Hey guys, I’m currently in year 11 at the moment and about to move into year 12 next term. I’m not sure what are the experiences like in year 12 but was wondering if you can give me some recommendations and advice on how to survive and perform well in year 12 thanks. (Btw I may be the youngest oz bargainer)
Preparing for The HSC
Lfreebiemaster1902 on 12/08/2021 - 22:39
Comments
That’s true, but who wouldn’t want to leave ozbargain
Do your assingments early, not at the last minute. Study a few days before an exam, not the night before, don't be afraid to ask the teacher for extra help, or other students.
I had a pretty average social life in year 11/12. I knew what I wanted and knew what ATAR I had to aim for and I didn't let my friends get in the way of that. Most importantly, after about 3 years after high school I barely spoke to more than 1 or 2 friends from school anyway and 10 years later, I speak to only 1. Don't be afraid to put yourself first and if friendships become at the expense of that, don't be bummed about it because after a few years you all go your separate ways.
ye true, thanks for the advice
I've known some people that have taken this path and became successful career-wise but regretted not having a social life whilst they were young.
Each to their own I guess. Apart from my partner who id give the world to, there isn’t much i wouldn’t give up to keep my job.
Try not stress out if you're not understanding the content as well as you would like and try not to compare yourself to your peers. Your ATAR mark may be based on a ranking system, but your going to stress yourself out if you think about the ranking system too much.
ye the ATAR system is just a rank at the end of the day and doesn't determine who you are because you don't need to be smart to be successful
Have fun and try not to take it too seriously.
If you do the work and do it early, you will do well.
yup, I always make sure to have fun and finish my work on time (:
Be prepared to reduce your social activities, gaming, spend time researching assignments and do NOT forget to thoroughly understand referencing and bibliography requirements esp. if you gather quotes and ref material from the net.
Many students your age haven't a clue on Harvard style referencing and get pinged with plagiarism often. also this sets you up well if you go on to a Diploma or Degree course later on.
If you cannot type I suggest getting a speech to text program such as Dragon Dictate (PC) and with training I was able to get around 100 WPM with 100 % accuracy.
Best of luckMy business teacher actually taught me about the Harvard style referencing and I find it very interesting as well. But anyways, thanks for the advice
I’m currently in year 11 at the moment and about to move into year 12 next term
It's Term 3 currently, don't you mean next year?…
🤦♂️
For HSC, "year 12" officially starts in year 11 term 4, so they have full 4 terms of studying year 12 material.
ye thats what I meant sorry
Seek out a mentor/coach who can give you guidance on effective ways to study.
Surround yourself with friends who are also keen on their studies. Iron sharpens iron.
If you're struggling, find a tutor, I can recommend one in the Georges River Council (if you are from that area).
does a person from a book count, I have been reading rich dad poor dad by Robert Kiyosaki multiple times which Has taught me real life lessons including getting out of the 9-5 job. He is a true mentor
Yeah that's good for personal finance but not for HSC as per your post…
One mistake I made was never asking the teacher for support. I always figured I had to do it alone, figure it out myself.
It means I’m pretty self reliant as an adult but my marks were a lot worse than they could have been.
Ye thats something I have noticed that I haven't been doing much lately since I was scared I would get judged on but I always say to myself that asking the teacher for support is the reason why I come to school 5 days a week.
Yup, the kids with the top marks are sitting in the teachers office sapping every bit of information out of them they can. I had the same fear, getting judged, but particularly in university that came back to bite me when I completely screwed the pooch on some essays because I got way off course on what I was writing.
I still do it at work too, I took on a piece of work and was flat out told by the CFO "don't disappear for 3 days and come back with something, I know you prefer to do that. Check in later today with me".
advice on how to survive and perform well in year 12
Can you provide some more detail about yourself. E.g. smart and hard working, smart but lazy, average average, below average but hardworking, below average x2. What's your school and family environment like (parents are executives/academics/office workers/migrants who work 9-9-6 but don't speak much English, etc; smart and educated, …)?
What do you want to achieve?
Hoping to become school vice captain next year, I am a person who likes to inspire and help others. I am typically sometimes smart and hard working through several of my online businesses which I have made in making couple of thousands each year hoping to use that to pay off my uni debt but I can easily lose focus since Im attached to social media a lot. I like to time manage myself such that I am always on top of things and never behind. My living environment is comftable but My school is full of naughty kids which distracts the teachers a lot and I get very annoyed when the teacher has to stop during the lesson to tell them off. Both my parents went to either uni and tafe who are currently in a stable job working 9-5 right now. In the future im hoping to get above 90+ ATAR and get into a bachelors degree of actuaries hoping to become a management consultant in the future.
