 

photastic

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Keep mx2, it will increase your atar by 5 if you don't drop to 2u, but seriously if you love maths and drop it, you'll regret 4lyf (me). Also don't focus on one subject (me) and work everyday and don't watch tv shows during exam period (me).
 
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Librah

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Don't think doing relatively well in external exam and lolfailing internal assessments will save your hsc.. personal experience (school rank 430ish)
atar-97.8
edit: one more thing, if you see kids in your class getting marks for ridiculous reasons cause the teacher is lenient (eccentricity of ellipse=0, in a step and kid ends up getting 4/4) dont be like "nah im too honest to scab marks" FIGHT FOR THE MARKS, prob my greatest regret not doing so lol.
 
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