Need help and advice on subject selection!! (1 Viewer)

[yoyo0904]

sorry this is really long but would be appreciated if you could help

for the past week i've been stressing out and freaking out so much about prelim marks because i honestly do not know what subject/s to drop. im currently on 12 units and my subjects are maths extension, english extension, business, geography and economics. im picking up 4u maths but out of eng ext, geo and eco i do not know what to drop as i am doing so badly in all of them, my school doesnt give ranks in year 11 but i'll list my marks and my thoughts on the subject, teacher etc.

eng ext: 78, 74, 48 (yearly)
my teacher is the sweetest angel but she CANNOT teach. naturally im not very good at english, i only just made it for the cut off last year to do english extension. my advanced teacher is one of the crappiest in my school and my extension teacher may be even worse. after the first lesson this year, i was set on dropping but then my other subjects came in the way. but the thing is SCALING, it scales pretty well and my other subjects dont really scale well so i was planinng to keep it but after getting a 10/25 for my creative i dont know if i can keep going..

geo: 70, 60, 78, 60 (yearly)
my teacher is the head and hes pretty good and has a unique teaching style. for the first two tasks i did kinda just go in and fluke the exam but for my yearly i got 60 AND I STUDIED SO HARD AND PRE PREPARED AN ESSAY AND EVERYTHING and i was actually really interested in the topic and i spent heaps of time studying and preparing so i thought i would get 75 because after the test i felt quite good and i was so disappointed with my mark..i've kind of come to a conclusion that i suck at geo tests maybe

eco: 68, 80, 50, 51 (yearly)
my teacher isnt very good and he always goes on tangents and in circles and never makes sense (hes going to be my business teacher as well since my current one is leaving) i find eco a really complicated and hard subject and i also hate the textbook - i just dont understand it especially the language. a lot of people that dont do well in it drop it, so its all the people that get 80+ who stay...but scaling. plus eco is kind of more useful?

at this point i really dont know out of those which subject i enjoy more because i honestly hate all of them. i NEED to get into university...honestly my predicted atar is so crap and i just have to get into some course in uni. and my grades now make me cry and super stressed and im like suffering from insomnia because of this. also my school is in the top 10 (not selective though) so im definitely ranked in the bottom for all of these subjects but i dont know if my school will bump me up. im seroiusly freaking out and have mini heart attacks and also the people i sit with at school most of them are really inconsiderate when they talk about marks and stuff. basically my question is: which subject should i drop? IF YOU HAVE ANY SUGGESTIONS OR ADVICE OR QUESTIONS OR ANYTHING PLEASE TALK TO ME AND HELP!!

 

[Feynman]

- the one you suck at
- the one you don't enjoy
- the one that has least relevance to your future
- economics IMO

 

[mp2250]

- the one you suck at
- the one you don't enjoy
- the one that has least relevance to your future
- economics IMO

basically this.

 

[matchalolz]

I do exactly the same subjects as you except for geography ^_^

also like you, I took english extension with the intention of dropping and my opinion has not changed since day 1, even though i did get 12/15 for my creative that i barely tried in. Is your mark bad because the markers are extremely subjective or is it your writing style? tbh I never get depressed over shitty english marks because I know that they fluctuate a lot. Your other marks besides the yearly sound fine so you probably have potential for improving (i think)

geo: you sound like you enjoy this subject but I don't think it scales too well. Also, if you adopt the mindset that you suck, then you'll actually suck

eco: which textbook do you use? coz imo riley is too detailed but dixon is too basic. Therefore, both textbooks are shit and the dixon company went broke so... lol? Have you tried watching youtube vids/researching the stuff yourself? Are you planning on doing a commerce/economics degree when you graduate? because eco would be really useful

I also go to a top 10 school and I'm half relying on the fact that my school will carry my marks

which one to drop? consider the points that I brought up and advice from others and make a choice
what I would drop: eng ext/geo
what I think you should drop: eco/eng ext

obviously I'm biased but I can't make the decision for ya
cheers and good luck~

 

