The school certificate is easy in comparison to the trials that your school will give you. The most important thing to remember for the school certificate is to:
- Get a good night sleep
- Keep track of time. You will finish, but you will need time to recheck.
- Make sure your writing makes sense. Do not ramble. Get straight to the point. There is no point in flashy introductions in the beggining of your answers.
- Do past papers - I cannot stress this enough. This is much more important than your study notes. Doing more past papers will increase your familiarity with the types of questions that they are going to ask
- Common knowledge
- Be concise in your answers: Write only what you need to. Try to support your claims with evidence, but don't make it too long
- For English: be original. Endings should not be cliche. Language, grammar, fluency and punctuation are more important than what you actually write. For your multiple choice, your first impression is usually 99% correct. DO NOT change answers unless you are sure that it is wrong. Do not over think the questions.
- For Maths: it is a relatively easy test. You do not need to memorise any formulas as they give you all of them. The most important point here is to practice from your past papers. Take care of silly mistakes, and remember to keep rechecking. There are some shortcuts to doing some questions. Do not be afraid of using them.
- For Science: Practice past papers. Remember the key points to each topic. Know your verbs like analyse, discuss, etc. Understand what the question is asking to structure your answer according to the meaning of the verbs. If it says to assess, that is to make a judgement of something. DO NOT write everything you know. Answer the question.
- history and geography: for multiple choice, try to study the key points to each topic, but for the extended response, you need to know some more detail for this section. What I did was listed some possible essay questions and I wrote points under each question. For the sources in history, OBSERVE different perspectives and corners of the source. Know what is meant by reliable, usefulness, and biased.
- computers: Practice from past papers. Very easy test.
Good luck. Don't stress yourself out too much. Study two weeks before the exam and you should be fine. I got all Band 6's except for a Band 5
but it's still pretty good