How hard is the HSC Bio exam? (1 Viewer)

[lizzobeth]

How many hours is the Biology exam? Is it mostly just short answers? Is it one of those exams that make sticking pins in eyes seem more enjoyable? I scared

 

[BlueGas]

Why don't you look at a past HSC biology exam?

 

[InteGrand]

Be prepared for a lot of rote learning.

 

[chairs]

its piss easy if youve done enough past papers.

 

[BLIT2014]

Working time = 3 hours
Reading time =5 minutes


If you know your stuff you can be out in an hour and a half (or less).

 

[Rouz]

HSC markers look for high levels of detail and depth in your responses, so you need to know your content and be able to explore them sufficiently. Describing the structure of blood vessels requires less detail as does explaining it. Similarly, assessing the contribution of scientists to the genetic model is different from discussing it.

Rote learning will take you nowhere. Of course, there is a lot of stuff that you will need to memorise and there's no way around that, but HSC Biology is all about principles. In fact, you are mainly assessed on your ability to apply the principles to the facts of the question. For example, you need to know your natural selection before you can explain antibiotic resistance and instances of such resistance eg, the Golden Staph. If you memorise huge lumps of information, you will end up having a brain dump which attracts low marks.

The exam is 3 hours long with 5 or 10 minutes reading time. 20 multiple choice, and not as many short-answer questions as there are longer response questions, so be prepared (PAST PAPERS and a lot of them please).

It is a very enjoyable exam because everything is, usually, extremely straightforward (this was not the case in 2015). If you 1) know your content 2) know how to structure your response and not go off-tangent, you will ace it.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Queenroot]

Harder than my boner

 

[baktiar77]

its piss easy if youve done enough past papers.

notsureifsrs. Last year I did close around 30 Bio papers (half old HSC; others trials) and yet I only got a 92 in the HSC. The application questions just killers and the multiple-choice is where even the top students struggle.

 

[Rouz]

notsureifsrs. Last year I did close around 30 Bio papers (half old HSC; others trials) and yet I only got a 92 in the HSC. The application questions just killers and the multiple-choice is where even the top students struggle.

The 2015 Biology paper was very unusual but I wouldn't say it was too difficult. Also, an exam mark of 92 is pretty good for HSC Biology for that paper.

How did you find the time to do 30 past papers?

 

[sinophile]

Its fairly straightforward. The biology exam is mainly just you information dumping everything you've learned. There is not much calculations or thinking involved, its mianly just recall of knowledge. I had enough time to check my exam three times over with plenty time to spare, and I'm not a genius. What gets you is the scaling rather than the raw difficulty of the exam. Bio doesn't scale as well as the other sciences.

 

[Nailgun]

The 2015 Biology paper was very unusual but I wouldn't say it was too difficult. Also, an exam mark of 92 is pretty good for HSC Biology for that paper.

How did you find the time to do 30 past papers?

HSC Marks are comparable between years, so getting 92 in 2015 is the same as getting 92 in any other year as the difficulty of the exam is compensated in the aligning? process. In theory anyways.

 

[Rouz]

HSC Marks are comparable between years, so getting 92 in 2015 is the same as getting 92 in any other year as the difficulty of the exam is compensated in the aligning? process. In theory anyways.

The final HSC mark, maybe (I don't know). But the exam mark is definitely not comparable.

 

[Nailgun]

The final HSC mark, maybe (I don't know). But the exam mark is definitely not comparable.

nah that too

raw hsc mark isnt, but the exam mark is comparable
wait I'll find some official documentation lel

 

[Nailgun]

Here you go
https://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/hsc-results/determining-achievement.html

In particular

4. Aligning a student’s raw examination mark to the standards-based reporting scale
Since 2001 the achievements of students in an HSC course have been reported each year in relation to the same set of standards. This means that marks reported to students for a course in different years can be compared.