ATAR Notes: Forum

VCE Stuff => VCE Technology => VCE Mathematics/Science/Technology => VCE Subjects + Help => VCE Computing: Software Development => Topic started by: no steez on October 15, 2013, 08:21:07 pm

Title: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: no steez on October 15, 2013, 08:21:07 pm
Hey guys, I thought to liven up this section a bit more we could report the exams we have completed.
Discuss any exams, suggest exams or even ask questions!

I've only completed the TSSM 2013 Software Development exam so far, only got 85% :/
Title: Re: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: silverpixeli on October 15, 2013, 09:05:59 pm
Hey, I've done
VITTA 2013
VITTA 2011 Unit 3 (not a full exam)
Insight 2011
Oh and VCAA 2012
My marks have been between 85% and 95%, which I'm pretty happy with. From the grade distributions on the vcaa website the A+ cutoff has been around 75% for the last 2 years, so these are pretty great scores. I get the feeling it's really difficult to full mark these exams.
Was the TSSM paper good? Worth doing? I'm hoping to get along to their revision lecture next weekend (I think)

Because there aren't as many papers available as for other subjects, I'm planning on just completing what I have and revising my notes in preparation for the day. I don't think there's much you can really do to prepare for some of the stuff they ask you anyway since it all relates to the case study and stuff.
Title: Re: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: Lasercookie on October 15, 2013, 09:41:43 pm
Don't forget about that Swinburne free lecture too, I never went to the actual lecture but at least sign up for it to get access to the online resources they put up.

You'll have a good sense for what's on the course and not on the course, so you can also go pretty far back with the VCAA exams. I'd recommend at least do the directly previous study design. I think Mark Kelly's post-mortems had the relevant/irrelevant questions listed too.

If you don't want to do the old Information Systems exams (or find that there's only a couple of questions worth doing by that point), I'd at least study the assessor reports for those. You might find a lot of familiar content, there's DFDs, pseudocode and case studies you can analyse from those ones. If you get stuck for what to study, looking at the quality of the answers you write down is something you can nearly always improve upon.

I wouldn't recommend doing non-VCAA exams from previous study designs though.
Title: Re: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: TechnicallyDead on October 17, 2013, 06:38:28 pm
I've done all the past VCAA paper to '07, removing the questions that didn't relate to the current study design. Been getting around 75% ( like silverpixeli said, is around the A cut off, so im pleased)

I've just printed a couple of VITTA exams i hope to get to this weekend. :)

Don't forget about that Swinburne free lecture too, I never went to the actual lecture but at least sign up for it to get access to the online resources they put up.

Signed up for this and looking forward to going. :D Anyone else attending???

Title: Re: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: silverpixeli on October 17, 2013, 07:08:47 pm
WARNING: VITTA EXAMS ARE SATAN
It's not defamatory if it's true, right? (Is bagging a company's product even defaming them?)

Anyway yeah I'm going to the swinburne lecture with a few friends :)

Around what percent of questions would you say are still relevant? 60% of them? 80% of them?
Title: Re: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: lala1911 on October 17, 2013, 07:23:46 pm
I'm doing I.T Apps. The exams I've done are:
INSIGHT, QAT, VITTA, TSSM, VCAA.
Most of these practice exams have a lot of irrelevant information.. compared to VCAA the exams they are pretty different. This applies to SD too.

Good practice though.
Title: Re: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: TechnicallyDead on October 18, 2013, 04:11:18 pm
WARNING: VITTA EXAMS ARE SATAN
Well im going to have a fun weekend  :-\ :P

Around what percent of questions would you say are still relevant? 60% of them? 80% of them?
There was only a handful throughout the exam ie. Maybe a couple in MC and 3 or 4 in the other sections.