[astroman]

do whatever you know you can perform best in

 

[Fiction]

My school's in the top 15 and we average around 60-70% of the cohort getting a 90+ atar. 30-40% of the cohort get 95+ atar. I highly doubt you'll struggle to get into a uni course. Check your school annual report and set goals for yourself. As for which subject to drop, I would say Eco atm... Unless you're putting more time into ext 1 than eco and you feel you may do better in eco than eext1 - in which case, drop the 1 unit. Not worth spending so long on 1 unit.

Are you doing OK in eng adv? Ifyou're doing better at eng ext1 than adv, and spending relatively less time on ext subject, don't drop EExt1 as it can cut the damage a low adv score might do to your ATAR (since 2u of eng must count).

 

[Crisium]

I'd recommend Economics because my teacher mentioned today that everything we learned in the preliminary course was pre-requisite knowledge that becomes assumed in year 12

We had 6 booklets (sometimes above 100 pages) this year for 5 topics

Those who carry on apparently have 18 booklets to complete for god knows how many topics (ok maybe the syllabus knows)

It's basically a subject that is very time consuming if you struggle to understand a majority of the concepts, and time is something that you won't have as you're picking up extension 2 maths

Just ask your teachers in regards to the changing difficulty of the courses in the HSC year and look at the syllabi for those subjects for the HSC and see whether you'll be interested in what you'll be learning next year

 

[yoyo0904]

- the one you suck at
- the one you don't enjoy
- the one that has least relevance to your future
- economics IMO

at the moment i dont particularly enjoy any of them and geography has the least relevance but i've been really lazy with it, it's an "easier" subject but its so hard to get a good mark and well eco LOL actually all three i never want to sit through a class again but thats impossible thanks anyways!

 

[yoyo0904]

I do exactly the same subjects as you except for geography ^_^

also like you, I took english extension with the intention of dropping and my opinion has not changed since day 1, even though i did get 12/15 for my creative that i barely tried in. Is your mark bad because the markers are extremely subjective or is it your writing style? tbh I never get depressed over shitty english marks because I know that they fluctuate a lot. Your other marks besides the yearly sound fine so you probably have potential for improving (i think)

geo: you sound like you enjoy this subject but I don't think it scales too well. Also, if you adopt the mindset that you suck, then you'll actually suck

eco: which textbook do you use? coz imo riley is too detailed but dixon is too basic. Therefore, both textbooks are shit and the dixon company went broke so... lol? Have you tried watching youtube vids/researching the stuff yourself? Are you planning on doing a commerce/economics degree when you graduate? because eco would be really useful

I also go to a top 10 school and I'm half relying on the fact that my school will carry my marks

which one to drop? consider the points that I brought up and advice from others and make a choice
what I would drop: eng ext/geo
what I think you should drop: eco/eng ext

obviously I'm biased but I can't make the decision for ya
cheers and good luck~

but 12/15 is AMAZING well at least it is compared to a crappy 10/25...the markers did mark quite hard but i still did get a few marks below average. i also did not prepare a creative beforehand and just made it up on the spot so that is a reason why. i'm more of an essay than creative person. as for geo, i think its because my teacher is quite good but i cant help but have that kind of mindset because no matter how much effort i put in i still do crappy. i dont know if its that im dumb or your a genius but i use dixon and i dont get a thing lol...i have watched a few youtube videos on economics...

but reallt truly thanks for you long response and advice! i will keep considering T_T i just dont want to regret my choice later.

 

[yoyo0904]

My school's in the top 15 and we average around 60-70% of the cohort getting a 90+ atar. 30-40% of the cohort get 95+ atar. I highly doubt you'll struggle to get into a uni course. Check your school annual report and set goals for yourself. As for which subject to drop, I would say Eco atm... Unless you're putting more time into ext 1 than eco and you feel you may do better in eco than eext1 - in which case, drop the 1 unit. Not worth spending so long on 1 unit.

