Hsc basics (1 Viewer)

[sleek1]

Congratulations, you are about the face the much dreaded HSC.
As HSC survivor I made this guide to help you understand, plan and get organised for the longest two years of your life.

First things first.

Subjects


When your start Preliminary HSC in year 11. The Board of Studies rules state that you should have 12 units. As each subject is 2units this means six subjects.
Most people tend to have six subjects straight up including English as the only compulsory subject.
While others have ten subjects and 2 extensions Subjects worth 1unit.

When choosing your subjects in year ten make sure you think clearly about what you are going to be studying for the next two years.
You should use your strengths and weaknesses at when choosing.
If you are good at Maths and English it is recommended to do extension but otherwise stay clear.
Some general tips about subjects:

• Do not rely on scaling when choosing a subject, it is always better to do good at a easy subject then bad at a harder subject
• Do not think of University prerequisites, all universities have bridging programs that can be complete before your Degree
• Choose subjects that you know you enjoy learning about.
  
  

Unless you are a science lover it is not recommended to do Physics, Biology and Chemistry. Remember you will be studying these subjects for the next two years.
If you hate sciences but you think it will help you with scaling / university. Think again, from my experience many students dropped subject they hated even tough they need it for University. Pick subjects that you can handle and will be able to keep up with or else you will fall behind and disadvantage yourself.
If you are unsure, talk to your careers adviser.










Resources


Once your have decided on your subjects, it is important to use all the resources at your disposal to help you. There is a lot of ways to gather information for homework assessments and to help you study for test such as websites, textbooks, tutoring, past papers.

Websites.


Using the internet is the easiest way to gather information but it is important you just don’t “copy + paste” sections of websites, trust me teachers will know that it’s not your work and you will get zero mark and will have to do the assessment again , so don’t even think about doing that .

The main websites I recommend to use are:

HSC online by Charles Stuart
This site has good guides and syllabus dot point notes.

Bored of Studies
The unofficial “board of studies “, this site should only be used as reference site and should not be depended on for notes.
Many students have been caught plagiarising from this site and most teachers use the site as well. I recommend to only using this site to fill in the blank when writing notes.




Textbooks

Textbooks have an advantage over websites because they are carefully edited and relevant to the current syllabus.
Most subjects have there own textbooks which you borrow from school. The school textbooks are mostly detailed and cover all the syllabus dot points. As the school pays a lot amount of money for these books you can assured they are useful for learning the content but some textbooks maybe outdated or hard to understand. I
If you are desperate one buying a textbook there are some guide lines.
Only buy textbooks that you will use,
I found study guides useful when studying for test and assessments they have HSC style questions which is great practice.
The “Revise HSC in one month” study guides were also great to use but did not have harder questions although they cover the syllabus pretty well.
The best place to buy textbooks in western Sydney is “five senses” in Seven Hills. It has a variety of books and study guides that will help for HSC. Other places to buy good quality textbooks is Bored of studies .


Tutoring

During my HSC years I did not have any tutoring except for the last couple months, I recommend getting a tutor if you are serious about studying other then that it’s a waste of money and time.
A tutor can help you maintain your grade or push you but they should not do your work for you. It is important to find a good tutor who has experience which the subject they re tutoring.

Past Papers

Perhaps the most important resource, I suggest doing every past paper for the last ten years for your subject.
Download past papers and answer from” Board of studies”.
This may seem like a lot of work but doing one past paper a week will help in the long run. The main reasons doing past papers are so important.


The syllabus doesn’t not change significantly from year to year, by doing past papers you are becoming familiar with HSC layout as well as the different types of questions asked with the correct response for each.

Questions tend to repeat themselves. When I was studying for HSC I had the same question repeat it self just with different wording. By practicing past papers you can easily get marks for the questions you have already studied at home.

Studying

This is the main part, no matter how many books you buy or notes you download if you don’t study, you won’t get high marks.

Different people have different ways of studying; some people need to re-write notes while others need to re-read notes. You have to find which way works best for you.


But the rule of studying is “repetition “.
There is no point doing things once if you want it to stick with you .By the time you finish year 12 you would’ve had to have repeatedly learned and reinforced everything.

