5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting VCE

[Joseph41]

Hey everybody! Here are five things I wish I knew before I started Year 11. I hope some of these are helpful to you before you move into Year 11 yourself. Feel free to ask any questions in this thread!

1. A basic understanding of how VCE works.

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You definitely don't need to know about all of the intricacies of the VCE system, and how the technical side of things works. But I really had no idea about study scores, or ATARs, or scaling, or anything like that. So here are some basic things to be aware of:

Scaling
Some subjects scale up; others scale down. This means that the "raw" mark you receive for that subject is adjusted, and it's the adjusted mark that counts toward your ATAR. However, this doesn't depend on how difficult a subject's content is - it would be very difficult to compare the difficulty of, say, Specialist Maths (the hardest VCE maths subject), and Studio Arts (a subject that emphasises a completely different skill set). It's not obvious here which one is "more difficult", because it will very likely change from person to person.

So how is scaling decided?

It's based on the competitiveness of that subject - not the difficulty. Basically, VCAA looks at every single person studying a specific subject, and finds their average study score (their overall mark) for all of their subjects. So let's say the average study score for all Chemistry students across all of their subjects (not just Chemistry) is 35. The average study score is usually 30, which means that, on average, the Chemistry cohort has outperformed the rest of the state, suggesting the Chem cohort was pretty strong. As a result, Chemistry scales up.

The whole point of scaling is to make VCE a fair system; it doesn't reward or punish you for taking certain subjects. So, with that in mind, it's best to not really prioritise scaling when it comes to choosing your VCE subjects.

Calculation of the ATAR
I wasn't really clear about this for quite a long time tbh. Basically, VCAA takes your four best Units 3/4 subjects (including at least one English subject, which is compulsory), plus 10% of your fifth and sixth best subjects if applicable. This forms your "aggregate". Everybody's aggregates are then ranked, and your ATAR is formed from that ranking.

So, just because you average 80% across the year - that definitely doesn't mean you'll get an ATAR of 80.00.

Both SACs and exams matter
Your SACs are basically tests administered by your school for each subject. SACs and the exam(s) are worth different amounts depending on the subject, but, without boring you too much with the details, SACs and exams are important for your final scores.

But you shouldn't stress too much about raw internal marks
So I've just said that your performance in SACs throughout the year (particularly in Year 12) is important, which it is. But the specific numbers don't really matter too much. Again, you can read more about it all here if you're really interested, but the take home point is to simply try your best, and the rest will work itself out after that.

2. There are heaps of free resources out there.

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For example, on ATAR Notes alone, we have:

Free notes: There are more than 3,000 sets of notes here to download at any time, for heaps of different subjects. You can filter them by subject and year level, too.

Free newsletter: ATAR Notes sends a really helpful newsletter each week with advice, tips and other resources to help you smash your VCE. You just need to have signed up as an ATAR Notes member. 👌

Free articles: There are hundreds of articles here about VCE stuff, including subject-specific advice and general tips and tricks. You can see a full list of ATAR Notes articles here.

Free videos: These are mostly for Year 12 subjects atm, but there's also some great general advice. Basically, they're series of concise 90-second videos covering lots of different subjects. So if you want to get ahead, this is a great start!

Free podcast: A couple of times per month, we chat with ATAR Notes users about their own VCE journeys and what they've learnt. There's heaps of great advice in these!

Free lectures: Four times per year, ATAR Notes runs completely free VCE lectures at RMIT University. These lectures are always the best time of the year.

And the free forums! You're on these currently, and there are literally thousands of resources to help you out. You can start here, but the best thing is actually the super supportive community. So if you're on the fence, please get involved!

The basic idea here is that you don't need to spend heaps and heaps of money to do well in VCE, as some people think you need to do. When I was in VCE, I went to a couple of revision lectures, which were about $70 each (they were the cheapest ones around at the time - free ones didn't exist back then!), but that's about it, and I did pretty well! At the end of the day, persistence and hard work will beat having a lot of money.

3. The most important thing atm? Study habits.

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At this stage, I honestly think the best thing you can do to prepare well for VCE is work out how you study best. Now, this will be different for everybody - and that's perfectly okay. But if you can work out how you study most efficiently before you even start VCE (and, more specifically, Year 12), you're in a really fantastic position.

I spent some of Year 10 simply trying out different study techniques. Some worked, and others sucked (for me, at least haha). But at least I knew what worked for me! You can check out some different ways of studying to test out here.

4. Tbh, Year 12 exams aren't that different to other exams.

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When I was going into Year 11, I was building up VCE exams heaps in my head. Like, to the point that I was getting super nervous about them, even right at the start of Year 11. But to be honest, they're actually pretty similar to other exams you've probably done through high school.

Like, yeah, there's probably a little bit more at stake, but you can only sit the exam in front of you. If you treat exams before VCE seriously (so like, do them properly, try your best, obviously don't cheat etc.), that's really good practice for VCE exams. Test-taking is a skill in itself, as you can see here!

5. The ATAR will probably be hyped lots, but it's honestly not the end of the world.

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There's so much pressure on VCE students these days, and a lot of it is just so unnecessary.

The ATAR was literally invented to help universities and other tertiary institutions work out who to offer places in their courses. And that's pretty much the only function it has. Once Year 12 finishes, you move on. If your ATAR is high enough to get you into whatever you want to get into, that's fantastic! But if not, you still have heaps of options, and you'll be able to get there another way.