Are you doing OK in eng adv? Ifyou're doing better at eng ext1 than adv, and spending relatively less time on ext subject, don't drop EExt1 as it can cut the damage a low adv score might do to your ATAR (since 2u of eng must count).

about 50% get 95+ atar and 68% get over 90+ thing is the people that do eco for HSC are all qiute goo at it like about half the people that are currently doing economics are dropping so basically its the economics geniuses that remain! as for geo, last year every single person got in the tpo 2 bands but then it scales so bad.

im doing better in advanced (overall) and i put much more effort in advanced so i kind of want to drop extension as it is time consuming. for my previous tasks for extension ive averaged around 75 so i was thinking if i can bump myself up to that, it can actually scale to 85, whereas for geo it scales down to like 60 if i get a raw 75.

thank you for your advice though its really helpful!

 

[yoyo0904]

I'd recommend Economics because my teacher mentioned today that everything we learned in the preliminary course was pre-requisite knowledge that becomes assumed in year 12

We had 6 booklets (sometimes above 100 pages) this year for 5 topics

Those who carry on apparently have 18 booklets to complete for god knows how many topics (ok maybe the syllabus knows)

It's basically a subject that is very time consuming if you struggle to understand a majority of the concepts, and time is something that you won't have as you're picking up extension 2 maths

Just ask your teachers in regards to the changing difficulty of the courses in the HSC year and look at the syllabi for those subjects for the HSC and see whether you'll be interested in what you'll be learning next year

omg are you serious? i heard it was completely different omg T_T are you keeping eco?? but you are right time is a big issue T_T i have started communicating with my teachers about it and they seem to want me to stay and are kind of like "you'll improve and work harder"

thanks for your advice!

 

[Evertone]

My two cents: You're mad if you stick with Economics. Have you seen the syllabus for the HSC course? It is the heaviest HSIE subject.

It appears your economics teacher leaves a lot to be desired anyway. Drop the thing sweet heart.

 

[photastic]

I would argue that modern is the heaviest subject for the humanities because there's so much content to know including your case studies, WW1 source analysis and personality, and so it's basically conducive to rote learning. Yes, eco is in a similar threshold, but if you can understand the concepts then there won't be as much memorisation involved compared to the histories.

All humanities are heavy in their own way... and science ofc.

 

[Mdyeow]

English Ext for me. NOT because of my background. Why?

Work:reward ratio. Economics and Geo are both standalone subjects (i.e. your study is only relevant for that subject). Moreover, you have to cram a lot for both (heavy memorisation, lots of course material), and scaling degrades your scores (so your work is "worth" relatively less).

For English Ext, investment in either it or English Adv will pay off twofold (across both subjects), and gains a multiplier effect because of the scaling factor. Plus, English is a lot easier to "hack" than either of the other cramtastic subjects - see in my sig for what I mean. By focusing on short bursts of regular training (I personally stand by my rule of "40 minutes a week"), you can rapidly scale up your English performance. No pun intended.

Of course, that depends on you adopting a smart approach to training for English. But if you do, you will get far better results (and life skills) than with Eco or Geo - both of which have little relevance to their practice at university or in the so-called real world.

PM me if you have any questions.

 

[yoyo0904]

your screwed mate, if you want that 99.95 atar, shouldnt have picked such content heavy subjects. prelim eco is easy compared to hsc year

i dont need 99.95 that would be nice lol i just want 90+ realistically speaking. i am literally regretting all my life choices. but thanks for the comment

 

[britaker]

but the thing is SCALING

You know scaling only works in your favour if you're doing well, right?

I'd advise you to drop the English extension, it does become more (not specifying how much because obviously with each individual it varies) work and more challenging if English isn't one of your strengths. And don't stay with a terrible teacher. That's just shooting yourself in the foot.

 

[faisalabdul16]

Drop your worst subject