I also used vceit.com to mark my exam as he indicated the question that are irrelevant to the current study design which is very nice :)
Title: Re: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: silverpixeli on October 18, 2013, 05:15:46 pm
They're not THAT bad, I guess they're just really vague in places, which makes it hard to know what they want from you. Compared to the VCAA exam I did which felt much clearer overall, I could tell what they were testing in each question which allowed me to (mostly) know what I had to write to get marks. I guess it just means VCAA put more effort into their questions.
Title: Re: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: WeaponX on October 18, 2013, 05:46:47 pm
I've done 6 MC exams (I like doing MCs a lot, they are lot less time consuming and still offer great revision) and like 1.5 SA exams. Still haven't done timed ones yet. I've done 4 from VITTA, and my marks are all over the place, from an 11/20 on VITTA 2011 Exam 1 to a 19/20 on VITTA 2012 Exam 2, they're a bit erratic :P I've also done one from CSE and AJ Publishing (the author of the SD textbook), got 18/20 for both of those. I'm saving the 2011, 2012 VCAA exams to do timed a little closer to the exam.
Title: Re: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: no steez on October 20, 2013, 12:34:59 pm
Hey, I've done
VITTA 2013
VITTA 2011 Unit 3 (not a full exam)
Insight 2011
Oh and VCAA 2012
My marks have been between 85% and 95%, which I'm pretty happy with. From the grade distributions on the vcaa website the A+ cutoff has been around 75% for the last 2 years, so these are pretty great scores. I get the feeling it's really difficult to full mark these exams.
Was the TSSM paper good? Worth doing? I'm hoping to get along to their revision lecture next weekend (I think)

Because there aren't as many papers available as for other subjects, I'm planning on just completing what I have and revising my notes in preparation for the day. I don't think there's much you can really do to prepare for some of the stuff they ask you anyway since it all relates to the case study and stuff.
In response to the TSSM paper, it's no doubt a solid practice exam, however I'm not sure if this is the study design or the questions but I felt as If I was using the same examples/knowledge over and over.
I wish they still made checkpoints for software development, but I suppose they stopped due to the declining numbers undergoing this subject.
Title: Re: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: XpK on November 09, 2013, 12:22:31 pm
Where do you guys get these exams from?

I managed to scavenge a few VITTAs from school but nothing beyond that
Title: Re: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: darvell on November 09, 2013, 09:30:13 pm
WARNING: VITTA EXAMS ARE SATAN

wow that's actually the most accurate thing I have ever read omg
Title: Re: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: no steez on November 09, 2013, 10:17:08 pm
Where do you guys get these exams from?

I managed to scavenge a few VITTAs from school but nothing beyond that
I was lucky enough to be hooked up with 10 papers relevant to this current study design. I got one from my textbook and the rest from school.
Title: Re: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: Ya Habibi on November 13, 2013, 05:40:25 pm
I've done at least 12 exams ranging from VITTA, VCAA, TSSM, CSE and others I think. I've got probably two more to go :) My marks have been in the high 80s.
Title: Re: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: XpK on November 14, 2013, 03:24:44 pm
I've done at least 12 exams ranging from VITTA, VCAA, TSSM, CSE and others I think. I've got probably two more to go :) My marks have been in the high 80s.

What d'you reckon you'll get as a study score? I've hit the same :D
Title: Re: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: Ya Habibi on November 14, 2013, 04:09:24 pm
Ideally, I want a 50, haha! But realistically, I'm aiming for a 40+, most preferably a 45. I've put so much time and effort into this exam. Ah well, it's only year 11, and that being said, it is only a guide for next year.
Title: Re: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: no steez on November 14, 2013, 04:13:07 pm
Ideally, I want a 50, haha! But realistically, I'm aiming for a 40+, most preferably a 45. I've put so much time and effort into this exam. Ah well, it's only year 11, and that being said, it is only a guide for next year.
Exactly my thoughts haha
Anyway good luck man, hope to see you in the 40+ section of the newspaper
Title: Re: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: availn on November 14, 2013, 04:18:52 pm
WARNING: VITTA EXAMS ARE SATAN

I remember in the 2011 VITTA, there was a multiple choice question that gave a list, a quicksort algorithm, and asked how many times the algorithm would call itself...
Title: Re: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: Ya Habibi on November 14, 2013, 04:29:16 pm
Exactly my thoughts haha
Anyway good luck man, hope to see you in the 40+ section of the newspaper

Woahh, there is a section of the paper where our names get put up if we score 40+? 
Title: Re: What practice exams have you guys done?
Post by: XpK on November 15, 2013, 04:54:14 am
Woahh, there is a section of the paper where our names get put up if we score 40+?

http://www.theage.com.au/national/tertiary-education/victorias-top-students-20121218-2bkww.html

A list of Gods  8)