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We have hundreds and hundreds of university subject reviews (template largely taken from those threads), which help students select their subjects. It makes a whole heap of sense to have a place where past HSC students can review their HSC subjects.
(https://i.imgur.com/4S0JLxO.png)
Review Index
Current Totals
Creative Arts Subject Reviews: 4
English Subject Reviews: 6
Health and Physical Education Subject Reviews: 1
Humanities Subject Reviews: 13
LOTE Subject Reviews: 0
Maths Subject Reviews: 5
Science Subject Reviews: 7
Technology Subject Reviews: 3
VET Subject Reviews: 1
Total: 40 Reviews
Total: 29 Subjects Covered
(2) (3) etc. denote 2nd and 3rd reviews.
Health and Physical Education Subjects (1)
Humanities Subjects (13)
Ancient History - HSC, 2017
Ancient History - HSC, 2017 (2)
Business Studies - HSC, 2018
Economics - HSC, 2017
Geography - HSC, 2017
History Extension - HSC, 2017
History Extension - HSC, 2018 (2)
Legal Studies - HSC, 2017
Legal Studies - Preliminary, 2018 (2)
Legal Studies - HSC, 2018
Modern History - HSC, 2017
Modern History - HSC, 2018 (2)
Society & Culture - HSC, 2017
This is a thread for subject reviews only. If you have any questions, then please PM the member who wrote the review. The views expressed are those of the authors. Keep in mind that, despite best efforts, information provided may not be accurate.
We encourage you to review the subject(s) you have completed, even if someone else has already reviewed your subject(s). The more reviews we have, the more helpful this resource will be. Please do not name teachers or denigrate your school.
Please use the following template for subject reviews:
[b]Subject Name:[/b]
[b]Level:[/b] (Prelim or HSC?)
[b]Workload:[/b]
[b]Assessment:[/b] (Outline the various assessments which make up the subject and how much each counts for)
[b]Exam Thoughts:[/b] (What's the structure? How hard was it?)
[b]Textbook Recommendation:[/b] (What did you use? How much did you use it?)
[b]Recommended Other Resources:[/b]
[b]Year of Completion:[/b]
[b]Rating:[/b] out of 5
[b]Your Mark/Grade:[/b] (Optional)
[b]Comments:[/b] Give your overall opinion of the subject, content, assessment etc. and a recommendation, plus anything else which you feel is relevant.
Updated as of reply #041
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Subject Name: Modern History
Level: HSC
Workload:
There is a lot of content in this subject, and constant revision is needed so you can keep up (syllabus points are mostly in chronological order. Practice is also key in Modern, especially with essay writing, so writing practice responses is a little time consuming, and not to mention keeping up to date with your notes!
Assessment: (Outline the various assessments which make up the subject and how much each counts for)
At my school, they tried to mimic sections of the actual HSC exam. First assessment was 20%, a WW1 source analysis exam; second was 20%, with a WW1 source analysis section and national study essay; third assessment was also 20%, but a personality study split essay; and the fourth assessment was HSC Trials, weighted 40% and was a 3 hour exam, just like the HSC. And of course, there's the HSC exam, which is 50% of your entire Modern History mark. School assessments make up the other 50%.
Exam Thoughts: (What's the structure? How hard was it?)
The HSC exam is 3 hours, with 4 sections - the recommended time for each section is 45 minutes. The 4 sections (at least until 2018) are WW1, which is a source analysis; the national study essay; personality study 'split' essay; and the Studies in Peace and Conflict essay. Trials and HSC are an absolute killer, because there's so much you need to know, and they could ask about anything, especially in the National Study and Peace and Conflict essay. You do have a choice of question there though, and it's usually split between the first and second half of the topic. Your hand will die at the end of the exam. You thought English Paper 2 sucked? Try the 3 hour Modern exam.
Textbook Recommendation: (What did you use? How much did you use it?)
- WW1 // Retrospective Year 11 Modern History. There was a section at the back of the book all for WW1 stuff. Quite detailed, lots of statistics.
- Germany // Republic to Reich. This one had a lot of historiography (great for essays!) and lots of other details.
- Gorbachev (personality study) and Cold War // Contested Spaces: The Cold War. Takes a bit of getting used to because the wording is a bit confusing at first, but this book was great! Lots of detail, historiography, sources, etc.
I personally didn't use textbooks very much, as my teacher wrote out notes for us. It was only when I thought there wasn't enough detail in the notes I consulted textbooks and the Internet.
Recommended Other Resources: None
Year of Completion: 2017
Rating: 5 out of 5
Comments: Give your overall opinion of the subject, content, assessment etc. and a recommendation, plus anything else which you feel is relevant.
I loved Modern History. So much. I had a really great time in the subject. I think some of that comes from having a really great teacher in both years 11 and 12, who was super passionate about history, and taught it really well, but the content also speaks for itself - it's very interesting. Content-wise, it is quite full on, and you need to make sure you're ready to put extra time and effort to read widely, because it does show in essays! Practice is also important in Modern, because it does show when you read responses - your preparation is veeeery evident. The exams aren't too bad, except for Trials and HSC, you need to plan out how you're going to do the exam, because timing is everything!
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Subject Name: Legal Studies
Level: HSC
Workload:
Legal's workload is a lot - mainly because it's very content-heavy. Notes need to be kept up to date and researching recent LCMs are super important!
Assessment: (Outline the various assessments which make up the subject and how much each counts for)
School assessments were weighted 50%, and the HSC exam is 50%. Like Modern, my school tried to mimic sections of the HSC in assessments. My assessments were all in-class exams. I can't remember what they were weighted individually but: first assessment was Crime multiple choice and 15 mark essay; second was Crime/HR multiple choice and 30 marks worth of HR short answers; third was a Shelter option essay; and the fourth was Trials, so the whole 3 hour exam.
Exam Thoughts: (What's the structure? How hard was it?)
The HSC exam is 3 hours, structured like this:
1. Crime and Human Rights multiple choice (recommended 30 mins)
2. Crime 15 marker and Human Rights short answers (also 15 marks) (recommended time: an hour for both)
3. Two options essays (45 mins each)
The Legal Studies exam isn't too bad compared to other subjects. However, you need to have a lot of evidence ready to back up your arguments, especially in the written parts (everything except for the multiple choice hahaha) so there's a lot to remember! Sometimes there are questions that will throw you, so you have to be super prepared, i.e. knowing your syllabus and content very well. Timing is also quite important, because while a lot of time is recommended for the MC, there isn't a lot of time for the Crime 15 marker and HR short answers. Planning ahead works well!
Textbook Recommendation: (What did you use? How much did you use it?)
I almost never picked up a textbook in years 11 and 12, because my teacher wrote out notes for us. I did use a bit of HSC Legal Studies (Pearson) and HSC Legal (Cambridge).
Recommended Other Resources:
The State Library (NSW) website is amazing for Legal! There's some really great cases there for Crime, and lots of resources for Human Rights.
Year of Completion: 2017
Rating: 4 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: (Optional)
Band 6: my overall HSC mark was 91 and my actual mark in the HSC exam was 94.
Comments: Give your overall opinion of the subject, content, assessment etc. and a recommendation, plus anything else which you feel is relevant.
Legal Studies was an awesome subject! Like Modern, I had a really great time in the subject. Some of it does come from having an awesome teacher and equally awesome class. At times, Legal can be a bit dry, as some Options topics are crap. Content-wise, there is a lot, but you need to be ready to invest time and effort into researching LCMs, as these are very important when writing essays - evidence is necessary to back up your argument! Assessments aren't too bad either. The content is also quite straightforward as well. There is a lot to remember, but it's just as important to remember where the content you're learning is going to go in an exam.
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I want to make a disclaimer before my first review: Many (but DEFINITELY NOT ALL) reviews posted at this time will soon become outdated, due to the changes in the new syllabus. Whilst they aren't always drastic, they do change the nature of the subject itself a lot, especially the content and consequently how students would cope with it.
Subject Name: Chemistry
Level: HSC
Workload: Varies from person to person, but tends to be fairly demanding. Can be a bit more of a struggle for students that dropped maths entirely, or didn't pay attention to little subtleties (e.g. sulfate vs sulfite) in prelim. Since you're allowed to answer extended responses using dot points/tables, the writing aspect isn't too bad for people who hate essays (even though I always wrote paragraphs anyway) so that slightly reduces 'extra' workload.
Assessment: At my school, we had...
- 15% Practical Assessments x2
- 15% Half Yearly
- 20% Research Assignment
- 35% Trial HSC Exam
Note that NESA requires a minimum of 30% of all assessment for science subjects to be practical based. The exact amount may vary a little.
Exam Thoughts:
- 20 Multiple Choice
- 55 marks overall for the core topics
- 25 marks for the option topic
The 2015 paper was fairly straightforward. Whilst I didn't come out really satisfied about it, I felt it was mostly really fair. The only bit I'm not sure about (from memory) was my option topic (industrial chem); it felt long.
Textbook Recommendation: Jacaranda textbook (forgot its full name) - I used it quite a fair bit as I was learning the course, since it did have some nice content in it. But arguably it overkills the content and some of the things mentioned there is just not necessary. (Also, the textbook was pretty.)
Recommended Other Resources: Excel chemistry is decent if you're having trouble with chemistry as a whole. Some people use the "Dot-point" series textbook because it forces them to make notes for each syllabus point separately. EasyChem also has nice videos.
Otherwise, just rely on notes. (AN notes are brilliant but I can't review them from first-hand experience, since they weren't out in my HSC year.)
Year of Completion: 2015
Rating: 4 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: 92 B6 (93 Ext, 90 Int)
Comments:
Perhaps what really distinguishes HSC chemistry from its prelim predecessor is that it takes away about half of the focus on actual chemistry and shifts it to its role in society. For this reason, content wise I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I did in prelim. Still though, chemistry is chemistry, and seeing explosions and stuff happen is always fun. Chemistry will always be chemistry.
Now, what's really nice for some people (not so much myself but definitely a lot of my peers) is that you can kinda get away with HSC chemistry without fully understanding all the prelim background. In prelim, you had to understand how and/or why a specific process happens, but in HSC chem all that they care is that you know it DOES happen. The rules of thumb introduced in HSC chem just take prelim for granted (e.g. we care a lot about a catalyst in prelim, but for the sake of LCP we just care that it doesn't affect the equilibrium because blah).
I've found that the main reason I managed this band 6 was because I found studying for it easier. The reason why I found studying for it easier is because unlike most of my peers, I just retained all of the previous information I learnt (well, at least a significant portion of it). So if you have a sound memory, and put that to use in this course, it can be really surprisingly helpful.
Whilst I enjoyed pracs, I was always shit at them. (A running joke in my chem class was that if I ended up becoming a chemist, I would definitely be a theoretical one.) Pretty much, pracs are divided into 1. the write-up, and 2. the actual experiment. Most people seem to be worse at the former, but for some reason I was worse at the latter. I just seemed to always run into accuracy problems with quantitative experiments (especially titration).
Other than that, assessment was generally fair.
You know you're prepared for the exam when you've done a bunch of past papers (duh), but you know you're ready for past papers when you pretty much have necessary and sufficient information for every syllabus point. Think about this before you dive into the papers.
(Oh, and also make sure you know how to use chemical equations. In fact, you should be writing chemical equations in your extended responses as well, not just your calculations questions. And with the calculations, never throw in unnecessary shit like 2U maths; try to visually picture what's going on and make deductions using relevant formulae based off that.)
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Subject Name: History Extension
Level: HSC (it is only available in yr 12).
Workload:
The subject does have quite a bit of work but I always found it to be manageable as I was very interested in it. Before the lesson each week we would get some readings (sometimes textbook, excerpts from historians works,etc) and need to do a table on a historian. We would sometimes have questions to do as well (mainly for JFK). Throughout the year you would also need to work on your major work at home as well (whether researching, drafting or editing your essay).
Assessment: (Outline the various assessments which make up the subject and how much each counts for)
I had the major work (proposal 10%, draft essay 20% and final submission (essay, synopsis, bibliography, logbook, source analysis) was 50%.