The best way I recommend to study is doing past papers and syllabus summaries.
I already wrote about past papers in thee resource part so refer to it above.






Syllabus summarise are probably one of the greatest things you can do.
Remember everything you learn must be from the syllabus, there is no point studying a topic that is not in the syllabus.
It takes about a week to summarise a terms worth of work so it’s a good idea to do a weeks worth of summarise during each weekend.

When making summarise make sure you don’t forget any dot points and you write a brief but useful summary of each topic.

Motivation

To be motivated to study you need to set your self some goals to aim towards.

When you set goals have short term and long term goals in order not to get distracted and to stay focused

Short terms goals should be easy to maintain and weekly example, finish all maths homework for this week, get above 80% maths in test next week etc.

Long term goal should be your Atar goal or such as first in subject or other goals which you think will motivate you to study.

General Tips

• Stay focused , the next two yeas will pass very fast
• Study 30 mins each night for each subject
• Don’t fall behind , make sure you are always ahead of the class
• It doesn’t count as studying if you are on Msn, Facebook or watching TV
• You will only do the HSC once, Make the most of it
• School assessments count towards half your Atar , so if you are not getting above 90, don’t expect your atar to be above 75
• Teachers will always help you if you need help, so swallow your pride and ask stupid question if you need help.
  
  

Final words of wisdom


“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.” -- Dr Seuss

The HSC is not the end of the world; as long as you put in your best you will not be disappointed with your results.

I wish you all the best of luck for the future


Waseem Syed Aziz




Resources



Bored of studies
Bored of Studies - Student online community, resources, notes, past exams, UAI Calculator, ENTER Calculator, HSC, VCE


Board of studies
Home - Board of Studies NSW


HSC online
NSW HSC Online


Five Senses
https://www.fivesenseseducation.com.au/about

Address
2/195 Prospect Highway
Seven Hills NSW 2147
Telephone: 02 9838 9265


Bored of studies discount online book store

Bored of Studies Study Guide Store

 

[H S C]

+1
Very good.

 

[study-freak]

“Revise HSC in one month” study guides aren't that great according to many people + me. I guess it's personal preference though.

I wouldn't usually recommend getting a tutor if one is dedicated enough to spend time looking at textbooks, reading the syllabus, asking school teachers any questions, etc until one completely understands concepts/topics. The chance is that this kind of person would excel regardless of tutoring. Perhaps, tutoring might be more suitable to people who is in the mid to mid-high range in terms of motivation and grade. Obviously not a solid rule though.

"I suggest doing every past paper for the last ten years for your subject."
I disagree with this statement for some subjects for which the syllabus has undergone major changes in the past 10 years. Only attempt relavant questions to the current syllabus.

"Study 30 mins each night for each subject"
I disagree with this idea, actually. Well, I suppose this depends on the student but I found doing 1 or 2 subjects for a more extended period of time more productive. IMO, 30 mins is too short.

"School assessments count towards half your Atar , so if you are not getting above 90, don’t expect your atar to be above 75"
That's just false.

Nice work though. That's a really long guide!

 

[NewiJapper]

I think a little fine tuning from study-freak's notes and it should be a sticky but maybe in the prelim thread...?

 

[Aerath]

EVERYTHING IS FROM MY Past experince ,
so if ppl disagree wit it , i invite them to suk on a long hard dik : )

Yeah, good for you. Unfortunately for you, study-freak over here got 99.95, so people would be more inclined to listen to his advice than someone who has invited people to 'suk on a long hard dik'. Besides which....your HSC is 2010 according to your profile?

 

[determine]

EVERYTHING IS FROM MY Past experince ,
so if ppl disagree wit it , i invite them to suk on a long hard dik : )

One thing that you actually stated above which is incorrect on a TECHNICAL LEVEL (and does not relate in any way to PERSONAL experience) is when you said "it is better to do well in an easy subject than badly in a hard subject" - and the problem is that you stated this as a side note in your discussion of "scaling".

It seems to me as though you're suggesting that subjects that scale well are more difficult than subjects that do not scale well - this is severely flawed, and I would like to address this so that students are not being misled.

