To drop or not to drop... (1 Viewer)

[MidNiteParis]

Hi, I need some advice for my subjects.
I'm currently doing 12 units:
English Standard
Mathematics 2U
Business Studies
Biology
Senior Science
Information and Digital Technology - Animation (at TAFE)

I'm worried that the extra 2 units is going to take up too much time - I'm behind in all my subjects already and one subject takes up 5-8 hours of my time per week (except Tafe, which takes less). I could be taking that time to focus on my other subjects and improving those.

I think I'm doing quite well for Maths, Business and Biology, so I have no intention of dropping those. Doing really crappy at English, but I guess I'm stuck with that.

So I guess it's a toss-up between Senior Science and IDT.
I want to get a Cert III from my TAFE course though, which may help in my future. It's less time-consuming and more enjoyable too. However, we spend most of our time doing prac work for the course, and we don't get notes or learn anything for the HSC (I haven't been about to find notes online either) until a little bit before the HSC when they bring a HSC marker in who goes over the past papers with the class. I think this is extremely risky, although many previous students mentioned it was very easy. It apparently scales quite badly too. I have no idea how well I do in this course - it's basically competent or not-competent until the actual exam (weighs 100%).

I feel I might be capable of getting quite high marks in SSC, but if I quit this, it mean 8 units at school, which means more time. SSC also scales very badly.

So should I drop something? What should I drop? Or should I just keep it all?

 

[WrittenLoveLetters]

I'm worried that you doing 10Us might be dangerous. Usually I see people with "harder" subjects correlated in its obviously better scaling such as Physics, Chemistry and 3U/4U Maths do 10Us, but I feel like you should have a backup.

With Senior Science, yes, it's scaling is terrible out of all the Sciences, however a high internal ranking with an extremely high mark in Senior Science will do your HSC mark good.

In the end, you should probably evaluate where that extra time will go and weigh if it's worth taking the risk for

 

[qwert73]

If you want to get your cert III from the tafe course and if the subject doesn't take up too much time then you might want to keep it as a back up. Also 5 hours a week per subject is a fair amount of study so I think you'll be alright(or quite well off) when it comes to those.

 

[MidNiteParis]

With Senior Science, yes, it's scaling is terrible out of all the Sciences, however a high internal ranking with an extremely high mark in Senior Science will do your HSC mark good.

Unless it isn't used in my HSC, then it's a waste.
Since my other subjects scale better (not including IDT), would the likelihood of SSC being counted in my ATAR be quite low?

Also, since my subjects are the 'easy' subjects, would it be quite difficult to get a high atar?

 

[sinophile]

Unless it isn't used in my HSC, then it's a waste.
Since my other subjects scale better (not including IDT), would the likelihood of SSC being counted in my ATAR be quite low?

Also, since my subjects are the 'easy' subjects, would it be quite difficult to get a high atar?

If you already know what you want to do after high school, then make sure you you need a high atar to get into it first

From experience I can say that scaling has a very dramatic effect on your atar. So its not impossible to get a high atar, but you'll have to be quite good.

 

[WrittenLoveLetters]

Unless it isn't used in my HSC, then it's a waste.
Since my other subjects scale better (not including IDT), would the likelihood of SSC being counted in my ATAR be quite low?

Also, since my subjects are the 'easy' subjects, would it be quite difficult to get a high atar?

Just because it might not be used, doesn't mean the efforts of having a back up is wasted. Having a backup, in life in general, is just the safer way to go through things. I won't know because every cohort and range of marks will vary every year, but just because scaling may be better, lower marks will never really beat high ranks and high marks (unless it was 4U etc...).

No, definitely, just because your subjects are "easy", it doesn't mean you will never get a high ATAR. I just believe to beat the effects of aligning internal marks and the addition of external marks, hard work will always prevail.

 

[teridax]

Just because it might not be used, doesn't mean the efforts of having a back up is wasted. Having a backup, in life in general, is just the safer way to go through things. I won't know because every cohort and range of marks will vary every year, but just because scaling may be better, lower marks will never really beat high ranks and high marks (unless it was 4U etc...).