Half yearly exam was 5% and the trials were 15%.
Exam Thoughts: (What's the structure? How hard was it?)
The HSC exam is 2 hours long and has 2 essays.
What is history?:
An essay on the historians/schools of history and how aspects such as their methodology and purpose have changed throughout history. Section one of the exam always has a source that you will need to extract the main arguments from and consistently reference throughout your essay. It is normally about ½ to a page long. They will require a judgement throughout the essay and a developed argument/voice. You need to know your historians and quotes really well to use them as examples throughout your essay.
Case study:
Study a historical event/personality and the different (sometimes conflicting) interpretations surrounding it. Usually smaller source then section one, sometimes only one sentence or a short paragraph. You must refer to the source in your essay.
Textbook Recommendation: (What did you use? How much did you use it?)
What is history:
⁃ History and the Historians: John Warren
⁃ Fifty key thinkers on history: Marnie Hughes-Warrington
I used them as readings before class for some of my historians and to make study tables out of. They weren't the easiest books to read at times but contained a lot of important information. I used the textbooks more at the start of the year to make notes then towards the end.
JFK: Excerpts from John F. Kennedy and the Historians by Peter Bastian
We used this for the context of JFK's life/events that occurred and a broad overview on each of the historians interpretations.
Recommended Other Resources:
Wide reading of excerpts from your historians works so that you can understand them better.
Atar Notes: Debate thread, question thread, guide to the major, guide to planning/writing essays.
Year of Completion: 2017
Rating: 5 out of 5 :D
Comments: Give your overall opinion of the subject, content, assessment etc. and a recommendation, plus anything else which you feel is relevant.
I went into extension not really knowing much about historiography at all, and I really loved the course. It is very different to a 2 unit history course as it is much more concerned with the historians and how history has been written over time. It challenged me to think about the way our history is produced and changed my views on many different issues. My major work was something that I researched heaps throughout the year and was incredibly interested in. I would definitely recommend history extension to anyone who has a passionate towards history and would like to learn more about it.
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Subject Name: Physics
Level: HSC
Workload: I've found this differs for everyone, and for different schools. Once you get to weird things (such as Lenz's law, but ESPECIALLY special relativity) the workload tends to spike, purely because you might have a difficult time trying to understand what's going on. By nature, it's fairly intense, but it gets reduced with a bit of each: understanding history, being able to work through the math, actually understanding the concepts of physics itself.
Assessment: At my school, we had...
- 10% Practical Assessment
- 10% Half Yearly
- 20% Practical Assessment
- 20% Researched based test (1 page cheat sheet)
- 40% Trial HSC Exam
Note that NESA requires a minimum of 30% of all assessment for science subjects to be practical based. The exact amount may vary a little.
Exam Thoughts:
- 20 Multiple Choice
- 55 marks overall for the core topics
- 25 marks for the option topic
The physics test was really weird this year. The questions were made in a way that looked almost as though they were trying to twist and warp your brain a bit. It seemed to break an 'implied trend' created over the past years.
Textbook Recommendation: Physics in Focus - Decent and gets straight to the point. Felt a tad shallow with the Astrophysics option though; think I preferred Jacaranda Physics for that part.
Recommended Other Resources: Don't remember anything worthy of interest :(
Year of Completion: 2015
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: 90 B6 (93 Ext, 87 Int)
Comments:
The gamble that I made by picking physics to begin with literally barely paid off this year. It was all worth it purely because I had scraped that band 6; I was very glad that my external mark made things pay off.
Physics in the HSC was full of stuff that bored me. All of the impact on society stuff put a lot of fatigue into me instantly (I hate rote learning), and the 20% build a motor assignment didn't interest me because I don't like building stuff.
That being said, it wasn't enough to put me off the course in the end. Having a brilliant teacher helped a lot and the actual physics concepts were still really fascinating nonetheless. Thanks to having a mathematical background, I was rarely stumped by all of the calculations they gave and whilst I don't know why, the physics itself just made sense. (EXCEPT for relativity.)
It's really worthwhile talking about the assessment for physics from my perspective. Pretty much, around the time of the half yearly's, I was getting tossed all over the place. The motor's assignment dropped a lot of marks, I lost marks for accuracy in the other prac task (figures, same issue as chemistry), and whilst I still ranked third in it, the top mark for the half yearly was like 75%. Then everything went uphill from there. The other assessments went quite fluently and in my school I topped the final exam. Whilst it's not one of those really drastic tales (going from failing to blitzing), it does show you what a lot of practice and devotion can get.
Also, a part of why I consider physics to be success was because it was the only subject where I made my OWN notes. It really helps, especially when things get abstract.
Something that easily weeds out people from getting a band 6 is just not understanding physics. Just because of the abstraction of some physics concepts, it twists peoples' heads too much. That's something you definitely want to get around, or else you're gonna be stuck.
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Subject Name: Music 1
Level: HSC
Workload: Not a lot of content to remember as it is more practical based. I spent a lot of time practicing for my pieces (as I did 4 for my HSC). I would practice for around 40min-1hr for at least 5 days a week. In class, we would spend 1-2 periods a week on aural and then the rest on our major works (either viva voce, composition or performance).
Assessment: (Outline the various assessments which make up the subject and how much each counts for)
My school had:
• Composition core (10%)
• Musicology core (Viva Voce-10%)
• Performance/Aural Core (20%)
• Trials (Elective 1/2/3-15% each)
• Aural trials (15%)
Exam Thoughts: (What's the structure? How hard was it?)
Performance Exam (earlier then written exams-around September): There are two different examiners in the room and you will perform your pieces/viva voces to them. Very easy to be nervous during the exam.
Aural Exam: There are four different questions and it goes for an hour (with 5 minutes reading time). You listen to a CD and have excerpts of pieces for each question. The questions are normally based on the concepts of music (e.g How are expressive techniques used in this excerpt?) so you need to have a clear understanding of all the concepts. You have 5 or 6 playings of the excerpt with pauses in between and need to identify the concepts of music. In the exam you are able to use dot points, graphs and diagrams to help explain your points. You need to do heaps of practice exams to improve in this as it’s a really hard skill to do at first.
Textbook Recommendation: (What did you use? How much did you use it?)
We didn't really use one.
Recommended Other Resources:
- Watch YouTube videos of your pieces so you can see different interpretations of them.
Year of Completion: 2017
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Comments: Give your overall opinion of the subject, content, assessment etc. and a recommendation, plus anything else which you feel is relevant.
I really loved music as a subject! I loved the pieces I chose and just being able to come into class and play my clarinet. However, it is a subject where you do have to put a lot of practice in for a good mark (definitely wasn’t a bludge subject). I also found aural really difficult at times (even just identifying and writing about the different concepts) as I found it boring, and it did drag down my marks. I did have to practice my aural a lot to improve.
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Subject Name: Mathematics
Level: HSC
Workload: Moderate - Consistency is key. If you were aiming for a state rank you'd need to put your guts into it, but otherwise so long as you're consistently working hard in it, understanding the concepts and doing several questions, you can pull through.
Assessment: At my school, we had...
- 15% In-class tests x2
- 30% Half Yearly
- 40% Trial HSC Exam
Exam Thoughts:
- 10 Multiple choice
- 6x 15 mark Extended responses, broken into subparts
The 2013 exam was known to be a killer. They spiked the difficulty of a lot of things in it. I came out of that test feeling quite distraught and definitely did not anticipate what I ended up getting.
Textbook Recommendation: At the time I used the new Fitzpatrick textbook. Not the best (prefer Cambridge) but fairly decent.
Recommended Other Resources: If it is a past paper, then that.
Year of Completion: 2013
Rating: 5 out of 5 (that's what I would've said back when I did it. Now, probably 2.5/5.)
Your Mark/Grade: 96 B6 (96 Ext, 96 Int)
Comments: Give your overall opinion of the subject, content, assessment etc. and a recommendation, plus anything else which you feel is relevant
My opinion of the course has changed since then. I'm gonna focus my review on whatever I would've thought back in 2013.
Unlike what most of my peers had been doing at the time, this easily let me explore much more of the powerful tools in maths, and also much more difficult to handle ones. It was pretty much the end of an acceleration started in Year 8 and it was quite a huge accomplishment at the time.
The assessment felt very fair, for the most part. So there was very little to comment on. (One funny memory I have was the fact that there was a M/C question where the teacher who wrote the exam forgot to put in a correct answer.) Having said that though, the trial HSC is generally quite different to all of the previous assessment tasks. Some instances of this may have appeared in the prelim exam and the half yearly, but especially in the trials they'll start throwing questions that force you to adapt what you know to more confusing scenarios. The ability to do this (coupled with avoidance of silly mistakes) is usually what splits a B5 from a B6, especially since this same thing does happen in the final exam.
It's easier to drop off in maths than many other subjects because HSC maths literally builds on top of prelim. Furthermore, maths is the only subject area where preliminary content is actually examinable in the HSC. Having gaps in prelim is a detriment that you'll want to avoid.
About 75% of the HSC course revolves around calculus. Most people are well aware of this and tend to perform a bit better in this ~75%. The other 25%, on the other hand, tend to make people really annoyed (series + finance, probability, etc.) and again, a trap to watch out for.
Seeing as though I did this course in Year 10, I had all the time in the world to study for the final exam. That's why it was ok for me to just bash out past papers come exam time. Some people may need to do practice problems during the entire HSC year. Disgusting, not gonna lie (else why would I have avoided it?) but it might not be something that can be helped. Especially since fewer people seem to find math enjoyable nowadays.
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Subject Name: Geography
Level: HSC
Workload: moderate - just don't underestimate it though
Assessment:
My school had:
Urban places exam: 20%
Ecosystems at risk written report: 25%
Trials: 30%
People and economic activity exam: 25%
Exam Thoughts:
Multiple choice: 20 marks
Do not underestimate this section! It's actually super hard so get practicing early and remeber to bring a magnifying glass to the exam. Yes it looks stupid, but it helps so much!
Short answer: 40 marks
Really easy to nail once you get the hang of answering them and have your content down pat. My favourite section of the paper.
Extended response (pick 2 of 3 possible questions): 20 marks each
Really hard to get everything done in the suggested time so I reccomend cutting down on multiple choice and short answer time to give at least 40 mins on each essay. Requires a lot of practice to avoid random waffling in the exam. Even if you do end up waffling on a tad (not reccomended, but happened to me in the HSC) make sure your essays have structure and subheadings to keep the ideas on track.
Textbook Recommendation:
Not really much out there. Used Macquarie guide and the excel book a few times during HSC study but really not needed (we need to make an ATAR Notes guide *hint hint*)
Recommended Other Resources:
HSC Hub is good but also a total rip off, other than that there are other people's notes and any thing your class teacher has given you - really not much out there
You can also use documentaries such as "world's busiest cities" but they aren't based on the HSC course so you've got to filter out all the not Relavence to the HSC info
Year of Completion: 2017
Rating:
4.5/5
Your Mark/Grade:
1st in course at school, 92 in HSC exam
Comments:
Geo is SUPER interesting and highly relevant! Weather you like human or physical geography there is an even split of both which is good. Don't underestimate the skills though, I rode them off as easy and ended up having a full day melt down over them because they were harder than expected (I'm normally pretty calm and this was the most stressed I'd ever been over the HSC period) so yeah, practice your skills early rather than in the last few days, practice those essays and short answer responses throughout the year too, and you're on your way to a band 6! (Also go on the geo board of ATAR Notes ;) )
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Subject Name: Mathematics Extension 2
Level: HSC (Only exists in Year 12)
Workload: Generally quite full-on. Usually depends on what you wanna aim for at the end. Assuming that moderation has negligible impact on you, a final exam mark of 75% usually secures an E4 scrape. But to really do well in this course it does require a relatively insane amount of effort. It's not really possible unless you legit like maths, not pretend to.
Assessment: At my school, we had...
- 15% In-class tests x2
- 30% Half Yearly
- 40% Trial HSC Exam
Exam Thoughts:
- 10 Multiple choice
- 6x 15 mark Extended responses, broken into subparts
The 2015 paper was easy. Later I found out that most of the marks I lost (in fact, nearly all) were because of clumsy, silly mistakes. There were only a few marks (less than 3) that were lost because I was confused and couldn't arrive at an answer.
