When is everyone starting practice exams?

[Lasercookie]

For methods, which company papers did you start with?

Do you do VCAA last?

I did VCAA first for all my subjects, just because that's the minimum standard that you *must* know, and also so that I could pretty much read the assessor's report inside out (they have some good tips about exam technique etc. in there). Also that way the left of field questions on VCAA exams still felt challenging, take a look at practice exams and you can see how a lot of them just adapt/follow the theme of the harder questions on VCAA exams from the previous year.

I didn't really feel comfortable leaving VCAA last. If there was a question on a VCAA exam that I couldn't do easily I certainly don't want to know that less than a week before the exam. You can do them whenever really, but I wouldn't leave them too late.

Otherwise I didn't fuss too much about the order of doing company exams, I just tried to keep things varied a lot.

[pi]

I did an older (current study design one) VCAA one first to see how noob I was, then did the rest at the end later to re-assess how noob I was.

edit: typo

[Shenz0r]

For methods, our school provided us with this massive exam pack which had something like 50 papers, but I didn't really use it since it had like 4 pages of an exam on one page. A person in my cohort was nice enough to share a huge library of practise exam pdfs for most subjects. It had all the company papers, down to the early 2000s. So I really had more than enough practise exams on my computer for the time being, just printed them out and did them.

No, I didn't do all the VCAA questions last. I recall doing it by the year. As in, do all the commercial 2006 papers first...then VCAA 2006. Then do all the commercial 2007 papers...then VCAA 2007, and so on. Then on the final week I did all the VCAA exams again (it's unlikely you're going to remember every answer to every question again, especially if you spread the exams out)

[chasej]

Our school will be finishing most courses in 4-5 weeks, after which I suppose we'll just be doing revision. But knowing how many practice exams there are available (most of which I want to complete), I'm wandering whether I should start earlier. Of course this means I'll have to self-teach myself the last few topics of my subjects, which may be pressing considering the number of SACs around this time...

When is (or maybe has already) everyone getting into practice papers? Are you starting before or after your school finishes the course? Just trying to get a gauge of where I should be. 

You can always do practice exams, skipping all the questions you don't know, if you want to start them before finishing the course.

My economics teacher says we should finish the course around the third last week of this term, so about 5 or so weeks from now.

I've already done a couple of U3 prac exams but that was just for revision rather than exam prep. Since my class is going to finish the course fairly early, I might as well just focus on SACs and get into exam rev after the last outcome and that would still leave me with 2 and a half or so months to revise. I think it's better to learn the course and not get into practice exams until I have a thorough knowledge of the course. Economics isn't really a subject you can spam prac exams for and do well so I'll probably do somewhere between 5 and 15 prac exams all up depending on how I feel.

There's no set amount or timeframe to do practice exams, so as long as you feel you are maximising your performance on the day than that's all you really need to do.

[lolipopper]

hi guys, so ive gone through my whole course for all subjects except for methods, i wanted to wrap everything in my head and revise all of it till the 7th august and then start exam preperation. Doing all checkpoints first, then NEAP Question booklets and then finally the practice exams. Would you guys recommend this?

[psyxwar]

I've done about 10 for Unit 3, taking it fairly easy. I'm starting unit 4 exams probably about a month or two before the actual exam, or when we finish the course at school (which comes first I guess). I don't see any point in spending all my time on trials though.

[Yacoubb]

I think I'm going to spend the 2 week break doing quite a few unit 3 practice exams + revising the unit 4 course material. Then, I'll probably spend my holidays doing unit 4 practice exams so that I've completed around 15 practice exams of each unit by the time we start Term 4. Thats why I'm probably approaching this no mid-year situation by completing some revision here and there during term 3 for unit 4 and then using that revision which will hopefully be sufficient to be able to properly do practice exams.

How are others going to approach doing unit 3 and 4 practice exams?
 

[shadows]

hi guys, so ive gone through my whole course for all subjects except for methods, i wanted to wrap everything in my head and revise all of it till the 7th august and then start exam preperation. Doing all checkpoints first, then NEAP Question booklets and then finally the practice exams. Would you guys recommend this?

Sounds like a great idea!

If you haven't yet, doing the chapter reviews/ extended response questions in your textbook are great as well!

Wow how come you've finished everything so early ?! (Hope you didn't rush, because theres still so much time left)  Just be sure to be constantly revising by doing questions/ notes etc.

[lolipopper]

Sounds like a great idea!

If you haven't yet, doing the chapter reviews/ extended response questions in your textbook are great as well!

Wow how come you've finished everything so early ?! (Hope you didn't rush, because theres still so much time left)  Just be sure to be constantly revising by doing questions/ notes etc.

i was thinking i would keep doing all these questions and revising my notes every weekend or something.

[Zealous]

I'm planning on (study days) doing 2 Biology practice exams and 2 Further Maths practice exams per day. On average; this gives me roughly 20 days to finish practice exams; I have about a month all up to study. Plus, integrated into that time of doing practice exams is actually revising the material (especially for Bio). It'll be really full-on, but it'll be over before we know it so its probably best we go beast!

I'm hoping to finish 45 for Unit 3 and 45 for Unit 4, and then 60 for exam 1 Further and 60 for exam 2 Further. I have about 2 days between Further exam 1 and 2, which I'll be doing about 15 exam 2s of Further over the two days so I can really familiarise myself with the set out *sighs* So much to do, so little time.

Man your plan sounds so crazy, seems like it's going to take a huge amount of determination to keep you doing 4 exams a day, don't burn out! I'm planning on doing about 30 sets for Further and Methods by maybe a few weeks before exam time.

[Yacoubb]

Man your plan sounds so crazy, seems like it's going to take a huge amount of determination to keep you doing 4 exams a day, don't burn out! I'm planning on doing about 30 sets for Further and Methods by maybe a few weeks before exam time.

Yeah don't worry I've already got the "4's too many" talk haha But I want to do as many prac exams as possible! Especially for Further! Some exam questions seem to vary quite a bit from typical textbook questions and I can't afford to lose too many marks for Further if I want the mark I'm praying for! Bio is more theory-inclined in terms of needing to have a flawless knowledge of every topic to then actually be able to effectively apply it.

[Stick]

Our school will be finishing most courses in 4-5 weeks, after which I suppose we'll just be doing revision. But knowing how many practice exams there are available (most of which I want to complete), I'm wandering whether I should start earlier. Of course this means I'll have to self-teach myself the last few topics of my subjects, which may be pressing considering the number of SACs around this time...

When is (or maybe has already) everyone getting into practice papers? Are you starting before or after your school finishes the course? Just trying to get a gauge of where I should be. 

I've started Unit 3 practice exams for Biology and Chemistry since that part of the course is completed. I'm just doing one paper a week, so it's pretty easy for me to manage and it makes sure that the knowledge stays fairly fresh. As for all the others, I guess I'll hit the ground running come September holidays. I could technically start proper practice exams for English, but I haven't made my mind as to which texts I'll be writing on, so I'm holding off that for the moment (that isn't to say I'm not revising language analysis and writing practice pieces for my upcoming SACs, however).