Good luck for exams!

[Collin Li]

Exam period starts this Friday, starting with VCE English, of course.

I wish you guys the best of luck. There's still a lot of time left for some of the other subjects, however. I check FSN daily (okay, more than daily), so if there are any concerns in other subjects as well, you can ask.

I'd refer you to the "Exam Tips" thread on some other not-to-be-named forum, but I don't think it'd load, so I purposely made the long-distance trip myself, and got the good parts for you (see next posts).

Some of these tips could do with conciseness, so please bear with that.

[Collin Li]

This thread is for the obvious exam/study tips that places like TSFX and other companies will try to sell to you for some amount of money (or sometimes give away the lectures for free, to promote themselves)

It's a bit late for study tips, but exam tips:

My advice is to build up confidence. Confidence is the most important part of an exam. It determines your ability to think under pressure, to improvise a response and believe in your own answer.

If there is one key pattern in my study, it would definitely NOT be rote-learning. I got through my exams largely on improvisation and application of ideas from extremely central ideas/themes/concepts. It was my confidence and general self-belief in my thought process that allowed me to write these answers on paper.

Secondly, use reading time. This synergises nicely with confidence. People who have no confidence will crack under pressure and nerves in reading time. They'll think "oh no, how do I do this??"

Look up "heuristics" on Wikipedia and read the introduction or something. It is the process of problem solving. You need confidence and a bit of academic initiative to start poking around your mind to try and get out an answer. Logically and systematically think about the problem, squeeze out a possible pathway to do the question. Don't remember how to do particular questions, but be prepared to do any question by simply mastering the art of problem solving.

Reading time is critical for identifying your weak spots. Combined with confidence, and some intuitive problem solving skills, you should aim to work through the "easy" questions (the ones you know how to do) first, then come back and spend your time trying to solve the trickier problems. Reading time is your planning time. You use it to map out what questions you will target first. For the middle-of-the-range students, this is critical! You must work out the order you will complete the questions. However, for the top students, this doesn't matter that much since they'll read the questions then attempt the paper in order since they can handle every question anyway .

Also use reading time to gain a bit of foresight into the depth of the question. Particularly in Specialist Maths, start solving the problem in your mind and thinking about what sort of substitution could work, or what integration technique, or what trigonometric identity to use, etc.?

Strawbaby mentioned using earplugs to prevent distractions!

enwiabe discouraged complacency near the final minutes of the exam, urging you to use every minute of it, supplied with anecdotal evidence (after all, why not? you only get to sit it once, give it your best )

liverpool3k reminded people to check every page for all questions.

http://community.boredofstudies.org/406/school-vce/153240/exam-tips.html

Link is here. I will summarise later or someone else can. I don't mind if you destroy all the credits and just sum it up in a nice bundle of nice tips.

[brendan]

i did the multiple choice questions during reading time, the ones where you didn't need to do working out.

[2happy]

are you allowed to mark the paper with your nails? apparently they penalize you for doin this

[Odette]

are you allowed to mark the paper with your nails? apparently they penalize you for doin this

No you aren't allowed to..

[Odette]

people still do it though

True, but thats the same with everything in life lol ...

[Fitness]

are you allowed to mark the paper with your nails? apparently they penalize you for doin this

What part of "you are to make no markings on the examination until the signal to write has been given"? Obviously you would be making "markings" on your paper if you used finger nails.

[principe]

are you allowed to mark the paper with your nails? apparently they penalize you for doin this

What part of "you are to make no markings on the examination until the signal to write has been given"? Obviously you would be making "markings" on your paper if you used finger nails.

Lol my English teacher actually recommended me to mark the paper with my nails if in case a forget important parts to discuss in Media Analysis. She's devious! But yeah I didn't need to mark anything anyways, and not that I can in the first place since I don't have nails