Website boredofstudies
hahaha nice joke
It is actually a great website
That really depends on what ATAR you are aiming for and what course you would like to do after year 12. If you aim to get 99.95 & a degree on medicine, then… Good luck and get off OzBargain!
One of my kids is also in yr11 this year and just looking at engineering degrees with high 80/low 90 requirement. In that case I am still asking her to work hard (and don't procrastinate), but don't be too stressed. Keep on enjoying school & whatever the Gen Z is up to these days. Make the most of your high school days, and make friends with other smart people :)
Do your kids use OzBargain Scotty?
I reckon they contribute to this site's coding as a way to help with getting to an engineering degree. :). Why browse when you can get them to code.
They just stalk me to make sure I don't say anything bad about them.
In that case, hi Scotty's kids! Hope home schooling is going well!
Hopefully I don't do medicine haha, I am looking towards the business degree kind of side where I am able to open up a own business of mine. But ye I always make sure im not too stressed and always enjoy the school life.
Year 12 student here (vic) can confirm that its not too hard (here at least) - would say the school system needs fixing, but it goes quickly. Advice: put effort into english and take it chill
nooooo not English (my worst subject) , but ye its compulsory anyways for HSC so I would need to put more effort into English
my parents spent thousands on an english tutor because i was getting 80% average and after essentially preparing and memorizing dozens of essays based off the top performing papers in the last few years my mark went all the way up to 85%.
just prepare your non original, but technically not plagiarized essays and spend your time learning something useful like maths. if I spent all that time on maths probably would have achieved an amazing mark. but i put all my effort into english which was my worst subject and totally subjective and totally useless for getting a job. think I went to tutoring for 15 weeks to raise my mark by 5. then i went to 1 week of maths tutoring right before the hsc and went over the entire course and my mark went up by 10 or 15 compared to my previous mark. so basically english is a joke of a subject.
Focus on the assessment tasks, they are the important things. The exams, sure do your best but don't stress.
One big thing I would like to see change is the level of stress put on HSC students - it needs to come waaaay down. To be honest, the whole focus on HSC will make or break you is just a lie, and the stress that is put on students is a joke.
Don't get a high mark in the HSC? Okay then adjust and move forward. The HSC will not make or break your future.
ye thats true, the HSC won't determine who you are. I have went to some school carrier programs where some past high school students and outside employees from different businesses came in to talk and to give some advice to us and what they have mentioned is that the employers don't necessarily look at your ATAR but more of your experiences and skills you have
Knowing how to study is important. Don't just mindlessly read the textbook. You need to do example test questions, and write notes in your own words as you read. Don't be afraid to ask the teacher for feedback on your answered example test questions (in case you are just missing something) and ask for suggestions of what sort of other questions to do from the textbook that will be like the exam questions.
thanks for the advice! will do
The simplest thing I did was to put a sign up in my room that said 'what did you learn today?'
Every night as I was falling asleep I would go over the key points of each lesson that I could recall. This helped me remember what I learned better and helped me fall asleep as it was boring as hell. Two birds, one stone.
i like this idea but honestly there are never any days when im like oh i learnt that, its just remembering at the end of the day and you'll eventually forget
i feel like this is just good advice for your whole life in general.
Yeah, I try to do it with my work now that I am employed. I either work on a problem I need to solve the following day or think about what I read/learned that day. Either way, I fall asleep in less time than if I don't think about anything in particular!
oh okay cool, thanks for the advice, I will try that out
What subjects are you doing? Was in a similar situation when I was in high school where I thought I only wanted to do a commerce degree.
business, economics (dropping next year), 4u maths, 2u standard English, physics, music 1
good to see you are doing a range, and not just business related. Take your time in uni and enjoy the most you can because when you start full time work, life is not as fun.