Textbook Recommendation: Cambridge 4U, Patel's textbook. The former really isn't interesting (Cambridge 4U is still the version by Arnold & Arnold, which presents information in a bland way and also throws in questions too easy or too hard. The latter is mostly good for reasonably challenging problems, but occasionally gives info outside of the course. Neither textbook was really good for teaching/learning the content; it was only the questions that were of interest.
Recommended Other Resources: If it is a past paper, then that.
Year of Completion: 2015
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: 97 E4 (97 Ext, 97 Int)
Comments:
Of course, this was my favourite, and also what I lecture now. But I'm still going to try and give these comments from my 2015 self's perspective.
I was really passionate with my math prior to starting this subject. To the point where I pretty much self learnt 40%+ of it beforehand. That definitely saved me a lot of trouble and gave more time for the other subjects. I found that what was easy to self learn were mostly things that straight-forwardly built onto MX1 (harder 3U induction, circle geo as well as conics, polynomials) and some of the topics that typically get taught first (complex numbers, bits and pieces of graphs). I was also an integration nerd at the time.
If there's anything that really knocks an MX2 student out of E4, it's gotta be harder 3U. Whilst the stuff is fairly reasonable to a mathematician, it requires far more intuition than any of the other topics. If you're good at this topic, you have most of this subject under the bag. (Yeah, that includes inequality proofs.)
Now, content wise MX2 isn't really like MX1. MX1 directly builds onto 2U, but MX2 throws a whole bunch of new stuff at you, and somehow you gotta work around it all. The coverage of MX2 is really enough to take up ALL 240 indicative hours you're granted for maths, even though you really only gain 60 more by taking it to begin with. So pretty much, the course is full of new stuff, and also just huge. That's a lot to consider.
I probably studied for this course a bit too much. It paid off quite reasonably, but who knows if it was worth it. (Actually, it was, because it made my uni life easier. But we'll ignore that.)
Assessments were quite curious, because we had a really good teacher writing most of them. They really tested your understanding of the course concepts as well, not just how well you're coping with it.
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Subject Name: Drama
Level: HSC
Workload: Moderate - Theory: Light, Practical: heavy (due to Individual Project (IP) and Group Performance (GP)
Assessment:
Ok my school did a LOT of drama assesments
Aussie Theatre Rationale: 10%
Aussie theatre monolougue: 10%
Approaches to acting group performance: 10%
Approaches to acting essay: 10%
IP logbook check: 5%
Theory trials: 20%
IP trials: 15%
GP trials: 20%
Exam Thoughts:
GP: 30 marks. Good thing you are marked individually so even the shittiest group can't bring you right down to the ground, however it's good if your group does work well and produce an awesome piece since the 3rd criterion is based on the dramatic coherence of the work.
IP: 30 marks. It's such a shame that you work so long on your baby and in the end it's all kinda subjective. Design, writing, research and film projects are probably easier to score highly (just a hypothesis) cause you can make sure they are perfect on the day, Performance is super fun, however it is subject to change and potentially not be as good as possible on the day (this happened to me, it was still good on exam day but not my absolute best. That's what the markers saw, and that's what I was marked on so oh well...)
Essays: 20 marks each. Super interesting to study for and write (maybe I'm just a drama nerd), like English but with much more to write and only slightly more time. Felt like my whole arm would drop off afterwards since writing at lightning pace is essential for the whole 1.5 hours.
Textbook Recommendation:
N/A - only the set texts are needed
No other drama materials exist as of yet
Recommended Other Resources:
Study guides for Aussie theatre, supplementary readings for approaches to acting (listed in syllabus) and YouTube vids for both, lots of YouTube vids. Also you can use other people's notes but in the end your logbook should be your best friend
Year of Completion: 2017
Rating: 5/5
Your Mark/Grade: assessment: 84 (5th) Examination: 87
Comments:
Drama is so super fun! The theory is incredibly interesting, the workshops are fun and the GP and IP, whilst hard to create, are really enjoyable too! The major work is honestly a labour of love and all the work needed to excel is 100% worth it and enjoyable 90% of the time. One of my favourite subjects (if you couldn't tell)
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Subject Name: Visual Arts
Level: HSC
Workload: Theory: very light. Practical: quite demanding because of the body of work
Assessment: (Outline the various assessments which make up the subject and how much each counts for)
- BOW Proposal (10%)
- BOW Progress mark #1
- Half Yearlies
- BOW Progress mark #2
- Trials (30%?)
(I cannot remember the weighting for the other assessments)
Exam Thoughts:
Body of work (50 marks): With the BOW, it's so abstract that there's no definite way of doing it to get top marks. A good friend of mine did hers last minute and got 50/50! Whilst I, on the other hand, worked on it consistently throughout the year and got selected for ARTEXPRESS 2018. The main thing about the body of work- it doesn't matter what it looks like physically or what medium you used, it's all about your concept. It has to be different, has your own personal take on it and must be explored well enough that it doesn't feel superficial. My body of work journey had a lot of surprises along the way, but it was definitely worth it at the end!
HSC exam (50 marks): The exam is split into two sections; Section 1 (25 marks) with unseen artworks and three questions (5, 8 and 12 marks) and Section 2 (25 marks) with six essay questions from which you have to choice to pick which one you would like to answer. I love love love and LIVE for Visual Art exams!! I love writing bs interpretations in the 1.5 hour time limit. Section 1 allowed me to appreciate artworks beyond their aesthetic and made me consider their meaning on a conceptual level. Section 2 was great because you can do ANY artist in the world! I did the same artists for my half yearlies, trials and HSC- which made it easier to study.
Textbook Recommendation:
Senior Artwise Visual Arts 11-12 and Caves to Canvas. *I only read the textbooks when I needed a general idea on what each artwork was about or the background of the artist. My teachers would give out articles from art critics and made us watch videos (of the artist) on Youtube.
Recommended Other Resources:
I mainly depended on my Visual Arts teachers (who were also experienced HSC markers). I just took notes of what just came out of their mouths and quoted them in my essays. I would also recommend just exposing yourself to as many art as much as possible. The Art Gallery of NSW is a MUST!- it definitely helps with studying for Section 1.
Year of Completion: 2017
Rating: 5 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade:
Ranked 1st internally. 94 for internal assessments + 94 for external assessments = overall 94 HSC Mark
+ Selected for ARTEXPRESS 2018
Comments:
This was the only subject that I've always had a consistent performance in and was the only subject that got me through the HSC. There was never a class where I felt disappointed and felt I learnt nothing because Visual Arts isn't just a subject learning about art. It's a subject that makes you appreciate the world, be aware of social issues and helps you become a better person. The BOW was literally the best thing I did during the HSC because it was quite nice having a break from my english essays and my calculations in maths. My piece of advice for you would just to be- enjoy the ride. This is your last year for Visual Arts. Give it your all!
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Subject Name: Ancient History
Level: HSC
Workload: Very content heavy. You need to know evidence (ancient/modern historians & archeological, and lots of different dates) for each dot point and in some topics be able to write an essay on any section of the syllabus. I was given a lot of readings in class and there was heaps of detail that would be good to know. Practice essays and essay plans are key throughout the course in order to improve.
Assessment:
My school had:
- Core study: research and in class task (picked 2 of the last 4 dot points from Pompeii/Herculaneum-30%)
- Half Yearly Exam (15%)
- Historical period (were given a dot point from Julio-Claudians): Oral presentation and research (30%)
- Trial Exam (25%)
Exam Thoughts:
It’s a 3 our exam (my hand was dead at the end of it) with 4 sections that are each recommended for 45 minutes each. Each section is 25 marks.
Pompeii and Herculaneum (core): Everybody does Pompeii and Herculaneum. This has multiple choice questions (usually related to sources) which are designed to trick you, 2 short answer questions (source and own knowledge) and a longer extended response (based on the last 4 dot points of the syllabus).
Section 2 (Ancient societies): Three small questions (2,3,5 marks) and a 15 mark extended response.
Section 3 (Personalities in their time): A 10 mark describe question and a 15 mark assses extended response.
Section 4 (Historical periods): A 25 mark essay based on one of the dot points. You have a choice between two different questions.
Textbook Recommendation:
I had:
- Pompeii and Herculaneum: Interpreting the evidence by Brian Brennan and Estelle Lazar
- Spartan society: Interpreting the evidence by Brian Brennan
- The Julio-Claidians and the Roman Empire AD 14-69 by Ken Webb
- Agripinna the younger by Ken Webb
I didn’t really use the textbooks too often. I found that the Ken Webb ones especially only provided a brief overview of events and the questions in them were pretty useless.
Recommended Other Resources:
Susie’s ATAR Notes book on Pompeii and Herculaneum was really helpful and easy to read.
Year of Completion: 2017
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Comments:
I really loved Ancient and found each of the topics incredibly interesting!! I had an amazing teacher and class and It was definitely one of the classes that I looked forward to each week. It is a class that you do need to be doing practice essay plans/exams as they are difficult and there is a lot to remember.
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Subject Name: Society & Culture
Level: HSC
Workload: Light
Assessment:
- PIP Proposal (15%)
- In class exam (20%)
- Research task (25%)
- Trial exam (40%)
Exam Thoughts: (What's the structure? How hard was it?)
2 hour exam and had 60 marks in total.
Section 1 (Social and Cultural Continuity and Change) = 20 marks
- 8 multiple choice questions
- There are three short answer question. Marks for each question differs each year.
Section 2 (Two in-depth studies) = 40 marks
- a set of 5 marker and 15 marker question for each depth study (20 marks per topic)
The SAC exam isn't too hard if you've got enough evidence to back up your statements and know your content. I found Section 1 to be the easiest because it was straightforward. But Section 2 was quite confusing because there isn't a definite syllabus so anything can pop up in the exam.
Personal Interest Project = 40 marks
5000 word report to be completed throughout your HSC year and is due during trial period. Imo this was the easiest external assessment because I had complete control on what I wanted to do and it was really fun!
Textbook Recommendation: (What did you use? How much did you use it?)
Society and Culture Preliminary and HSC = pretty much was my SAC Bible because all my information came from this book.
Recommended Other Resources:
Try reading online articles and videos for more evidence to use in your essays.
CONCEPTS!!! = so important. Ensure you have this everywhere.
Year of Completion: 2017
Rating: 2 out of 5 (this is what 2017 me would've rated the subject)
Your Mark/Grade:
Ranked equal first internally, 88 HSC mark
Comments:
The thing about SAC is that you don't need to study as much to get top marks. A lot of it is common sense. You just need to learn how to get your content out there in a concise manner, using your concepts and backing all your statements up with evidence.
I honestly would've rated SAC 4 out of 5 now but when I did it at school, I would've rated it a 2. SAC is so diverse, flexible and so abstract that I felt that the course was going nowhere. I found the core topic to be interesting (Social and Cultural Continuity and Change) because I could easily apply it to the world now. However, my depth studies (Conformity and Non-Conformity + Belief Systems and Ideologies) weren't taught properly and made it harder for me to appreciate the subject more. My classmates absolutely hated the subject and my teacher didn't show much enthusiasm which made things worse. The PIP was the only thing that got me through HSC SAC because it was nice having control over this written report.
Now that I'm out of the HSC, I appreciate the SAC topic a lot more because I'm no longer in a classroom context and I'm able to learn the SAC topics at my own pace. I would rate it 4 out of 5 now. The key to getting top marks in SAC is really through referencing a lot of your concepts and preliminary content. You're getting assessed on how much you can relate society back to the concepts. But as well as providing an unbiased perspective on society through social theories and studies.
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Subject Name: Standard English
Level: HSC
Workload: Moderate/heavy
Assessment: (Outline the various assessments which make up the subject and how much each counts for)
- Discovery Portfolio (10%)
- Video submission (Module A) (10%)
- Hand in essay (Module B) (20%)
- In class essay (Module C) (20%)
- Trial exam (40%)
Exam Thoughts: (What's the structure? How hard was it?)