Scaling ONLY indicates the relative strength of the group of students completing a particular subject and does not indicate whether one subject is more difficult than another - 4u maths is NOT harder than community and family studies, for instance, but rather the STRENGTH of people doing 4u maths (since it IS an extension course and thus would require students undertaking the course to be somewhat talented and of HIGHER ABILITY in this subject) is greater than the level of students GENERALLY completing community and family studies.

You cannot assert that one subject is "harder" than another, because, as I am sure I have mentioned in some of my previous posts, the difficulty of a particular subject is RELATIVE to each individual - subjects with a huge mathematical component may be seen as "easier" to students who grasp mathematical concepts quicker (and by the same token, these students may find that a subject like economics or business studies or modern history, which does require analytical skills is more difficult - and these three subjects scale WORSE than 4u maths).

So I just wanted to clear that up because in your post it seemed to me as though you were classifying subjects as "hard" and "easy" - no subjects are hard or easy as such, they all have their own demands and require the application of different knowledge/skills. Students will find subjects hard/easy depending on their individual strengths and weaknesses, and the function of scaling is NOT to downgrade certain subjects by saying they're easy or hard.

 

[grubz]

actually some subjects are HARDER and some are EASIER than others - there's no way to sugar coat this fact.

e.g. general maths vs maths ext 2
e.g. std english vs adv english

Scaling is the system we have that makes things fair, e.g. easier subjects are scaled lower. But the scaling is not determined by any arbitrary judgment of how much harder or easier each subject is, but rather based on mathematical / statistical relationships that we don't understand, but we can assume its technically fair

 

[Dragonmaster262]

Yeah, good for you. Unfortunately for you, study-freak over here got 99.95, so people would be more inclined to listen to his advice than someone who has invited people to 'suk on a long hard dik'. Besides which....your HSC is 2010 according to your profile?

Check his profile. He's apparently 21.

 

[determine]

actually some subjects are HARDER and some are EASIER than others - there's no way to sugar coat this fact.

e.g. general maths vs maths ext 2
e.g. std english vs adv english

Scaling is the system we have that makes things fair, e.g. easier subjects are scaled lower. But the scaling is not determined by any arbitrary judgment of how much harder or easier each subject is, but rather based on mathematical / statistical relationships that we don't understand, but we can assume its technically fair

Not to sound rude or anything, but that's coming from a person who did/is doing ext. 2 maths, ext 1 english chemistry and physics, subjects amongst the highest in terms of scaling.

general maths vs maths ext 2 : just because the scaling is much better for maths ext 2 does NOT mean the subject is easier.. this is NOT what scaling is about. it's just that the people that do general maths are generally WEAKER at maths (hence their choice to do general maths) whereas people doing ext 2 maths are stronger at maths (hence their choice to do ext 2).

again I'll say that the board who devised the scaling process does NOT know what subjects are harder/easier, because everyone has different strengths and weaknesses! that is fact which can't be ignored, and neglecting this would be denying a fundamental thing of scaling.

 

[Enchantress91]

“Revise HSC in one month” study guides aren't that great according to many people + me. I guess it's personal preference though.

Yeah I couldn't agree more. Excel's "Revise in a month" study guide series seriously SUX! I've had one for pretty much every subject except English. The things mentioned in there are soo vague.

And with regards to doing past papers, although timing yourself is an absolute must with Maths, with other subjects, I don't think you need to always complete the entire paper under time pressure (3 hours for most subjects) at once. Break them up into smaller, more manageable sections instead. Eg. short response & multiple choice today, extended responses the next day.

Another thing is don't burn yourself out too early. Because that's the problem a lot of my friends and class mates experienced. I still went shopping every week, went to the beach/ parties with my friends, went on formal dress-hunts and wasted a lot of my free periods.

So the HSC is all about knowing when's the time to relax and when to be motivated to work hard (lol, like 2 days before your English assignment's due). I was never the type of person who could just sit there for 5 hours straight and do nothing but study. SO many people doubted me coz I was having it way too easy and my mum kept saying to me "there's always TAFE" my dad thought i'd need a miracle to pass my hsc. i guess in the end my result shocked them all. SO have faith in yourself and always stay positive no matter what.