The ‘prestigious’ unis tend to make life harder and have worse student cultures than the one with lower entrance requirements.
if you can't stay on top of your homework and complete assignments 2-3 days after you get them in high school, you're in for a rough time at university, because its a lot harder. don't be like me. I had a rough time. it was not healthy.
breezing through high school beause its easy and then attempting to get a degree is like going to the gym once a month for a year and then trying to lift really heavy weights every day for the next year. that's why so many people either drop out of suffer physically or mentally. its not because they aren't smart enough. they just didn't work themselves up to it properly.
it really is just like lifting weights. you start small and don't try to bullshit yourself. that's a great way to get injured.
ye I am always on top of homework but for assignments its flexible since they give us a month to do it
what worked best for me was setting up group assignment work sessions, so other people can call you out when you are slacking off. or at the very least organizing a time to skype someone to go over the completely assignments together forcing you to do the assignment before that time instead of just before it's due.
You can survive HSC by getting your LNP-stolen Pfzier if you're hesitant to get it! Better than it going to waste
I don't think the serious students that are your main competition are going to be that distracted . What I don't understand is why run 7 online businesses when facing the biggest schooling year of your life ?
This is going to sound backwards.
But start looking up previous exam papers early.
This way you will understand the exam question format, and then learn the course material towards that.That way you can filter out what is relevant for the exam and what is not as you work through the subject.
yep! thanks
My personal view of school is, Primary school is used for developing social skills, high school is for developing study skills and Uni, trade or your profession after high school is what's important. As long as you develop sound study habits and skills I personally believe ATAR is less important, of course a good ATAR is the fastest way into university but not the only way.
My younger brother received something like a 56 ATAR and did a bridging course, now, in university her is doing a Bachelors of science sitting on a distinction and is on his way to a first class honors.
As people above have said, you should prioritize making sure not to stress and maintaining good mental health. Your results now are not the be all and end all.
yep! thanks
my advice is getting a bad HSC result is not the end of the world. I got decent HSC results but ended up with a bad UAI due to scaling as i wasn't ranked high in my subjects (due to fluffing around most of year 12)
there are many other pathways into uni and once you have gotten in no one cares about your high school results.my pro tip would be making sure you realise your final result depends on "everything" you do in year 12, not just your HSC exam results.
but also have a balanced social life, i understand its hard atm, but some of my most fond memories we made in year 12 with my friends and i still hang out with most of them to this day over 12 years laterthanks for the advice!
Pick your friends wisely… having smart friends aspiring to well will have a big impact on your success in year 12. If you are friends with smart people who are studying every day you will also feel like you should be studying every day. If you can, try and organize to go to the library with them or stay back after school so you guys can study together. You will also be able to share notes and help each other with things you understand. I joined a new friend group in year 12 and without following their study habits and having their support I would have never gotten to where I am or even aspired to get to where I am (Usyd bachelor of commerce btw). I think you shouldn't underestimate the importance of internals and you shouldn't write them off or be lazy, because they can have quite an impact on your atar. If you don't understand how this works I suggest you take a look how your atar is calculated and how internals factor into that. Also if you are doing 4u that will take up a lot of your time and you will have to study it every day. also if you can do decently well in 4u and physics (e3 and band 5 I'd say) and band 6 in business, you can afford to do not as well in English. if you wanted to know anything else feel free to dm me
Finish an assignment early. Spend a few days reading it, reading it aloud especially. Does it answer the question? Does it cover the marking criteria? Revise it if it doesn't. Take this advice with you to university if that's your plan.
Use editing websites like Grammarly to check your work. Most of their suggestions are sound, some are strange. Use common sense with those.
For Business Studies and English, practice essay structure. Personal pronouns are not allowed, use formal tone. Introduction, conclusion, 3-4 body paragraphs. Topic sentence and ending sentence for each body paragraph - these are repetitive but necessary.
Understand what each of these terms want you to do: (there will be more terms, these are just an example)
Outline - define + one more sentence
Explain - define + 2-3 sentences
Assess - Say both sides of an argument and then make an assessment/judgment
Justify - argue a point
These last two will often be 5-6 sentences answers.For English, many teachers will make you write an essay, perfect it with multiple drafts, and then memorise it. Get someone to help you memorise it. Memorise a paragraph then get a family member to hold your paper, and read it out loud in front of them. If you forget, do it again. I did this with my sister when I sat the exam, and when she sat the exam. I did Standard, my sister did Advanced, and both did very well (89+ mark)
For the HSC, there are multiple essays (3 I think, one of them a story we wrote outself) to memorise. Start 2 weeks before.
Practice adapting your English essays to different essay questions. They don't like throwing off Standard students, but they're not always so kind with Advanced kids. You're in the clear.
Good luck.
I am a student teacher, I'll be doing Business Studies and Commerce placements from next year.
Don't procrastinate ..like on ozbargains.