Paper One - Area of Study (Discovery) = 45 marks in total | 2 hour exam
- Section 1: Unseen texts = 15 marks
- Section 2: Creative writing = 15 marks
- Section 3: Essay = 15 marks
Workload is fairly light compared to Paper Two. You're able to pick what order you want to do the questions in; whether that'd be doing your essay first then working backwards (in terms of word requirement) or work in the order the exam is in; Paper One is quite flexible. Though the exam is quite distinct as well because for all three sections, you're pretty much referring to the same syllabus, making it easy to study. However, since this exam is marked anonymously, there tends to be a huge gap between Adv. and Standard students (not always but is a possibility).
Paper Two - Modules = 60 marks | 2 hour exam
- Module A essay = 20 marks
- Module B = 20 marks
- Module C = 20 marks
Definitely this exam is much more intense than Paper One. You're expected to write three essays in under two hours- all with different texts, evidence, rubrics and questions. Expose yourself to as many questions as possible and practice writing under the time limit because this will pay off in the end.
Textbook Recommendation: (What did you use? How much did you use it?)
- Discovery (Away from Michael Gow)
- No textbook for Mod A (material was from the NESA website)
- Module B (The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender by Marele Day)
- Module C (Billy Elliot- students had the choice of purchasing the DVD)
Recommended Other Resources:
HSC Standard English Excel
Cambridge Checkpoints Standard English (doesn't matter what edition- the latest one is recommended)
Year of Completion: 2017
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade:
88 internals (ranked equal 4th) + 89 external = overall 89 HSC mark
Comments:
To truly understand english, you just need to have a go at understanding the texts, appreciating their ideas and give out a beautifully written out analysis. English is mandatory for the HSC, so whether you love it or not, you're stuck with it until the very end. I would definitely recommend handing in practice essays every week (if possible) because that's pretty much the only way you can get decent marks. But also try getting feedback from your tutors (if possible) and/or the AN community because english is such a subjective subject. Also (in my opinion) english isn't really a content heavy subject, but its a subject that assesses you on your skills. I found that looking beyond the text's story and diving into the meaning and themes really helped me pull up my marks.
Edit: Also another comment I nearly forgot to make is that, don't feel that Standard English doesn't scale as well as Adv. English. It's all about how you perform in the subject. The key difference between the two levels of English are the texts but in terms of workload, you're still doing the same amount of essays, doing the same creative stimulus and responding to the same unseen texts. It's also about developing your skills in the subject as well and writing your ideas sophistically :)
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Subject Name: English Advanced
Level: HSC
Workload: Quite heavy. For some schools it's reasonably demanding, but it's still not English Ext 1.
Assessment: At my school, we had...
- 15% Essay (Listening)
- 15% Speech (Speaking)
- 15% ?? (Viewing/Representing that I remember nothing about)
- 25% In-class test (Reading/Writing)
- 35% Trial HSC Exam
Exam Thoughts:
Paper 1
- 15 marks - Unseen texts
- 15 marks - Creative writing
- 15 marks - AoS Essay
I found it very straightforward. At least the second easiest of all of my exams, if not the easiest.
Paper 2
- 20 marks for each module
At least the questions were friendly, unlike the CSSA trials in that same year, and I was able to write something up. At the same time, the rubrics for the modules never made sense to me (unlike the AoS which was crystal clear), so naturally I wasn't able to produce the best stuff.
Textbook Recommendation: These were my texts
AoS: The Tempest (studied last)
Module A: Nineteen Eighty-Four/Metropolis (studied second)
Module B: Selected poems of T.S. Eliot (studied first)
Module C: Why Weren't We Told (studied third)
I really liked The Tempest and 1984. The rest were between boring to decent.
Recommended Other Resources: Afraid I wouldn't know, because I didn't know what was useful.
Year of Completion: 2015
Rating: 3 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: 87 B5 (90 Ext, 83 Int)
Comments:
Contrary to public belief, I didn't entirely hate English. I actually think analysing texts in itself is fun, and trying to figure out what exactly is the author's perspective in writing/producing/... something. What was problematic was really just the assessments. I was decent at essays (good at them if they were AoS), but found it quite agonising to do anything besides them. Nor did I like how I was really just rote learning a selection of quotes and techniques, which in my opinion makes my analysis feel a lot more restricted. Sure, the crux of doing well in English is the ability to adapt (especially being able to actually answer the question, which I could do), but it really doesn't make much difference when you're forced to just "technique, technique, quote, quote".
Now, rant out of the way, just because I didn't really like it doesn't mean that the assessment was unjustified. In English, you must be examined on all the forms - reading, speaking etc. as listed above. This is quite reasonable, because otherwise there's simply no variety, and different students shine in different forms. You should be able to understand how each of them differ from one another.
Pretty much, the rubric is the main thing. If you don't know how to take advantage of it, you're doing yourself a disservice. (Which was me, with all the modules.)
Some people say that you shouldn't bother reading/viewing all of your texts. I say that this is a bad idea, and you should at least do it once. I also say that the holidays are a very good time to do this, because that way you don't have to do it on top of everything else. What good is understanding a bunch of quotes and shit when you don't understand the synopsis? It makes "evaluate" questions much harder, because you won't be able to form any judgement or you'll give a circular one, or worse, contradict yourself.
English past papers definitely are not a waste. Practicing essay writing does make life easier for the final exam.
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(Prompted by Rui's opinion, which I hear from everyone about Extension 1, but one that I personally off my own experience see differently :)))
Subject Name: English Extension 1
Level: HSC
Workload: Let me stress that this was my experience and so don't get your hopes up too much! The workload was far less demanding than Advanced in my opinion.
Assessments:
- Creative Writing
- Tutorial on Romanticism topic of choice
- Trial HSC Exam (Creative and Essay)
Exam Thoughts:
The creative is very challenging as you have to mimic the language of the period (mine being Romanticism). Thus, this requires extensive research and reading for inspiration! Also, your story had to reflect the context and philosophy of the time - again A LOT of research. However, once I had fine-tuned my piece, I memorised it (English teachers across Australia gasp collectively) and basically went through all possible stimulus' and worked out how I would adapt to the set question. Luckily, both in my trial and HSC the stimulus' were easy to adapt to and actually made me change my story just a bit to make it even better.
The essay question can also be quite specific, but again I was fortunate enough in my HSC and Trial exams to receive questions that were very in keeping with the Romantic movement as a whole. I do not recommend memorising a response here. Rather, to prepare, simply create a table with quotes, an explanation, link to philosophy and know these as they form the basis of your response along with contextual links now and then. I cannot stress the importance of including ways of thinking (philosophy) in your response and how philosophical ideas are conveyed in your texts as many students neglect this.
Textbook recommendation: We didn't have any textbooks. Thorough and extensive research online and through books is key for success in English Extension 1. I'd definitely recommend signing up for as many libraries as possible, including the State Library of NSW as they have a fantastic online research database full of great resources! In terms of specific books - Barbara Stanners did a seriously helpful book on Romanticism but I recommend reading widely and looking at books from the library in particular compared to online websites as library publications are often written by accomplished writers and include information many students do not know.
Year of Completion: 2017
Rating: 3.5/5
Your mark/grade: 48/50 (External) 49/50 (Internal)
Comments: The 3.5/5 rating is more a reflection of how much my teacher made me hate Extension 1. He focused so much on unnecessary context rambles - it made me go to sleep. Romanticism is a fascinating topic (coming from a guy) and I loved (and hence found Extension 1 easier than Advanced) that Romanticism was the only topic we looked at it compared to Advanced where there are countless modules. It allows you to really get in depth with the topic and gives you the chance to develop a passion for it. The concepts are harder than Advanced as they involve a lot of philosophy and deep thinking yet you have a whole year to learn it! I definitely recommend as long as you are confident with doing lots of thorough research and reading to really write a thought-provoking essay :)
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Subject Name: Mathematics Extension 1
Level: HSC
Workload: In itself moderate, but of course it must be learnt alongside 2U. Which makes it reasonably intense for some people, especially since the content is definitely harder.
Assessment: At my school, we had...
- 15% In-class tests x2
- 30% Half Yearly
- 40% Trial HSC Exam
Exam Thoughts:
- 10 Multiple choice
- 4x 15 mark Extended responses, broken into subparts
It was really easy in 2014, and hence why I'm constantly disappointed at myself with this subject (see comments)
Textbook Recommendation: At the time I used Maths in Focus, which is shit. But it wasn't entirely useless; it gave me quite a fair bit of foundational knowledge and then I just moved to past papers ASAP.
Recommended Other Resources: If it's a past paper, then that.
Year of Completion: 2014
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: 94 E4 (Ext 95, Int 92)
Comments:
So like, when I did the course I loved the content. But some of my test/exam marks disappointed me. Every time I think about MX1 I always think "I could've easily gotten four more marks on that 94", but my internals dragged me down and for some reason my mind was distracted as hell in the final exam by songs. Felt like really poor form. Apologies for the arrogance, but that's really how I feel about my mark with MX1.
As for the assessments themselves, again I felt it was very fair. The questions were quite straightforward and tested exactly what needed to be tested. Having said that, the final exams of this course is different to the one harder and one easier. MX1 is, actually, tiny. There's not that much to be examined on, and as a consequence the final exam is only 2 hours long. This can be both good and bad.
The good is fairly simple; you have less to do. Your brain also gets to relax a bit earlier on. The bad is the fact you're gonna be more focused on the clock. Occasionally, people drop a bit of time in the 2U/MX2 exams, and then will manage to get (or at least scrape) some of it back. MX1 will most likely not let you do this; I feel that the shorter exam only reinforces the fact that you should be grabbing all the marks you can get, and also doing it quickly enough so that you can spread out more time for other questions.
I feel that around 66% of the final exam, or even in extreme cases only 50% will be based off 'calculus'. This is something to look out for. And also, just like with 2U, 20% of the exam will involve preliminary topics. So once again, the issues with dropping off in maths because of problems at an early onset can bite you hard.
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Subject Name: Hospitality (food and beverage)
Level: HSC, However, the HSC exam content was taught over two years so you need to know some of the topics you did in year 11 well.
Workload: Light-Not too bad as I found most of the content easy to grasp initially.
Assessment: As hospitality is a vet course your HSC mark is based on your external exam only. However, there are quizzes, pracs and tests throughout that can contribute to your VET certificate 2 in hospitality. We also did half yearly and trial exams to prepare us for the HSC.
Exam Thoughts:
It’s a 2 hour exam with 5 minutes reading time.
Section 1-15 multiple choice questions.
Section 2 –Short answer (35 marks-recommended time is 50 minutes).
Section 3- 2 short answer questions and a longer answer question (3,4 and 8 marks).
Section 4- Extended response (15 marks).
The wording of questions is specifically designed to trick you and were difficult at times. Also, as they can ask you anything from the examinable content in each section they can pick on really small parts of the course (e.g I had a 3 mark question on plunger coffee in my HSC which was a tiny section of the coffee unit which I didn’t remember well).
Textbook Recommendation:
Hospitality by Cambridge. Found it fairly helpful to make notes/Flashcards but didn't use it too much.
Recommended Other Resources: Past papers.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Comments:
Hospitality ended up being one of my relaxing subjects amongst my 13 units and I ended up really enjoying it. It was very practical based and we cooked/made coffee most weeks. It was centered on if you wished to have a job in the industry afterwards (which I really don't want a full time hospo job), however I did complete my certificate 2 in Hospitality. The food and beverage stream focusses more on the waitressing side of cooking (although we did learn how to make simple dishes, drinks, & coffees), while the commercial cookery stream focusses on becoming a chef.
As part of the VET qualification, I needed 70 hours of work placement. I did 35 hours at a restaurant and the other 35 hours helping out with school functions and catering. To be signed off as competent in a topic, you needed to successfully get 100% on each test/quiz/prac you needed to do relating to the topic. So sometimes, you would need to do some questions multiple times in order to pass. You need to be really dedicated to catch up and redo questions, or it’ll pile up and a lot of my class didn’t end up getting full qualifications because they didn’t complete everything.