 

[Shadowdude]

For the average run-of-the mill student, Maths Extension 2 is notoriously harder than General Maths. And that's what scaling aims to do, it aims to see what kind of marks everyone would get if they were placed into a random class. Or that's how I see it anyway.

Now to get shot down, maybe:

Take a 5 mark question in the General Maths paper, if there is any, and compare it to an equivalent (in terms of percentage) 6 mark question in the Maths Extension 2 paper. You can argue that the 5 mark question will be of the same difficulty of the Maths Extension 2 question in terms of relative difficulty - for example, a hard General maths question will be 5 marks, and a hard MX2 question will be 5 marks.

But when you look at the bigger picture, for your average student, they'd gravitate toward the five mark General question.


Also, fun fact. A P25 in Maths Extension 2 is better than a P99 in General Maths! Awesome stuff.

 

[mRJoJo]

"School assessments count towards half your Atar , so if you are not getting above 90, don’t expect your atar to be above 75"

I was told that the most important thing is your rank and the marks in between
your rank; not necessarily your own individual mark
correct me if i'm wrong

 

[Shadowdude]

Your mark is important as it establishes your rank in the class. The only things the BoS cares about is your rank, and the differences in mark between the person above you and the person below you.

So that's correct.

 

[ilikebeeef]

As HSC survivor I made this guide to help you understand, plan and get organised for the longest two years of your life.

You haven't yet finished the HSC, and you said the two years are going to be short.

When choosing your subjects in year ten make sure you think clearly about what you are going to be studying for the next two years.
You should use your strengths and weaknesses at when choosing.
If you are good at Maths and English it is recommended to do extension but otherwise stay clear.
Some general tips about subjects:

• Do not rely on scaling when choosing a subject, it is always better to do good at a easy subject then bad at a harder subject
• Do not think of University prerequisites, all universities have bridging programs that can be complete before your Degree
• Choose subjects that you know you enjoy learning about.

Unless you are a science lover it is not recommended to do Physics, Biology and Chemistry. Remember you will be studying these subjects for the next two years.

Resources


Once your have decided on your subjects, it is important to use all the resources at your disposal to help you. There is a lot of ways to gather information for homework assessments and to help you study for test such as websites, textbooks, tutoring, past papers.

Websites.


Using the internet is the easiest way to gather information but it is important you just don’t “copy + paste” sections of websites, trust me teachers will know that it’s not your work and you will get zero mark and will have to do the assessment again , so don’t even think about doing that .

The main websites I recommend to use are:

HSC online by Charles Stuart
This site has good guides and syllabus dot point notes.

Bored of Studies
The unofficial “board of studies “, this site should only be used as reference site and should not be depended on for notes.
Many students have been caught plagiarising from this site and most teachers use the site as well. I recommend to only using this site to fill in the blank when writing notes.




Textbooks

Textbooks have an advantage over websites because they are carefully edited and relevant to the current syllabus.
Most subjects have there own textbooks which you borrow from school. The school textbooks are mostly detailed and cover all the syllabus dot points. As the school pays a lot amount of money for these books you can assured they are useful for learning the content but some textbooks maybe outdated or hard to understand.

+111111

If you hate sciences but you think it will help you with scaling / university. Think again, from my experience many students dropped subject they hated even tough they need it for University.

If you hate sciences then you shouldn't do a science-oriented uni course.

The “Revise HSC in one month” study guides were also great to use but did not have harder questions although they cover the syllabus pretty well.

I agree with a lot of people here that "Revise HSC in one month" sucks.

The main reasons doing past papers are so important.

The syllabus doesn’t not change significantly from year to year, by doing past papers you are becoming familiar with HSC layout as well as the different types of questions asked with the correct response for each.

Questions tend to repeat themselves. When I was studying for HSC I had the same question repeat it self just with different wording. By practicing past papers you can easily get marks for the questions you have already studied at home.

That's only for certain subjects e.g. Science. It doesn't apply to subjects which change e.g. English.

• It doesn’t count as studying if you are on Msn, Facebook or watching TV

Well, yeah.

