Getting 40 or above in Methods

[mohakmalhotra]

Here's my situation. I got 75%, 80's, and 95% on my SACS in year 11. What should i do to get a 40. I have a tuitor. i have almost finished everything for term1.  What SACs scores should i get and Exam scores to acheive a 40. Also, is it actually god to finish stuff in advance?

Thanks in Advance!

[Alter]

It's pretty pointless to tell you to aim for a certain SAC score as a 90% at one school might not even be as good as 50% at another. Just aim to be ranked in the top few people so that the effects of SAC moderation aren't too detrimental towards you.

In terms of exam scores, you'll want to aim for an A or A+ in both exams in order to maximise your study score and to get a good score in the 40s. The A+ cut-off changes each year, but you can get an indication from the graded distributions on the VCAA website.

Link here to the most recent one - http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Pages/vce/statistics/2014/statssect3.aspx

Good luck!

[HopefulLawStudent]

I'm going to open with this: I got a 44 study score in Math Methods.

I'm going to be brutally honest. Your SACs are important but they're nothing if you screw up your exam performance. I go to a school where admittedly, the cohort overall wasn't the strongest but the top 4 - 5 kids were really up there. In such a laidback school, you wouldn't have expected the competition that existed our year. I'm not boasting or anything but after all of our SACs, I ended up being at the top of my cohort. I had scored almost perfect marks on all of my SACs (annoyingly, dropped exactly 1 mark in every SAC because of something stupid), knew the study design back to front and had it virtually memorised and could puzzle my way through virtually every question thrown at me. Did a million and one practice exams too - VCAA, Heffernan, Neap, Kilbaha, MAV. I exhausted every single resource I had.

Then I walked into the exam.

I was an accelerated Year 11 student. Methods Exam One was the first exam I'd done. And that was okay. I went home after that, thought I'd done alright - most of my answers bar one matched my teachers'. Went to bed early after some quick revision. The next day, I chilled most of the day, did some more revision. Then walked into my Methods Exam Two. A minute or two into reading time, there was a HUGE storm and it started pouring down like crazy. I remember that because at that very moment, I wanted to cry. Why? Because my exam sucked. I knew it would suck. The questions were hard - insanely so. It felt like nothing else I'd done compared to it.

After my methods exam, my mother was waiting outside. She watched the faces of everyone as we walked out and apparently no one was smiling. When I came out, she asked me how it went and I burst into tears. I was inconsolable. It felt like I'd screwed up my entire year. Everything I'd worked so hard for had gone down the drain. I walked in thinking 46/47 Study Score above if I could repeat my Exam One performance. And walked out done with life.

I honestly remember nothing from Exam Two. I remember going through MC and ER, doing what I could and bluffing what I couldn't and the entire time thinking I'd wasted an entire year. I kept thinking, I should have stayed up just that little bit longer, worked that little bit harder and done just one more exam - maybe then I would have gotten my dream study score.

I ended up getting a 44 and if I'm being honest, I was just a tad - and sort of still am - disappointed in myself. But the night before results, my brother was admitted to hospital. I stayed up all night not knowing if he'd survive.

My point in telling you this story is this: Your SACs are important. Your exams are more important. But there are more important things.

[mohakmalhotra]

I'm going to open with this: I got a 44 study score in Math Methods.

I'm going to be brutally honest. Your SACs are important but they're nothing if you screw up your exam performance. I go to a school where admittedly, the cohort overall wasn't the strongest but the top 4 - 5 kids were really up there. In such a laidback school, you wouldn't have expected the competition that existed our year. I'm not boasting or anything but after all of our SACs, I ended up being at the top of my cohort. I had scored almost perfect marks on all of my SACs (annoyingly, dropped exactly 1 mark in every SAC because of something stupid), knew the study design back to front and had it virtually memorised and could puzzle my way through virtually every question thrown at me. Did a million and one practice exams too - VCAA, Heffernan, Neap, Kilbaha, MAV. I exhausted every single resource I had.

Then I walked into the exam.

I was an accelerated Year 11 student. Methods Exam One was the first exam I'd done. And that was okay. I went home after that, thought I'd done alright - most of my answers bar one matched my teachers'. Went to bed early after some quick revision. The next day, I chilled most of the day, did some more revision. Then walked into my Methods Exam Two. A minute or two into reading time, there was a HUGE storm and it started pouring down like crazy. I remember that because at that very moment, I wanted to cry. Why? Because my exam sucked. I knew it would suck. The questions were hard - insanely so. It felt like nothing else I'd done compared to it.

After my methods exam, my mother was waiting outside. She watched the faces of everyone as we walked out and apparently no one was smiling. When I came out, she asked me how it went and I burst into tears. I was inconsolable. It felt like I'd screwed up my entire year. Everything I'd worked so hard for had gone down the drain. I walked in thinking 46/47 Study Score above if I could repeat my Exam One performance. And walked out done with life.