While Hospitality is seen as a really easy subject (I never found the content very difficult), the exam deliberately tries to trick you by focusing on minute areas of the syllabus and difficult wordings of questions.
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Subject Name: Ancient History
Level: HSC
Workload: Moderate
Assessment:
- Oral presentation (Historical Periods)
- Half Yearlies (Historical Periods + Personalities During their Time)
- Feature article (Ancient societies)
- Trials (all topics)
Exam Thoughts:
I'm just going to quote Katie here ;)
It’s a 3 hour exam (my hand was dead at the end of it) with 4 sections that are each recommended for 45 minutes each. Each section is 25 marks.
Pompeii and Herculaneum (core): Everybody does Pompeii and Herculaneum. This has multiple choice questions (usually related to sources) which are designed to trick you, 2 short answer questions (source and own knowledge) and a longer extended response (based on the last 4 dot points of the syllabus).
Section 2 (Ancient societies): Three small questions (2,3,5 marks) and a 15 mark extended response.
Section 3 (Personalities in their time): A 10 mark describe question and a 15 mark assses extended response.
Section 4 (Historical periods): A 25 mark essay based on one of the dot points. You have a choice between two different questions.
I felt that the questions for Section 1, 3 and 4 are quite predictable. Section 2, on the other hand, has such a huge syllabus (Ancient societies) that anything could happen in this section.
Textbook Recommendation: (What did you use? How much did you use it?)
- Antiquity 2 (All topics- predominantly used for Historical Periods and Personalities during their time. I did Greek World 500BC-440BC and The Near East: Xerxes). Provides evidence for all possible syllabus dot points and good overview each event/dot point.
- Spartan Society to the Battle of Leuctra 371 BC by Ken Webb (shoutout to my main man Ken Webb ;) ahah). In seriousness, Webb gives a very very basic overview for each syllabus dot point for Sparta. It was nice for the book to provide some written evidence for some dot points.
- Pompeii and Herculaneum - Interpreting the evidence by Brian Brennan. Didn't touch this book as much because I found Susie's book way more useful.
- Spartan Society - Interpreting the evidence by Brian Brennan. Didn't use this book as much for other dot points.
- The Near East: Nelson Ancient History (Super helpful with the Xerxes topic considering he isn't much of a popular personality compared to Agrippina or Julius Caesar. This textbook has great insight into the Persian Empire)
Recommended Other Resources:
AN Ancient History Study Guide by Susie: This book became my holy grail the moment I first laid eyes on it. Straight to the point. Provides relevant evidence. Uses language that is easily understandable. Gives out tips and tricks on how to successfully nail the exam. It has everything. *Only has information on the core topic (Pompeii and Herculaneum)
Year of Completion: 2017
Rating: 3.5/4 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: 88 external mark
Comments:
Once you get past telling a narrative in Ancient History, that's when the fun begins. You analyse evidence. You question the legitimacy of each historian. You start thinking "did that really happen?" or was everything a lie? A huge factor in nailing Ancient History is just being on top of your notes and having enough evidence for each dot point. You don't need new evidence for each dot point. Try to think of evidence that applies to a lot of syllabus dot points. Another key thing in Ancient is that you need to make judgements. Make a judgement and use evidence to back up your statements :)
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Subject Name: Photography, Video and Digital Imaging (Board Endorsed Course)
Level: Preliminary (can also be HSC but does NOT count towards your ATAR)
Workload: VERY light
Assessment: (Outline the various assessments which make up the subject and how much each counts for)
Portfolio #1 (50%)
Portfolio #2 (50%)
Exam Thoughts:
N/A. We were not examined under timed conditions as this was a subject that depended on your creativity, portfolio and growth as an artist.
Textbook Recommendation:
Caves to Canvas (very minimal use though)
Recommended Other Resources:
Feedback from your teacher and your peers + having an open mind
Year of Completion: 2016
Rating: 4 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade:
Ranked first, mark average of 92%
Comments:
I definitely agree that Photography, Video and Digital Imagining is a 'bludge' subject. The workload is very light (barely did anything in class besides taking photos and messing around on photoshop). We were only asked to write four extended responses (for 'theory' component) in the entirety of this course. It's a very practical based and requires creativity. Just because you have a DSLR, does not mean you will take good snapshots. You need to learn to be open minded and adopt the ways actual photographers take their photos (ie; use manual mode, the rule of thirds, framing not aiming etc.). You also need to present a consistent performance during this course as this will help you with your portfolio. By starting early, you give yourself enough time to do your contact sheets, edit your photos in photoshop and get your portfolio together.
This course is a board endorsed course meaning that this subject will not count towards your ATAR (reason why I only did it during my preliminary year). I would definitely recommend this course to those who are doing Visual Arts, Drama, English Extension 2, Design & Technology etc in their HSC year because the skills you will develop in P, V and DI will help you during the completion of your major works in Year 12.
*Sidenote: my school did not do the 'video' aspect of this course as we did not have the facilities.
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Subject Name: General Maths 2
Level: HSC
Workload: Wasn’t too bad. However, it was really easy to fall behind if you had missed a few lessons/not caught up after class. If you did fall behind in the classwork, you needed to put in a lot more work to catch up.
Assessment:
My school had:
Assessment Examination 1 (test on first 2 topics)-15% (I didn’t complete as they did it before I changed courses).
Half Yearly Exam-30%
Assessment task 3-Focus study on health-20%
Trial HSC Exams-35%
Exam Thoughts:
It’s a 2 1/2 hour exam with 5 minutes reading time.
Section1-25 multiple choice questions.
Section 2- 75 marks short answer questions, in 5 15 mark parts.
The recommended time is 35 minutes for multiple choice and 1hr 55minutes for the short answer questions.
You are given a three page formula sheet that has majority of the needed formulas on it. However, there are a few that you need to memorise.
Textbook Recommendation:
New Century Maths: Mathematics General 2. Used very heavily throughout the year (majority of lessons) for the exercises, chapter reviews, practise exams,etc.
Recommended Other Resources:
Past Papers
Atar Notes General Maths topic tests and the question threads
Year of Completion: 2017
Rating: 4 out of 5
Comments:
I dropped down to General Maths from 2 unit at the beginning of the year 12 in term one and found it a better course as the workload wasn’t as intense and I understood most of the content easily. However, if you drop, you need to make sure that you do go over some of the prelim content as about 20% is examinable and assumed knowledge for the course.
I didn’t find much of the content really hard in General however some of the exam questions are designed to trick you. Also, if you do drop a few marks in the exam, it is very easy to go down a band.
Past papers and practise questions are very important to improve in maths. When you find a topic/or exercise that you don’t understand it’s good to go through some more questions so that you improve and become more confident in it.
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Subject Name: Information Processes and Technology
Level: Preliminary
Workload: It is quite a content heavy subject, and there's lots of technology jargon but I managed it pretty well. We would work through folios which linked to activities in our textbooks, and we would do them at our own pace, but they had to be finished by a certain time. Some lessons were quite hands-on, like playing around on Adobe Photoshop (desktop publishing) and Microsoft Access (databases).
Assessment:
- AT1: Introduction to Information Systems (15%)
- AT2a: Tools for Information Processes (15%)
- AT2b: Research Task on 1 Information Process (15%)
- AT3: Developing Information Systems (20%)
- Preliminary Exam (35%)
Exam Thoughts: The great thing about IPT exams is there isn't an extended response! The exam consists of multiple choice and a series of short answer questions. Some questions might have you deduce something from a table in a database, or you might have to draw a context diagram/data flow diagram. The short answer questions can range from 2 marks to 6/7 marks. Scenarios are given sometimes, and then there are short answer questions for that scenario. The other stuff is just knowing your theory and applying it to a given situation.
It's hard to say how my exam was because our teacher gave us document of all the things that would be in the preliminary exam (and it was pretty accurate), but I'd say that as long as you keep on top of your theory, the exam will be fine and there shouldn't be anything too out of the blue in the exam.
Textbook Recommendation:
We used:
- Information Processes and Technology by Samuel Davis
- Information Processes and Technology by G.K. Powers
I preferred The G.K. Powers book as it was a lot easier to read in terms of length. However, the Davis book is more in-depth. The revision questions from both books were quite good as well.
I personally used the Powers textbook a lot more than the Davis, mainly because I would just read/do exercises from the Davis one but I made my notes from the Powers textbook due to its simplicity compared to the Davis book.
Year of Completion: 2017
Rating: 4 out of 5
Comments:
- Your level of English should be pretty good, because even though lots of people think it's just about playing with computers, there is writing to do, and as previously said, there's lots of jargon, so keep that in mind if you might pick IPT.
- A common question that people ask if IPT student write programs. Unfortunately there isn't any programming in the course, but there is a little theory regarding HTML in the HSC course in the Information Systems and Databases topic, so I suppose that it's more to do with understanding how a line of code works than writing it.
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Subject Name: Chemistry (compressed)
Level: HSC
Workload: Pretty demanding as a compressed course. But our small class size meant that we got through the content quicker, and were able to focus more on the areas that we found more challenging, so it wasn't too bad.
Assessment:
Prac Task and Lab Report (15%)
Research Task and First-Hand Investigation (25%)
Secondary Sources Research and Presentation (20%)
Trial Exam (40%)
- No half-yearly exam (due to time constraints of compressed course)
Exam Thoughts: 20 MC, 55 marks short answer, 25 marks option, including a longer response (Biochemistry).
The multiple choice was fairly average, but there were a few trick questions. Short answers were pretty breezy, though they tended to have a lot more 4-5 mark questions then previous years. Option was fairly good (I really liked the long response), but there was a tricky calculation question that I hadn't anticipated - there had probably only been one or two calculation questions for this option through all of the previous exams I had looked at.
Textbook Recommendation: Chemistry Contexts 2 (pearson).
It was alright to use, but I found that I needed to use it in conjunction with other sources, because it seemed to cover some aspects in not enough detail, or provide extraneous information for other aspects.
Recommended Other Resources: Easychem website, ATAR Notes summary book, Dux College website syllabus notes
Year of Completion: 2017
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Your Mark/Grade: Not really one to share marks, but oh well. ;D 88 (external), 88 (internal) - rank 1.
Comments: Found it really enjoyable, just a little dry at times (esp. production of materials module). The calculations for moles and pH were a nice way to provide a bit of variety instead of just a content dump. It would have been cool if they had focused more on emerging technologies, such as nuclear chem - one chapter was not enough! Would highly, highly, highly recommend the biochemistry option - I loved it!
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Subject Name: PDHPE (compressed)
Level: HSC
Workload: Moderate. There was a lot of random content to remember, but roping it in with syllabus acronyms allowed it to be very manageable.
Assessment:
FAP Skill Acquisition Analysis and Training Session
IP Training Analysis and Presentation
Sports Medicine Topic Test
Trial Exam
(not sure about weightings for each)
Exam Thoughts: 20 MC, 40 marks short answers (core 1 & 2), 40 marks long responses (options: improving performance and sports medicine)
Overall: A straight-forward exam. They worked really hard to make the MC pretty challenging this year, but short answers were easy in compensation, and the questions were very clear in what they expected you to write. Options were nice too - they were the ones I had predicted - and the questions were pretty broad.
Textbook Recommendation: Outcomes 2 (Jacaranda).
It did a good job of explaining things, and between its weblink videos, and other supplementary materials my teacher used, it covered the syllabus really well.
Recommended Other Resources:
Pdhpe.net and its flashcards, ATAR Notes summary book, ACHPER HSC PDHPE Enrichment Day (really helpful advice and revision)
Year of Completion: 2017
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: 93 (external), 93 (internal) - rank 1.
Comments: This was a really good subject! Just a little wishy-washy at times ;D (especially in core 1). The content came naturally to me, and I loved integrating my knowledge from the course into my everyday life. Helpful for anyone thinking about studying sports sciences at uni, or who just love sports in general (very focused on athletes and performance).
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Subject Name: Physics (:)))
Level: HSC
Workload: Everyone seems to have different views to this, however, the most important part about the whole subject is understanding the concepts, once you understand how and why something works, it becomes much easier.
