How much harder is Specialist, in comparison to Methods and Further?

[nosuperstar]

So i'm in year 11 and currently doing General Maths, originally I was doing 11 Methods (CAS) but moved down to General due to in class pressure because of the teacher I had, though as the semester has gone on, i've been self teaching myself the methods unit with the hope of doing methods 3/4 next year, but after looking at the scaling of Specialist, I was curious, how much harder is it in comparison to Methods and Further?

[paulsterio]

Depends really, I found specialist maths mildly harder than methods, not that much harder, just requires a little more brain power when doing exams and stuff, but it does have a bit more content than methods. Further is actually a lot harder than it looks to be honest, because it is competitive.

Note that a difficult subject can be difficult in two ways, difficult because it is difficult to understand and difficult because it is too easy to understand and hence it becomes so hard to get those high marks because everyone does well. So I think Further is a bit of the 2nd.

You're up against a stronger cohort when doing spesh though, as compared to methods, so it's much more difficult to get the same raw study score.

[Romperait]

The content of specialist maths is a little bit more difficult than methods but the increased scaling is not as a result of this change in difficulty but rather the competitiveness of the cohort.

[nosuperstar]

Further is actually a lot harder than it looks to be honest, because it is competitive.

Note that a difficult subject can be difficult in two ways, difficult because it is difficult to understand and difficult because it is too easy to understand and hence it becomes so hard to get those high marks because everyone does well. So I think Further is a bit of the 2nd.

My school isn't exactly high achieving, and anyone that is actually good at maths in my year level is up ahead doing further or methods 12, or doing methods 11.
Majority of people doing General are as they say 'being forced to do it' because their parents want them to, leaving mostly everyone doing average to low in the course.
Methods gave me an advantage in the first unit of General and i'm topping my class on every sac and even the exam, so there isn't much competition, but in that sense, I feel a bit out of place because it doesn't offer much of a challenge, i'm great at maths and I enjoy it, but the fact that the smart students in my level still do average to low in methods worries me a little.

[paulsterio]

Yep, I get you, but how well you do is dependent upon you and you only, if you put in the hard work and you try your best, you can still do well, that's why sometimes you get kids at elite private schools doing badly but kids at lower-ranked public schools do really well.

Hmmm, I don't know, just from the looks of things you should be doing Unit 1/2 Methods - but yeah, I get what you mean, the challenge with Further is that it's not DIFFICULT per se, but it's so competitive that the difficulty lies in not losing any marks on the exam

Ok, so what are you wanting to do next year - in terms of maths? Methods + Further? (Just makes it easier to tell you about stuff )

[ligands]

lol wouldn't even add further here, further = year 10 stuff in most cases

[paulsterio]

lol wouldn't even add further here, further = year 10 stuff in most cases

Like I've said, you might think it's year 10 stuff, but it doesn't make it easy, the difficulty lies not in the content, but the minimisation of marks lost on exams, and that's a very difficult thing to do.

[Special At Specialist]

Although specialist maths is a bit harder than methods, the fact that you are attending twice as many maths classes with about two thirds of the topics overlapping is enough to compensate for that.
The main issue with specialist is the competition. Unlike methods, people don't do specialist maths because they "need it". They do it because they enjoy maths and are quite passionate about it. If you want to score a 40+ in specialist, you need to stand out amongst these people.

[TrueTears]

Quoted by the man himself:

Spesh is about 1.6 times harder than methods.

Re: How HARD is specialist?

Also note if you go on field trips, you should find spesh very easy:

Hey guys, should I take spec next year considering i've been averaging a field's medal every four years?

I think you will find that with enough dedication and diligence, you will be able to have a successful year in spesh next year. Most of the topics you would have studied on ur field trip thingy will be similarly covered by spesh as well, so gl.

lol in all seriousness, spesh just carries on from methods (cept for probability), methods provides the foundation, spesh goes beyond.