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Well English will probably seem like a distant memory by now. Hopefully your hand isn’t too blistered and your brain isn’t too fried. But I hope you’ve had a bit of a break too! The English Exams take it out of you, so it’s important to recharge a little bit. That said, we now reach another critical stage: There are 80 hours until Math. If you take any level of Math, you have an exam on Friday. Gulp.
Math is a very different subject to many others that you will take in your HSC. There’s not a whole lot of content to know. Instead, it’s all skills. It is for this reason that a lot of people, with 80 hours until Mathematics, get a bit lost. What the hell do you do for these last few days to get yourself prepared? Fear not, here is your game plan.
1. PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE
Yeah, you probably knew this was coming right!
A massive amount of your time over the coming days should be spent practicing exam-style questions. Now these need not be done under exam conditions, although with 80 hours until Math, it would be best to be getting comfortable with that scenario as soon as possible. But confidence is important too!
Devote some time every single morning to do a past HSC paper. If you are out of them, grab a Trial Paper! I would wake up every morning of my HSC and do a past paper; every single day from 9am-12pm. It is not too late to pick up that habit. With 80 hours until Math, even just one past paper every morning gets you three full practice exams before the big day. That’s awesome! If you can do two, even better.
Now the important thing here actually isn’t the papers themselves (though they are bloody important). No, the important thing here is identifying your weaknesses.
2. FOLLOW UP ON YOUR TROUBLE AREAS
After you do a past paper; you need to mark it. There is absolutely no point in doing a past paper and not figuring out how you went. It’s like running a marathon and not checking your time (okay, so some people probably do that, but you get the idea).
After the past paper you will do tomorrow, take 15 minutes to mark it against the sample BOSTES solutions. Try and guess how many marks you’d be awarded for your working (this is a great exercise by itself). Importantly, use this info to classify your marks lost by topic.
So by the end of your session, you should have a breakdown of where you need improvement. If you only got 4 marks out of the 10 available for a particular area; revise it. Then watch for improvement in your next exam. This process of exam-evaluate-follow up is extremely important with 80 hours until Math. You need to be hitting your weaknesses!
In the lead up to my 2U paper, I would do a past paper in the morning and mark it. Wherever I lost the marks, I would revise that in the afternoon. Do some chapter review questions, check my formulae, watch a YouTube video on it if I needed, that sort of thing. Remember you can use our Question Threads for General, 2U and 4U to get some assistance at any time! Then, I’d do my next paper that night and check if I’d improved. I tested, I evaluated, I followed up, and then I re-evaluated. This process is literally everywhere, and it is extremely important with 80 hours until Math.
So there is your plan! Past paper in the morning, revision in the afternoon, then another past paper in the evening. It’s a gruelling schedule for sure, but trust me. It’s well worth it.
3. MAKE YOURSELF SOME ANSWER TEMPLATES
So normally at this point in a pre-exam rant, I’d say something like this:
“Make yourself a summary sheet of your formulas.”
Except now everyone gets this given to them in the exam. Lucky you!
So, we take our energy and devote it to something that is actually more useful. We are going to make some answer templates! This is how it works.
Our Math topics all have standard question types.
Find the tax owed on BLAH
Differentiate BLAH
Sketch BLAH
You get the idea. The key to success in any math course is being able to respond to these question types quickly and efficiently, so you can devote energy to the curveballs.
Even with 80 hours until Math, you’ll need some chill time. Take an hour to do this between papers! Grab some palm cards, and on one side, write a question type (the BLAH’s like I’ve done above are optional). Then on the other side, dot point the process you apply to get the answer in that circumstance.
I’ll give an example for 2U:
Question Type: Curve Sketches
Approach:
Domain/Range
Odd/Even
Intercepts
1st/2nd Derivatives
Turning Points
Inflexions
Sketch
That was a long one, but it shows what I mean. Lay out the process you follow to answer that question type. Have a collection of these to study the morning of your exam, or on bus rides, or whatever.
Don’t spend too long on these with 80 hours until Math! Practice is always better. That said, if you are looking for something to study in your off-time, and have trouble remembering how to approach certain key questions, this might be really beneficial for you!
4. SCREW MATH, I’VE GOT BIO THE DAY BEFORE!
In an ideal world, you have all day every day between now and Friday to prepare for your Math exam. In reality, a lot of us have other exams this week. I suspect many of us will have Biology the day before (maybe some had Senior Science today). CAFS and Modern History are this week too. All this taken into account, our 80 hours before Math is dealt a pretty significant blow.
You need to devote time however you think will work best for you. More time for your harder subject is likely best, while still continuing to work on everything at least a little bit.
The key is this. With 80 hours until Math, you need to be doing at least a little bit of Math every day. Even on the days of other exams, find the time to do just 30 minutes’ worth of work. Your brain is like a muscle; you need to keep using it to keep it armed and ready. Doing a little bit every day will make sure you don’t fall too far out of practice.
5. 80 HOURS UNTIL MATH ISN’T LONG: COME AND CHAT TO US!
We’ve got some wicked talented math tutors on ATAR Notes. Band 6 Math students, 99+ ATAR scorers. Want your 4U questions answered by a tutor who got 97 for 4U in his HSC last year? It’s crazy cool, and it’s totally free. Register here and come ask them all your questions, or just come say hey and pick their brain! We’re here to help!