• School assessments count towards half your Atar , so if you are not getting above 90, don’t expect your atar to be above 75

Nahs, it's not that bad.

But kudos to you.

 

[Shadowdude]

Dammit, I have one of those Revise in a Month things <_<

 

[sleek1]

ok lets get sum thigs straight.
i finished my HSC last year.
my atar was 88
i dnt use this site often cos i life , so i dnt give a site bout details
every1 else who is doing their HSC , u got sum stuff to learn, i got my olds schols principle and last years dux who got 99.95 to check this
and they are gonna publish this in my schools news paper


yes scaling will affect ur marks but its not sumfing to rely on .
i duno wtf the rest of yu lil nerd kids are on about but.
i still invite yu to go suka dik

tc

 

[ilikebeeef]

ok lets get sum thigs straight.
i finished my HSC last year.
my atar was 88
i dnt use this site often cos i life , so i dnt give a site bout details
every1 else who is doing their HSC , u got sum stuff to learn, i got my olds schols principle and last years dux who got 99.95 to check this
and they are gonna publish this in my schools news paper


yes scaling will affect ur marks but its not sumfing to rely on .
i duno wtf the rest of yu lil nerd kids are on about but.
i still invite yu to go suka dik

tc

Wait... judging from your sudden rise in grammatical/spelling/punctuation errors, coarse language, and from reading the rest of your posts which show similar qualities, you didn't actually write this guide, did you?

 

[annabackwards]

“Revise HSC in one month” study guides aren't that great according to many people + me. I guess it's personal preference though.

I wouldn't usually recommend getting a tutor if one is dedicated enough to spend time looking at textbooks, reading the syllabus, asking school teachers any questions, etc until one completely understands concepts/topics. The chance is that this kind of person would excel regardless of tutoring. Perhaps, tutoring might be more suitable to people who is in the mid to mid-high range in terms of motivation and grade. Obviously not a solid rule though.

"I suggest doing every past paper for the last ten years for your subject."
I disagree with this statement for some subjects for which the syllabus has undergone major changes in the past 10 years. Only attempt relavant questions to the current syllabus.

"Study 30 mins each night for each subject"
I disagree with this idea, actually. Well, I suppose this depends on the student but I found doing 1 or 2 subjects for a more extended period of time more productive. IMO, 30 mins is too short.

"School assessments count towards half your Atar , so if you are not getting above 90, don’t expect your atar to be above 75"
That's just false.

Nice work though. That's a really long guide!

+1

Not to sound rude or anything, but that's coming from a person who did/is doing ext. 2 maths, ext 1 english chemistry and physics, subjects amongst the highest in terms of scaling.

general maths vs maths ext 2 : just because the scaling is much better for maths ext 2 does NOT mean the subject is easier.. this is NOT what scaling is about. it's just that the people that do general maths are generally WEAKER at maths (hence their choice to do general maths) whereas people doing ext 2 maths are stronger at maths (hence their choice to do ext 2).

again I'll say that the board who devised the scaling process does NOT know what subjects are harder/easier, because everyone has different strengths and weaknesses! that is fact which can't be ignored, and neglecting this would be denying a fundamental thing of scaling.

You are correct in saying that scaling =/= harder subject and that scaling is only an indication based on the strength of a subject's cohort.

However, General maths is easier than MXT2 and there's no way to tip toe around this fact. Despite this, the strength of a subject's cohort is used as your ATAR is a rank and scaling which compares raw marks in different subjects basically makes findind a person's ATAR easier.

A better example you could have used would be would be mentioning the difficulty of a subject like Textiles. The difficulty subject is dependent on a person - I, for example would find this subject horribly difficult despite it being "low scaling".

So there you go. Whoever is saying higher scaling = harder subject stop it, even if you're generalising as there are many examples where it is not true.

 

[Deer]

Wait... judging from your sudden rise in grammatical/spelling/punctuation errors, coarse language, and from reading the rest of your posts which show similar qualities, you didn't actually write this guide, did you?

Yeah, I don't think he has the grammatical capability...

And I don't see how someone could care so much about the next generations of HSC'ers to bother writing this guide, when in the next post, one is invited to 'suk on a long hard dik'... Something is just not adding up here