Assessment:
20% Practical exam (had to conduct one of the experiments in an exam-ish setting)
30% Practical assessment (Had to construct our own generator that generated more than 2volts, and then write up a scientific report on it)
20% Research assessment (Given multiple technologies from Ideas to Implementation topic and had to write how it worked etc...)
30% Trial HSC exam.
Exam Thoughts: We were expecting curveballs this year, and boy were we right. This year's Multiple choice was quite difficult, and a question about Webers about a coil (question 27) threw every single one of my classmates we were not really expecting it. It was really looking to know if you really knew the content.
Textbook Recommendation: Physics in focus. However, I did not use this and rather used internet resources such as youtube and AN.
Recommended Other Resources: Jamon's AN physics book :)
Year of Completion: 2017
Rating: 4.4 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: 88
Comments: The assessments were pretty good, apart from the generator one. I have never spent so many hours investing in a single assignment (it did pay off, but 100+ hours was not really worth it)
The course overall isn't a memorisation course but isn't that hard once you understand the concepts. If you don't learn the concepts, you will be severely disadvantaged. My favourite topic was Motors and Generators, it introduced new concepts that were just so fascinating, it really introduced me to a world I didn't know existed.
The mathematics in this course was not that bad, actually quite simple once you understood again the concepts, but MOST of the questions were just simple rearranging of formulae or substitution.
One thing I highly recommend is to make your own notes, including diagrams that make it easy for you to understand, some concepts need this (e.g. relativity). The best thing about this course is the fact it stands out from the others, you would never get a question in chemistry where you go "you know what, that is a good question, I wonder what it'll be" Physics really tests yourself in a critical way, it makes you think outside of the box, and is what really made the course (and the overall HSC) very enjoyable. It is a very refreshing course in a mix of mundane, repetitive courses. However, its variety allows for much harder exams, allowing broader and exciting questions.
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Economics:
HSC: (Prelim or HSC?)
Workload: There is quite a lot of content to study for the HSC Economics course, with lots of economic concepts to learn and you must be up-to-date with economic statistics. However, with those economic concepts, once you understand the concept, you can quickly revise them - the hard bit is just understanding it the first time. If you manage your time well, and revise every so often, the amount of content shouldn't be too overwhelming.
Assessment: Schools usually have the trial worth around 50%, with the other 50% made up of an exam or assignment each term. The exam would be in the form of multiple choice q's, short answers and an essay. Assignments can range from the case study of an Asian economy or reading newspaper articles on economics and discussing issues raised.
Exam Thoughts: The structure for HSC Economics Exam: 20 multiple choice questions, 40 marks worth of short-answer questions (split into four sections of 10 marks each), one stimulus essay (20 marks) and one extended response (20 marks). The MC questions are usually basic knowledge and calculation questions (note: the maths in economics is very simple), and occasionally one or two hard questions. The short answers require a bit more depth but as long you are familiar with the basic economic concepts you will be fine. The essays are where most people struggle as it requires detailed knowledge and application of real-world examples/stats.
Textbook Recommendation: The two main textbooks used are the Dixon and Riley textbooks. I prefer the Dixon one as it is succinct yet detailed enough, and explains concepts clearly. The Riley one is a bit over-the-top with too much extra information that can overwhelm students. It might be good to focus on Dixon, but take a look at Riley to see if there are any important details.
Recommended Other Resources: Constantly check news articles and updates on economic statistics.
Year of Completion: 2017
Rating: 5 out of 5
Mark/Grade: Band 6
Comments: I personally found economics to be a really interesting course as you better understand the business world and how consumers, businesses and governments interact in the economy. You learn about global free trade, exchange rates, economic issues and economic policies which are really helpful in gaining an insight into business. If you are thinking of studying commerce/economics/business courses at uni, this course would be a good starting point.
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Subject Name: English Advanced
Level: HSC
Workload: Moderate because we had to read prescribed texts, research our own critical readings and read the assigned readings.
Assessment: (Outline the various assessments which make up the subject and how much each counts for)
Speech
Half-yearly exam
In-class essay (exam conditions)
Trials exam
Exam Thoughts: (What's the structure? How hard was it?)
Preparation was relatively easy because we were given two possible essay questions and but we'll be answering one of those questions in the exam. I did find it stressful since my school hasn't really assessed us on short answer questions or the creative (apart from Trials) so it was up to me to start my creative early.
Textbook Recommendation: (What did you use? How much did you use it?)
Nil
Recommended Other Resources:
State Library journal articles for critical readings.
Year of Completion:
2018
Rating: 4 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: (Optional)
86% (5/53) - Trials
Comments: Apart from how stressful English was when it came to memorising quotes (especially with Yeats), I did enjoy the subject because the texts we studied were really interesting. Even though we've joked about how useless English is, I liked looking at the various themes and found it fascinating at how applicable they were in terms of personal development.
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Subject Name: Modern History
Level: HSC
Workload:
Modern is such a content-heavy subject so you need to make sure you don't fall behind. It also gets a bit confusing when you start going into politics (as someone who doesn't really have an interest in politics). There are also things you need to learn that aren't even in the syllabus but it would be good to talk about in the essay. Also, practice essays are key to doing well in Modern.
Assessment: (Outline the various assessments which make up the subject and how much each counts for)
Exam (WW1 section)
Research/ half-yearly exam (Personality Study)
Hand-in essay (Germany)
In-class essay (Conflict in Europe)
Trials
Exam Thoughts: (What's the structure? How hard was it?)
Since the exam is 3 hours and has 4 sections, it does get a bit exhausting- to be fair, a lot of 3 hour exams are exhausting. Also, the fact that there are so many things NESA could ask in the exam also makes it a bit difficult to predict. I always struggled in the Personality section because I find it difficult to adjust my personality to the quote. The good thing about the exam is that you can choose the questions for Section 2 and Section 4 so you could manipulate the paper to your advantage- that's if, the questions are good.
Textbook Recommendation: (What did you use? How much did you use it?)
Germany: Republic to Reich
Contested Spaces: Conflict in Europe
Recommended Other Resources:
History Hit is a website run by historian Dan Snow. This month, he's been making resources in relation to Conflict in Europe. Podcasts like The History Hour, History Extra, History Hit and Versus History are also great resources.
Year of Completion: 2018
Rating: 5 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: (Optional)
84% (1/19) - Trials
Comments: Give your overall opinion of the subject, content, assessment etc. and a recommendation, plus anything else which you feel is relevant.
Modern was one of my favourite subjects. I actually chose it as the subject where I could "relax" in contrast to my other subjects. Even though it's very heavy in content, I found it a really interesting subject.
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Subject Name: History Extension
Level: HSC
Workload:
The workload is quite heavy because it's up to you to take on the historiography debates and come up with your own opinions. It's also your responsibility to do your own research and reading. I had to do my own readings on postmodernism early on because my teacher wasn't comfortable with teaching postmodernism. You also need to do some practice essays. It's important for other subjects as well but I found writing History Extension essays to be a mix of English and Modern History essays so you need to find the perfect balance between the two. On top of exam preparation, you have your Major Work as well, which is worth 80%. Essentially, you need to be able to balance your Major Work with exam preparation.
Assessment: (Outline the various assessments which make up the subject and how much each counts for)
Major Work (proposal out of 20 which then gets moderated when calculating the overall mark, logbook checks throughout the year, final submission: essay, log, annotated bibliography and reference list- all worth 80%)
Half-yearly exam (Question 1 essay)
Trials (full exam)
Exam Thoughts: (What's the structure? How hard was it?)
The exam is 2 hours. It's highly recommended to plan your essays, especially for Question 1. Source A is quite long so it's important to take the time to read the source and annotate it so you can use it to frame your essays. Question 2 has a shorter source which means you don't usually have a lot to say. I was told that Question 2 essays tend to be shorter than Question 1 essays. I personally struggled a lot more with Question 2 essays because I didn't know what to talk about since there wasn't a lot to say.
Textbook Recommendation: (What did you use? How much did you use it?)
Nil
Recommended Other Resources:
The History Extension Source Book of Readings was a great resource because it was a compilation of sources from different historians.
Year of Completion:
2018
Rating: 5 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: (Optional)
74% (1/4) - Trials
24/25 (1/4) - Major Work
Comments: Give your overall opinion of the subject, content, assessment etc. and a recommendation, plus anything else which you feel is relevant.
A lot of people tend to walk into History Extension knowing nothing, and that's okay! History Extension is definitely different from other subjects because it's a very philosophical subject. But it's also very enjoyable. You get to gain perspectives that you've never considered and sometimes you spiral a bit.
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Subject Name: Engineering Studies
Level: HSC
Workload: There is a lot of content, not only do you have to know theory (Written work) but you also have to know how to do mechanics which takes up a lot of time. All year 11 content carries onto year 12 which is not so bad. Do not pick this subject if you are not up for a challenge or are only looking for a bludge. Assessments also required a lot of work, sometimes my assignments could reach 2000-5000 words sometimes even more.
Assessment:
Term 1 - Civil Structures - Made a bridge and did truss analysis
Term 2 - Personal and Public Transport - Analysed personal transport (I did a Segway)
- Half yearlies
Term 3 - Aeronautical Engineering - Analysed planes + how they worked etc.
- Trials
Exam Thoughts: The 2018 exam paper wasn't something that I'd complain about but it was definitely different from past years. I think there were a lot more questions that needed explanation, contrasting materials etc than there were mechanics questions. In most exams, there would be a large truss analysis question (Not in my paper) as I had one in every paper leading up to the HSC. Overall it is reasonable. You can get a good mark if you study.
Textbook Recommendation:
- Excel Engineering Studies Prelim
- Excel Engineering Studies HSC
- Engineering Studies by John Rochford (We used this one the most)
Recommended Other Resources: I used youtube a lot to help me with Truss analysis questions as well as other mechanics questions.
Year of Completion: 2018
Rating: 4 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade:
Trials - 87/100
Comments: I really enjoyed my time in Engineering Studies although there were times where we had the hard slog of trying to get through the content. Our class was small, there were 7 of us, so it made things a lot easier and we got along much better. We had an excursion to Sydney which was the best excursion I ever had. I won't forget Engineering studies :) OH and don't leave assessments to the night before, it's always worse when its done that way.
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Bumping this thread !!
Congrats to the class of 2018 for completing their HSC exams. If we can get more subject reviews on this thread, that would be swell!
Doesn’t matter if the subject has already been reviewed— every review counts !
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Subject Name:Business Studies
Level: (Prelim or HSC?)Hsc
Workload:There is a pretty huge syllabus and it becomes like your best friend because literally everything you learn can be found on it. So you do a lot of work throughout the year in order to fully complete it; some of it can go very quickly so it may seem as if it is piling up.
Assessment: (Outline the various assessments which make up the subject and how much each counts for)
Operations topic test: 20%
Marketing in class section 4 essay: 20%
Finance topic test: 20%
Trial HSC exam: 40%
(Can't really remember weightings-there were 4 tasks but i don't remember how they added up)
Exam Thoughts: (What's the structure? How hard was it?)
There's 4 sections-Section 1: Multiple Choice (20 mks), Section 2: Short Answer (40 mks), Section 3: Business report based on given stimulus (20 mks), Section 4: Business report or essay using case studies using one of two provided questions.
All the sections and questions can vary in difficulty depending on who wrote the exam but it is easy to prepare for because all questions are made from the syllabus. So the questions can be worded to sound very hard, but they still incorporate some part of the syllabus, so knowing it makes it alot simpler.
Textbook Recommendation: (What did you use? How much did you use it?)
Business Studies in Action: 5th edition
Used moderately-it has some good summaries that can be used to consolidate knowledge as well as some good chapter questions to ensure you know what you're talking about and it also includes some pretty good small case studies dotted throughout which makes things easier. But it can be pretty dense so its good to not rely on it heavily
Recommended Other Resources:A set of notes you make yourself. This can be useful to consolidate your knowledge at all times in a way you know you'll understand.