I honestly remember nothing from Exam Two. I remember going through MC and ER, doing what I could and bluffing what I couldn't and the entire time thinking I'd wasted an entire year. I kept thinking, I should have stayed up just that little bit longer, worked that little bit harder and done just one more exam - maybe then I would have gotten my dream study score.

I ended up getting a 44 and if I'm being honest, I was just a tad - and sort of still am - disappointed in myself. But the night before results, my brother was admitted to hospital. I stayed up all night not knowing if he'd survive.

My point in telling you this story is this: Your SACs are important. Your exams are more important. But there are more important things.

That's quite scary . throughout the year, were you studying ahead of your school?

[byCrypt]

Also, is it actually god to finish stuff in advance?

It can be helpful to be ahead, but it's definitely not necessary. Throughout my year, I mainly kept pace with my class but was a little ahead only for calculus and that was due to covering the same topics in spesh earlier. Throughout a lot of probability I was actually behind. However I would recommend you to stay a little ahead if only you're comfortable with it. It can reduce stress when you have a lot of SACs and you'll have more time for practice exams (do a lot of these to maximise your exam marks, prioritising VCAA ones).  

[mohakmalhotra]

It can be helpful to be ahead, but it's definitely not necessary. Throughout my year, I mainly kept pace with my class but was a little ahead only for calculus and that was due to covering the same topics in spesh earlier. Throughout a lot of probability I was actually behind. However I would recommend you to stay a little ahead if only you're comfortable with it. It can reduce stress when you have a lot of SACs and you'll have more time for practice exams (do a lot of these to maximise your exam marks, prioritising VCAA ones).

Thanks! i saw you got a 49 for methods. Did you get it because you naturally good at maths or did yu work very hard? 

[byCrypt]

Thanks! i saw you got a 49 for methods. Did you get it because you naturally good at maths or did yu work very hard? 

I would say probably a mix of both, but I'm not a maths genius. I would say it was mainly due to working hard and a bit of luck. The reason I fell behind in probability was because I wasn't very confident in some of the topics, so I ended up doing pretty much all the questions for some of the chapters, which took some time. If you have SACS that go for multiple periods, make sure you talk to other students when appropriate to get help/answers (helped me get my rank 1 aylmao).

For exams, I did around 35 practice exams (about 20 exam 1s and 15 exam 2s). I started exams quite late since I didn't work ahead but it turned out okay. It takes some luck to get anywhere in the high 40s in my opinion. Exam pressure gets to you. Due to some silly mistakes and not reading questions properly, I missed out on a 50.

   

[Champ101]

I tried for every topic to look over it before class and really try and understand the concepts on my own, that way once i got to class i would be consolidating what i had already had a rudimentary understanding of. After i would also attempt some of the chapter questions.

I would also recommend once you've finished a chapter don't let it slip until you come to your exam revision period. Try and revise constantly throughout the year so the concepts remain fresh in your mind and you don't have to 'start over' again. Ultimately work consistently, do the questions/exercises etc. and really try and get a solid understanding of the concepts and the how and why you're doing things.

[Zealous]

I ended up getting a 44 and if I'm being honest, I was just a tad - and sort of still am - disappointed in myself. But the night before results, my brother was admitted to hospital. I stayed up all night not knowing if he'd survive.

My point in telling you this story is this: Your SACs are important. Your exams are more important. But there are more important things.

I would love to upvote this more than once. This is something that should definitely be kept in mind.

The others have really covered it. You just need to work consistently throughout the year, and then have an exam that you are compatible with. Doing a lot of practice exams and resources can help, but ultimately 66% of your study score comes from 3 hours of exams (unfortunately like the rest of VCE). Just put in the work, and even if you fall short you've tried your best!

[HopefulLawStudent]

Throughout the year, were you studying ahead of your school?

I didn't see this until now. No. Throughout the year, I did not study ahead of my school. I never felt the need to. Primarily because I can't self-teach material to myself and retain it for long periods of time. I need to have it explained to me with examples to ensure I stand any chance of committing it to my long term memory. I know this is a question lots of current kids ask previous students - I remember asking it myself last year. However, I feel like there is no one size fits all with this. How you learn is how you learn. For some kids, studying ahead works because they can self-teach and retain material. For others, studying ahead didn't work because I had to have it explained to me. With that said, I was really big on revision. From the very beginning, I was revising material we'd already covered in class. Holidays turned into a chance for me to go over the study design like a checklist of things I should have already covered and revising those topics and redoing past questions I'd had some degree of difficulty with and marked down as being hard (legit, my math textbook has almost as much annotations as my English texts). In doing so, by the time I finished the course, it was less relearning material and more reviewing topics I already had pretty much memorised.

Please note: I was a year 11 at the time so I had HEAPS more time than my poor year 12 counterparts who had to juggle 4/5 other subjects as well as methods.