Excel and Success One books?

[Thebarman]

What are your thoughts on HSC Excel and Success One books? Are they worthwhile? Is there any point to buying a book with previous exam papers when they're all available online?

I recently bought the Modern History and Math copies of the book, and I'm not quite sure how best to utilise them. Any suggestions?

[RuiAce]

I found Excel English, physics and chemistry all useful in their own ways.

Maths though... maths excel is mostly for if you really need it. Textbook's fine as is.


Sometimes they muck up, but more often than not I highly favour the Excel Success One series for everything. BOSTES answers for stuff science are so plain; you only ever use it for the marking guidelines. They also overanswer, which may be bad in telling you how much you should write about but do more in what there is you CAN write out.

Although just buying the MANSW books for maths may be more money saving. But I reckon they're both equally as good and Excel Success One for maths is a good choice.
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How math can be used though, well math is mostly just a set of notes plus a set of questions. So tbh you can treat it as though it were a textbook. I only used Success One come HSC time though

[jamonwindeyer]

What are your thoughts on HSC Excel and Success One books? Are they worthwhile? Is there any point to buying a book with previous exam papers when they're all available online?

I recently bought the Modern History and Math copies of the book, and I'm not quite sure how best to utilise them. Any suggestions?

Hey hey! You are spot on the money with the Success Ones to be honest; as long as you are happy to spend an hour downloading them all from BOSTES! The one thing they do have is worked solutions, which is really handy (BOSTES has them for the most recent papers, though they are often either over/under-detailed).

If you are only going to be doing a few past papers, then the Success One books aren't that useful. I see it as those books are for the people who want to do a massive amount of past papers (that was me, and I did find them extremely useful for that purpose!). Otherwise, just download what you need from BOSTES and use their solutions (a lot of people just jump onto our Math Q+A's if they are stuck with them too).

I had the Excel books for Studies of Religion and Mathematics. I used the SOR book a few times, wasn't worth the price I paid, and I never used the Excel Mathematics book. I only really think they are useful if you don't have a good textbook, particularly for Maths/Sciences. The humanities they might act as nice summaries to help you write your notes (although the ATAR Notes HSC Subject Notes) serve this purpose better imo).

So yeah, in summary, the Success One books are really useful if you want to be doing a whole lot of practice papers! For other situations and for the other products, perhaps less so

[elysepopplewell]

What are your thoughts on HSC Excel and Success One books? Are they worthwhile? Is there any point to buying a book with previous exam papers when they're all available online?

I recently bought the Modern History and Math copies of the book, and I'm not quite sure how best to utilise them. Any suggestions?

Admittedly, I found that the way to utilise HSC books on Modern History was to just use a tiny amount from a lot of books. Because the options are diverse, it's difficult to find really in-depth information on just one topic. And when you do find a really in-depth explanation of one of your topics, there is still always more to add. So, I think Excel and Success One might be a great place to start, but then go to your local library and find other text books, historian's books, and non-HSC books that tackle the topic, to get a really great understanding of your topics. Modern History is a subject where you could really research only that for the entire year and you still wouldn't know everything, but definitely reading widely is super important in the subject! The more scope you get, the better. And you'll always find little bits and bobs that could be super important for your study/exams in one book, and it won't feature in the others.

Hopefully this helps