Copies of the syllabus pinned up throughout your house-you really do need to know the whole syllabus in order to do well in this course, so it is vital to ensure that you always know all the dot-points
Year of Completion:2018
Rating: out of 5
4.5 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: (Optional)86/100 trials
ranked 8/49 with an overall internal assessment mark of 85
I predict a 83-84 for my final hsc mark (based on my performance in internal assessments and the final exam)
Comments: Give your overall opinion of the subject, content, assessment etc. and a recommendation, plus anything else which you feel is relevant.
I really enjoyed this subject and i had a very good teacher which made it even better. Having a good teacher in such a content heavy course can make it or break it for you. I won't lie when i say that there can be times when the amount of content can seem to drown you, but at the end of it, its worth it.
I've already stressed how IMPORTANT the syllabus is, so i won't do that again.
I would recommend a moderate amount of revision from past papers and your OWN notes to ensure you know the content you've already learned while learning new stuff
Seriously a rewarding course at the end of it, and definitely is easily manageable when you understand everything and stay on top of it.
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Subject Name: English Extension 2
Level: HSC (only offered in the HSC year)
Workload: The workload wasn't as intense as everyone told me it would be. If you begin your Major Work early (rather than leaving it to the last minute) you'll have a pretty light weekly workload. I began writing my Major Work over the summer holidays and had a final draft completed before trials, meaning that the workload didn't feel overwhelming. Extension 2 doesn't necessarily have any content to learn – it's more just about creation – so if you begin early, the workload is quite light compared to some other subjects.
Assessment:
Viva Voce (worth 10/50): basically just an oral presentation/conversation about your ideas for the Major Work. At my school there was simply a panel of two teachers with whom I had to discuss my Major Work. I quite enjoy public speaking, so it was a relatively easy task. The hardest part was putting my concepts into words for the first time.
Report (worth 15/50): a written summary of all of your research and how this research has shaped your Major Work. It needs to be quite detailed and sophisticated. In my personal opinion, it was harder than the Viva.
Draft (worth 25/50): this was my favourite assessment. Essentially, it was just the final draft of your Major Work (with the Reflection Statement included). Not only is it an enjoyable assessment, but also a useful one, because your teacher should provide their final feedback on it before you hand it in.
Exam Thoughts: There isn't an exam because the Major Work is the component marked externally. I thought the making of the Major Work was a highly enjoyable process and I loved every part of it. In the beginning, it was a little hard on the self-esteem as I struggled to write in a sophisticated manner, but as the year went on (and my writing improved) it became one of my favourite parts of Year 12.
Textbook Recommendation: As there isn't set content, there is no textbook. Instead, my reading for the subject consisted of other short stories, writing guides, advice from published authors, and critical theory. Here are some of the most important resources I read:
- Anything by George Orwell.
- Short stories such as Saboteur by Ha Jin, The Wall by Jean Paul Sartre, and The Bet by Anton Chekhov.
- The Philosophy of Composition by Edgar Allan Poe.
Recommended Other Resources: See above. :)
Year of Completion: 2018
Rating: 5 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: I haven't received my HSC results yet, but my internal raw mark was 46/50. My draft was marked at 24/25 :)
Comments: I absolutely LOVED Extension Two English (it helped that my teacher often brought coffee and cake to our lessons.) I think the course really developed my confidence as a writer which consequently improved my short stories in Advanced English and Extension 1. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in language, writing, and creativity. :)
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Subject Name: English Advanced
Level: HSC
Workload: Heavy - lots of practice required (towards the HSC, I was writing and critiquing 1 essay/day - this differs from person to person).
Assessment: 15% Creative Writing Assignment
20% Half Yearly Exam (Paper 1)
15% Module A Listening Essay (in-class)
15% Module B Speech
15% Module C Essay
20% Trial HSC Exam (Paper 1 & 2).
Seemed to do a lot of assessments for this subject. ;D
Exam Thoughts: Paper 1 (AOS): Short answers on unseen texts, creative writing, essay - reasonable exam, some of the short answer texts were challenging to interpret with the time allocated.
Paper 2 (Modules): 3 essays - also reasonable, but I found it strange that they made the essay questions common across the whole modules instead of writing a question specifically for each text.
Textbook Recommendation: (What did you use? How much did you use it?)
Nil.
Recommended Other Resources:
Top Notes - Module B Speeches (Yarris Garrett)
Discovery Creative Task (Anna McHugh) - not relevant anymore, but this company may have produced something for the new syllabus. :)
Year of Completion: 2018
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Comments: This subject can be very time-consuming or cruise, depending on your ability, willingness and writing style.
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Subject Name: Food Technology
Level: HSC
Workload: Light
Assessment: 15% AFI Case Study
25% FM Practicals and Report
30% Food Product Development Project and Practical
30% Trial HSC Exam
Exam Thoughts: Section I - MC: this was probably the most challenging part of the exam - many of the questions were very random and kinda irrelevant to the syllabus in comparison to previous years.
Section II - Short answer: Liked this section, everything was fairly straight forward. Interestingly, there were 6 x 6-marker questions this year.
Section III - Divided long response. A random question, but quite manageable.
Section IV - Long response: good, good! A very basic (yet broad enough to write enough) question on our AFI case study company.
Textbook Recommendation:
Food Tech Focus
We used a very recent edition, it was good for getting some ideas of going over specific aspects of content, though it can provide too much information at times. It was more of a supplementary material rather than an all-important textbook, if that makes sense. :)
Recommended Other Resources:
Australian Food News Website - provides current examples of food innovation and news to enrich exam responses.
Year of Completion: 2018 (Compressed)
Rating: 4 out of 5
Comments: Food tech is a great subject if you are into food or nutrition. Do expect to be drenched with the business side of the food industry - legislation, developing food products, manufacturing processes - some of which I found interesting, other parts, I did not. In some cases, I found prelim food tech more interesting than HSC.
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Subject Name: Mathematics
Level: HSC
Workload: Moderate
Assessment: 15% Topic Test: Locus/Parabola and Geometric App. Of Calculus
25% Half Yearly Exam
20% Topic Test: Trigonometric and Logarithmic Functions
40% Trial HSC Exam
Exam Thoughts: 10 MC, 90 Marks of questions of increasing difficulty. Man, I found this exam very hard! I was a bit disheartened walking out of the exam, as I just didn't get many of the questions.
Textbook Recommendation:
Maths in Focus - it was ok, I have been told that is textbook is not great, though.
Recommended Other Resources:
Past papers :).
Year of Completion: 2018
Rating: 4 out of 5
Comments: Maths requires a lot of regular practice, rather than just revising in time for a test/exam. It also requires a moderate degree of problem solving and "improvising" - something I struggled with, but exposing yourself to a variety of exam sources and difficulties will help to build this skill.
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Subject Name: Biology
Level: HSC
Workload: Moderate
Assessment: 15% Secondary Sources Research Task
20% Practical Task
30% Practical and Research Task
35% Trial HSC Exam
Exam Thoughts: 20 MC, Short answer, 25 marks option (I did Communication).
I thought the exam was fairly nice, MC difficulty was definitely raised a bit. The option was generous (though I have heard other opinions), short answer was good, except for one poorly worded question.
Textbook Recommendation:
Heinemann Biology - used this A LOT. I really liked how it structured its information according to the syllabus points, and that it had many of the secondary source investigations included (if I decided to be a bit lazy and not research these myself ;D). Module exam-style questions were helpful.
Recommended Other Resources:
Notes from others - this was my go-to resource when writing my own notes, as it hard sometimes to work-out how much depth I should use.
Year of Completion: 2018 (Compressed).
Rating: 5 out of 5
Comments: I loved HSC Bio, and it was 100% better than prelim. It is a subject where all the modules are interconnected, and there were constantly areas of study that really interested me beyond just getting a good grade. Using a variety of ways to memorise information is helpful - my go-to was diagrams and acronyms, but there are many other ways to get the info into your brain. :)
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Subject Name: Legal Studies
Level: (Prelim or HSC?) Prelim
Workload:
A relatively heavy workload. I know a lot of people dropped out soon after Term 1 began, because they weren't ready for the intense work load. Or, they fell behind. It is really easy to fall behind if you don't make consistent notes, so if you feel unsure about a topic or are even a LITTLE bit behind - work through it. Don't leave assessments to the last minute (especially not prelims!).
Assessment: (Outline the various assessments which make up the subject and how much each counts for)
I had a first assessment in Term 1 that was on the first few dot points of the syllabus. It was a fairly basic test - multiple choice and an extended response on the application of law. Becuase we were so new to the course, many of us didn't get great marks. But it's amazing to see the improvement between that first task to where we are now!
The second assessment was a hand-in research task. It was the most in-depth research I had ever done. My teacher chose for us to evaluate the legal and non-legal measures of a contemporary issue, where we did surrogacy. You had to be reallllly analytical - if you just rehashed information you can find with a quick google search, that's a C at best. The best responses needed thorough research and justified analysis.
Exam Thoughts: (What's the structure? How hard was it?)
Prelims! oh my goodness. The structure in hind sight was as expected: multiple choice, short answer, and extended responses. In short, a lot of writing. I got a lot of things wrong, especially in the multiple choice, because my knowledge wasn't as fine-tuned as it should have been. But a killer extended response can easily pull through those extra needed marks, so don't forget to do really well in those.
It wasn't hard per se - you just had to know the content well.
Textbook Recommendation: (What did you use? How much did you use it?)
We used the Pearson textbook. It was all right, adequate as a textbook can be. The general principles and basics are really crucial for you to understand, but I wouldn't rely on the textbook. My teacher gave us notes the whole way through to supplement the textbook, and sometimes just disregarded the text entirely. Since it was published in 2011 or something, the stuff was really out of date. For example, gay marriage wasn't legalised at that point, so it talked about "a movement towards marriage equality" rather than discussing the result of that movement. You definitley have to use your own research and notes.
Recommended Other Resources:
LCMs are still really important (Legislation, Case law, media articles). This ties in with the extra research on contemporary issues you need to do. Markers always look for contemporary issues, so don't talk about something from the 80s, when a better recent case can be applied.
Year of Completion: 2018
Rating: out of 5
5/5 soooooooo good
Your Mark/Grade: (Optional)
1st
Comments: Give your overall opinion of the subject, content, assessment etc. and a recommendation, plus anything else which you feel is relevant.
I cannot recommend legal enough. It would be the best decision you have ever made. I came into it in Year 11 planning to drop it, but the first lesson made me stay, and I even want to do a law degree now! I recommend it to everyone because I love it so much; the content is great, and you get a really great insight into the functions of society.
However, it's not for everyone. Do you like writing? Like, a lot? Essays? Do you enjoy research? Making lots of notes? Are you prepared to memorise a bunch of stuff?
If you said yes to the above, then hooray! Legal is great for you ;)
Also, if you do legal, make sure to pay attention to the prelim content. It's helpful for the hsc course!
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Subject Name: Physics
Level: HSC
Workload: I wouldn't say there is too much workload, a lot of memorization though sadly. Concepts aren't that hard to pick up however may be abstract and so your ability to think outside the box in Physics largely dictates your workload. For my HSC I never hand wrote answers for any past paper and I never completed the worksheets we got in class.
Assessment: At my school, we had...
- 25% Practical Assessments x1
- 25% Half Yearly
- 20% Research Assignment(was practical based so it counts as a practical technically)
- 30% Trial HSC Exam
Exam Thoughts:
- 20 Multiple Choice
- 55 marks overall for the core topics
- 25 marks for the option topic
Took the 2018 HSC paper, and came out disappointed at the kind of paper NESA made. There was no questions that required critical thinking or thinking outside the box. Each question was an endless regurgitation of content which you were required to put into an essay form as if this subject is English. Sadly for me I'm not as good at writing essays as opposed to mathematical questions
Textbook Recommendation: Physics in Focus, its a good book. However I did not use a single textbook for Physics in my study. Get the matrix Physics books, they will be everything you need for this subject!!!
Recommended Other Resources: Matrix Physics Textbooks. They are a MUST. By only reading these books you could get a band 6 as they contain absolutely everything you need!
