2017 CSSA Mathematics Discussion

[RuiAce]

Yeah but HSC is significantly easier than CSSA

Is it?

I can see how it's easier but I never felt it was "significantly" easier

[georgiia]

Is it?

I can see how it's easier but I never felt it was "significantly" easier

Well not necessarily the entire thing, but for HSC you very much know what to expect with the style of questions so if you practise a lot you are good to go but I think with CSSA at times there are questions that throw you off if you haven't seen that style before or aren't great with thinking on your feet.

[RuiAce]

A small barrier gets drawn by the fact that CSSA papers are copyrighted, so students have a lack of past papers. At the end of the day, if there were just as many CSSA papers available as is NESA papers, and of course the student has enough time, they would just as well be able to excel at CSSA papers also. It's just about training your abilities to adapt.

[EEEEEEP]

Well not necessarily the entire thing, but for HSC you very much know what to expect with the style of questions so if you practise a lot you are good to go but I think with CSSA at times there are questions that throw you off if you haven't seen that style before or aren't great with thinking on your feet.

This. The style of q's are not like common and they do test your knowledge. They were designed to test your knowledge and be " harder" than the HSC.

[pikachu975]

A small barrier gets drawn by the fact that CSSA papers are copyrighted, so students have a lack of past papers. At the end of the day, if there were just as many CSSA papers available as is NESA papers, and of course the student has enough time, they would just as well be able to excel at CSSA papers also. It's just about training your abilities to adapt.

Idk about that cause so many people have copies of CSSA

[RuiAce]

Idk about that cause so many people have copies of CSSA

Forgetting that most of the time it'd be most likely illegally obtained, it's quite hard to find people who have almost all of them (or have the time to do them as well).

[12070]

A small barrier gets drawn by the fact that CSSA papers are copyrighted, so students have a lack of past papers. At the end of the day, if there were just as many CSSA papers available as is NESA papers, and of course the student has enough time, they would just as well be able to excel at CSSA papers also. It's just about training your abilities to adapt.

I fully agree with this. Throughout the year our papers were very similar to HSC and I went into the trials with 140/147 9my study was solely HSC past papers). I  assumed this method would work for CSSA but lost a lot of confidence when I couldn't do the early questions. I only just scraped a pass in the CSSA paper and I put it down to lack of familiarity. Under different circumstances, I could have probably gotten >75%. The very next paper I did was 2011 HSC and I didn't drop a mark until question 9. I can guarantee that there isn't that big of a disparity between CSSA and HSC and I feel my trial result reflected mindset rather than ability.