Whats the best way to prepare for the further exams

[Gmfarah1]

In preparation for the exams I've printed VCAA exams for the years (2017,16,15,14,13 ,10) exams 1/2, I've stopped doing checkpoint questions since they're essentially VCAA exam questions compiled in a book. I've then proceeded to  do them under exam conditions and found out  that I could finish exam 1 with (25-30min) left on the clock and couldn't finish exam 2 as I tend to overthink the questions and waste time. This lead me to make quite a lot of mistakes but I've corrected my mistakes, taken a picture of the question and printed all my incorrect answers of the past exam papers I've printed to compile them in a log book. My question here is, is there an effective way for me to tackle my problem of overthinking and wasting precious time during exam conditions and do you think I can do anything else differently that could essentially help maximise my exam results and potentially get that 50.

[PopcornTime]

In preparation for the exams I've printed VCAA exams for the years (2017,16,15,14,13 ,10) exams 1/2, I've stopped doing checkpoint questions since they're essentially VCAA exam questions compiled in a book. I've then proceeded to  do them under exam conditions and found out  that I could finish exam 1 with (25-30min) left on the clock and couldn't finish exam 2 as I tend to overthink the questions and waste time. This lead me to make quite a lot of mistakes but I've corrected my mistakes, taken a picture of the question and printed all my incorrect answers of the past exam papers I've printed to compile them in a log book. My question here is, is there an effective way for me to tackle my problem of overthinking and wasting precious time during exam conditions and do you think I can do anything else differently that could essentially help maximise my exam results and potentially get that 50.

I'm doing further this year and I do the exact same thing - I make too many silly mistakes and overthink simple questions.I think that you should start with the 2010 exams and make your way up to 2017, while noting down the errors you've made. If you note them down, chances are, you'll pick up the hidden tricks VCAA will throw and you also won't make the same mistake again.

Hope that helps.

[Bell9565]

Hey, I did further last year so I hope some of my tips could help you get a bit closer to that 50 you want!

Personally I would recommend not doing the VCAA exams until closer to the exam. I'm not sure about your school but mine gave us a book of like 25-30 practice exams with all the commercial brands which we did prior to any VCAA as then, we could complete the VCAA ones when we were a bit better at sitting the exams. If your school doesn't have these exams purchased see if you can source them elsewhere as I ended up by doing 35-40 exams!!

When sitting the exams, I would get through Exam 1 in about 45 mins and exam 2 in just over an hour so exam 2 is longer. The biggest thing I'm sure with most people and further is not making stupid mistakes - so a lot of time is spent reading and making sure you're answering the question that is asked. Practising more will get the CAS skills faster and the actual question answering better so don't stress about that too much at this stage.

Completing the exams, I would sit them and then mark them like any average joe but then what I think is really key is write down what mistakes you made - even if they are stupid. I then wrote most of these in the back of my summary book and then went through it like a checklist at the end of both exams on the day. It really helped yet I still dropped one mark on financial.

But yeah save the VCAA ones as they're the best judge of the difficulty and question type out of all of them. If you run out of exams - there's always the Northern Hemisphere VCAA ones that you could look into!