No, definitely, just because your subjects are "easy", it doesn't mean you will never get a high ATAR. I just believe to beat the effects of aligning internal marks and the addition of external marks, hard work will always prevail.

Whilst this is definitely true within the context of the HSC, natural ability shouldn't be disregarded. Yes, natural ability is not the most important factor when it comes to success in the HSC, but it is nonetheless a factor. So if you compare student A, who has just an excellent work ethic, and student B, who has both natural ability and hard work, undoubtedly student B would prevail.

That's just my take on things, though.

 

[Mr_Kap]

Whilst this is definitely true within the context of the HSC, natural ability shouldn't be disregarded. Yes, natural ability is not the most important factor when it comes to success in the HSC, but it is nonetheless a factor. So if you compare student A, who has just an excellent work ethic, and student B, who has both natural ability and hard work, undoubtedly student B would prevail.

That's just my take on things, though.

Unless you do rote learning subjects like bio and business where: Amount of hours of work is proportional to HSC mark.

 

[teridax]

Unless you do rote learning subjects like bio and business where: Amount of hours of work is proportional to HSC mark.

Yes, but even then, if you have natural ability (which in the context of the HSC is the ability to easily absorb content), coupled with hard work, can shorten the hours to know what you have to know. And this makes your second sentence moot because I argue it's entirely subjective; some people can barely do anything and achieve great HSC marks ('great' is relative here) and others who invest a ridiculous amount of hours and struggle to do well.

There's a lot more to HSC than just plain rote learning imo. And I don't think you can say that ANYONE who simply "works hard" can pull off excellent HSC marks. If that was so, then every pure rote learner who exists will be scoring excellent HSC marks and that obviously isn't the case.

 

[Mr_Kap]

Yes, but even then, if you have natural ability (which in the context of the HSC is the ability to easily absorb content), coupled with hard work, can shorten the hours to know what you have to know. And this makes your second sentence moot because I argue it's entirely subjective; some people can barely do anything and achieve great HSC marks ('great' is relative here) and others who invest a ridiculous amount of hours and struggle to do well.

There's a lot more to HSC than just plain rote learning imo. And I don't think you can say that ANYONE who simply "works hard" can pull off excellent HSC marks. If that was so, then every pure rote learner who exists will be scoring excellent HSC marks and that obviously isn't the case.

If it was an equation:
HSC MARK = Amount of Hours * Natural Ability.

If you have not much natural ability, you make up for it in amount of hours.
If you have natural ability, you can do less hours and get the same mark

Although for Biology HSC mark = (2*Amount of hours) * Natural Ability
only because of the whole course being memorisation

 

[WrittenLoveLetters]

Whilst this is definitely true within the context of the HSC, natural ability shouldn't be disregarded. Yes, natural ability is not the most important factor when it comes to success in the HSC, but it is nonetheless a factor. So if you compare student A, who has just an excellent work ethic, and student B, who has both natural ability and hard work, undoubtedly student B would prevail.

That's just my take on things, though.

Unh! Yes Ofc. But from my perspective, I don't think I'm a brilliant/smart student with much "natural ability", rather I think I have more passion and thus it is radiated through my hard working nature, my high marks and ranks come heavily from my work ethic and my constant pursuing of fixing mistakes until I understand them or until it becomes second nature.

Unless you do rote learning subjects like bio and business where: Amount of hours of work is proportional to HSC mark.

I also think Business Studies needs some skills in essay writing tbh.

 

[Yeungster]

i'd just drop the HSC. it's overrated - Confucius

 

[swagmeister]

The only reason you should drop is if you have consistent performance in all your other subjects, meaning there is very little risk...

 

[MidNiteParis]

The only reason you should drop is if you have consistent performance in all your other subjects, meaning there is very little risk...

For the prelims, I got over JUST (barely) 90s for business, bio and maths, rank 4 in my grade for business and bio, I did horribly for Eng, so i def need to spend time on that, which I don't have time for right now. It's gonna be counted no matter what though, so it's not a risk, it's definite. I have no idea how I'll do for IDT, but the teacher said that last year, the entire tafe class got band 6s.

 

[minisu]

dust some magic pew pew