Year of Completion: 2018
Rating: 2 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: Expected 92+
Comments:
Largely a disappointing course. What they teach us is not even Physics, rather it is a version that has been watered down to such a large extent into feeling like a HSIE subject. Instead of deriving equations and performing mathematical arguments, were stuck regurgitating material into an essay format that really doesn't allow some people including myself who will be taking Physics in UNI to shine and become exposed to the real side of Physics. Still a fun course definitely, the exams may be disappointing BUT the theory and content is SUPER FUN! Especially when you get to the quantum side of it.
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Subject Name: Software Design and Development
Level: HSC
Workload: On the contrary to what everyone's opinions are on SDD, it is not an easy subject. There is quite a bit of workload, especially due to the sheer amount of theory and the Major Project which takes a lot of dedication. Pseudocode is fundamental to any SDD exam and because it relies on your problem solving ability, it is hard to master. I personally spent a lot of hours improving my ability to problem solve for algorithms in a software exam. I've done every one from 2000 - 2017 atleast 3-4 times, so there is a fair amount of workload.
Assessment: At my school, we had...
- 15% Social and ethical issues Assignment
- 20% Half Yearly
- 15% Major Project Part A
- 25% Major Project Part B
- 25% Trial HSC Exam
Exam Thoughts:
- 20 Multiple Choice
- 60 marks overall for the core topics
- 20 marks for the option topic
I found it quite an easy paper, but that is due to the amount of study I put behind this subject. The general consensus was that it was a tough paper. NESA seems to be focusing more on the problem solving side of SDD recently, i.e. the algorithms and charts, hence you MUST be able to do these for a band 6 mark. The option topic for this year(programming paradigms) was the easiest it has been in years so we were lucky on that part. The larger algorithms were definitely much more tedious than previous years and definitely more difficult as they put forward quite unique scenarios that required the use of multiple loops
Textbook Recommendation: The Sam Davis SDD textbook. For theory you can literally just memorize and regurgitate his exact words in the book and get full marks for a question in the HSC, taking into account you have related it to the scenario. That is what I did.
Recommended Other Resources: Independent Trial Papers, you NEED to get your hands on those. The algorithms they provide are REALLY good practice for HSC as they tend to be much harder and thus prepare you.
Year of Completion: 2018
Rating: 5 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: 96
Comments:
Software is a very fun and engaging course. It is sad to see many people drop out after the first few weeks just because they find it boring. Yes the first chapter of software is really boring as it is just social and ethical issues, but it gets MUCH better. After the first one or two chapters you start getting into the hard core software design and development which is really fun. Regardless of the scaling and peoples opinions Software is by no means an easy course and it requires a lot of determination especially for the Major project and Algorithms in exams. Definitely give it a shot!
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Subject Name: Legal Studies
Level: HSC
Workload: Very heavy! But.. if you track your workload week by week and break it down into little chunks... it will be a lot easier to cope with.
Assessment: In my HSC year (2018) for Legal Studies I studied; Human Rights, Crime, World Order and Consumers.
Personally I loved crime the best... I think everybody does tho...lol ;) the others were very interesting except consumers got a bit dry. I'll explain what each assessment was like.
Sooooooooo...... Term 1 of Year 12 Legal Studies: Human Rights. For this assessment we had to choose a contemporary human rights issue (I chose arbitrary arrest and detention) and we had to write an essay on this issue with relevant cases, statutes, media articles etc. Then we had to make an 'engaging' table about the legal and non-legal responses to this issue and we also had to write an in depth report on one of these responses and assess to what extent it was effective in trying to eliminate arbitrary arrest and detention.
I really enjoyed this task as I included a case study of Otto Warmbier (american citizen who traveled to North Korea and was arrested for 'crimes against the state'. He really just took a picture off the wall... but yeah, story for another day). Mark for that assessment: 93% || Rank: 1st in class
Term 2 of Year 12 Legal Studies: Brings me to my most favourite topic..... Crime! So for this topic our teacher basically gave us free reign over what we wanted to study. We had 10 weeks to complete (so a full term) and I think I used 9.5 weeks to get the whole thing done. We were assigned to study ANY recent criminal case in NSW that had been resolved and the accused had a final outcome achieved. So basically the accused couldn't still be awaiting a final trial, or on bail or held on remand... etc. etc. I chose the case R v. Xie which was one of the best cases for legal as it literally covered every single aspect of the criminal justice system. We had to research the whole case and write up a report covering every side of the crime. This included proving the mens rea (the accused had the guilty mind to kill) and actus reus (the accused physically carried out the act of killing) as it was a murder case; then we also had to prove the reasons for the crime, criminal investigation process, criminal trial process, court proceedings etc. It was a very detailed assessment also including an appendix with crime scene photographs and an extensive bibliography. In short, this assessment probably helped me the most in regards to my Trials and actual HSC as I knew the case inside and out and used it in every crime essay. Mark for that assessment: 100% || Rank: 1st in class
Term 3 of Year 12 Legal Studies: World Order. I also really liked this topic (just not quite as much as crime tho ;D) because it was very current affairs based. So basically, our teacher chose this topic as an option (there are many other choices) but if you have the chance of persuading your teacher about what topics to do... I recommend steering him/her into choosing world order! Currently, there is a lot going on in the world. *wow obvious statement* but what I mean by that is that topics such as North Korea, Donald Trump, global warming, nuclear warfare, Russia, China etc. are explored in detail and give you a lot of scope for the assessments etc. For the assessment task we had to do a 50 minute timed response to an unseen question. I found it a bit tricky but basically just memorised every theme and challenge from the textbook in order to prepare for any question that could be thrown at us. I can't remember what the question was but mark for that assessment was: 92% || Rank: 1st in class
Term 4 of Year 12 Legal Studies: Consumers. Brace yourselves, it gets rather boring. Some cases were interesting (like a lady who found a decomposed snail in her ginger beer whilst out dining!!) but the rest of it got very tedious. No, I'm exaggerating. It wasn't that bad. It's just more business based and focused. But we didn't actually do an assessment for this topic, which I found made me really struggle with consumer essay questions in the HSC. Why this happened was because when the Trials rolled around, we hadn't even started learning about consumers. In the Trial, for the options essay we had to write BOTH world order questions which was an absolute killer. Anyways, we crammed it in before the holidays and I basically taught myself everything about consumers.
Trial Mark: 88% || Rank at end of year: 1st in class
Exam Thoughts: The basic structure in a Legal Studies exam looks like this:
- Section One: Multiple Choice (Crime and Human Rights)
- Section Two: Part A: Short Answers (Human Rights) || Part B: Crime Essay
- Section Three: Options Essays
Overall, I found the exams to be challenging. The reason for this is that Legal Studies requires you to learn and retain a LOT of information and they can literally test you on any random point or section of the syllabus. In saying that though, I found that keeping up with the weekly work and staying on top of it really really helped me to cope in the exams and gave me something to fall back on as I often managed to remember little pieces of information that we had learnt whilst doing the homework. Lame as that sounds... doing your homework actually helps you.... WOW!!!!!!
Basically, stay on track of what your doing. Have a plan of attack for each section of the exam and it's fine. 8)
Textbook Recommendation: Pearson: Legal Studies - I used this every single day. (well every single day I had a legal studies lesson) as our homework was based off this textbook. It's really helpful and has loads of information but I also liked to sometimes use Cambridge Legal Studies textbook (I had it on PDF file) just to fill in the gaps and to get extra information from time to time. In the lead up to trials and the HSC I really really loved the Excel textbook for legal. It was awesome. Had a breakdown of every single point in the syllabus and explained it in detail. HIGHLY RECOMMEND THE EXCEL TEXTBOOK!
Recommended Other Resources: - NSW Legislation website, NSW state library, AtarNotes 8) 8), BarNet Jade and the Supreme Court of NSW court documents.
Year of Completion: 2018
Rating: 5 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: Still awaiting HSC result. Final Rank at end of year: 1st in class
Comments: I absolutely loved Legal Studies. It is like no other subject and is highly relevant to today's society and what is going on in the world. I had a lot of friends say to me in the year "Oh I wish I had done Legal Studies! Sounds like such an interesting subject" and let me tell you... it sure is! Just be prepared to have to retain quite a lot of info, but... as I said before, if you break it down into small daily or weekly chunks and write your notes bit by bit, you won't have a ton of stuff to cram and memorise in the week leading up to exams.
I can't recommend Legal Studies enough! It is so totally different to any other subject I did and I truly loved doing it. If your considering choosing it as a subject I encourage you to DO IT!!! You definitely won't regret it (except when its late at night and you've spent hours hunched at the computer reading about a murder case and you suddenly need the loo... that was the only time I ever regretted choosing the subject.... LOL haha ;D ;D).
Go for it! Give it your all and you can smash Legal Studies out of the park!
ATVB on your HSC journey!!
xo
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Subject Name: Legal Studies
Level: HSC
Workload: A lot of workload, essay writing - but more so revolved around not just knowing syllabus dot points but knowing contemporary examples/evidence - legislation, cases, treaties. If you can research the best evidence and use it to adapt to any given essay then you will be fine. For crime and human rights - there's not doubt you need to know your content for the multiple choice and short answers. Personally I think updating your lcmdt is the big workload as that's the key to writing an essay, alongside knowing the crime and human rights content. But really, it's testing your flexibility and critical thinking to argue your point.
Assessment: Well for legal, my first assessment was for my consumer law option - we had to basically film a video of ourselves or do a magazine article informing consumers on various remedies/redress options for contemporary issues such as deceptive and misleading advertising and basically evaluate how we would in an essay. It was actually pretty decent since we could use the same information from our video in the essays, pretty funny filming myself tho. Our second assessment was a hand in as well for crime and human rights, so the crime essay question was on young offenders and the human rights was a short answer on the contemporary issue human trafficking. Since it was hand in it was pretty easy to smash although I do admit it would have been good to do some handwriting practice but you know corona and all. The third assessment we had was an in class family law essay on law reform on two contemporary issues with one page of summary notes that basically just had my evidence on it. I did changing nature of parental responsibility and same-sex relationships. Overall, I came second in the assessment tasks most of the time and third for my trial exams. The assessment tasks I would say were weighed pretty equally - like 20% and trials was like 30%.
Exam Thoughts:
So the legal studies exam is 20 multiple choice on crime and human rights for 20 marks, you have to do human rights short answer worth 15 marks, you have a 15 mark crime question (that could be on literally any syllabus dot point in the crime syllabus!) and two options essay you get to select. For my class, we did family law and consumer as our options.
I thought the 2020 legal exam was pretty good considering the year that we have had, some multiple choice were a bit effy but the options essay was pretty broad questions and good - I attempted the one about family law/consumer law finding it difficult to encourage compliance, using domestic violence, parental responsibility for family, product certification and deceptive advertising for consumer. The crime question was okay since I was kinda expecting it to be the criminal trial process because they never did that before in previous years, but the "moral and ethical standards" like I had seen that question before from like papers ages ago and online and I was like whattt but overall it was pretty good but that doesn't mean they wont be really really specific to one dot point next year! I tackled the exam with the options essay first, crime essay and then did the short answers and mcq last because I felt they were easier than the essays but yeah its really up to you how you approach
Textbook Recommendation: (What did you use? How much did you use it?)
So my class used Cambridge Legal Studies Textbook. To be honest, I only used the textbook when we had to do in class review questions for each chapter but I reckon the textbook is really useful for multiple choice and short answer questions because its really detailed and has all the terminology for your responses. I scavenged the textbook from time to time for terminology for my consumer and family law essays even.
Recommended Other Resources:
- I would recommend utilising abc news, Sydney morning heard and like any news paper and using contemporary examples from the news for your essays to show your application to the real world
- the notes on these atarnotes website is great too to learn to create your own
- also art of smart practice questions helped me have the flexibility to adapt to any crime question
- do lots of practice questions/trial papers -- expose yourself and see how you can adapt any evidence to any question and argue your point
Year of Completion: 2020
Rating: 5/5
Your Mark/Grade: Tbh I don't even know
Comments: If you like writing, reading and researching and actually learning about how society functions then go for it! This course content is really interesting and makes me wanna do law. Another tip is to use PEARRJAM criteria to evaluate, which means to make a judgement, knowing that and having the best examples of the law today is the best achievement ever!