Bad mid-year results? Here's the good news

So… you’re not happy with your mid-year results?

Bummer.

Nothing worse than working really hard, being super stressed and not even getting the results to make all the bad times worth it.

But hey, just like that dud friendship that comes to an end, there’s plenty you can learn from these exams AND you’ll be able to take that into the heavy weight stuff (trials, major works and the HSC). Also, the mid-years really are a fairly small percentage of your final mark and it’s super unlikely any of you did any serious damage to your HSC marks that can’t be turned around. So no need for the breakdowns just yet!

And yes, even if you did pretty decently in these exams (congratulations, everyone is super jealous of you), you can still use these tips to push your marks even higher.

Let’s do this.

Target your worst subjects

The best part of getting your mid-year results back is that now you have half a year worth of results to show you where you’re doing well and where you're not. That’s some seriously valuable information.

Why?

Well, it will pretty much give you a study strategy for the next term or so. See, based on the way HSC marks are calculated, it’s super important for your ATAR that all of your subjects are pretty consistent. If you are getting much lower marks in one or two subjects than the others, you need to make them your priority.

For your ATAR’s sake, pick up your marks by 5 points in your lowest subjects instead of using that same study time to push up 1 extra mark in your best subject. Yeah, you do need to keep up your study across all subjects but make sure you are putting your extra time into picking up the worst marks before you improve the best.

Fine tune your study habits

It’s also pretty important to remember that you can use these results to basically put your study habits to the test.

See, just like you studied for mid-year exams, you’re going to be studying for Trials and you’re going to be studying for the HSC. So, if your tactics and habits didn’t really work so well for you, it’s the perfect time to recognise what didn’t work and find out how you can make them better.

If you didn’t have enough time to study everything, start studying earlier and get a nice study timetable going to manage your time.

If you came across things in the exam you didn’t expect to be there, then spend some time making sure your study is more syllabus based. Have notes and a solid understanding for each syllabus point!

If you couldn’t remember any of your study in the exam, then you probably weren’t engaging with your study. Ditch reading the same textbook over and over again and switch it up with some creative study methods like watching our killer videos or using flashcards.

If you got poor marks for not answering the question right, you probably know your content but not how to apply it properly. Start visiting those past papers and make sure they get marked!

Seriously, take any “constructive” criticism you got from your mid-year results and look at how you can change up your study habits so you’re a million times more prepared for the next exams.

Take note of your weak skills, not just weak content

It’s pretty obvious that your mid-year results will show you what content you don’t know, right?

As in, any answers you got wrong, you probably need to go and study again. It’s a pretty useful approach and you should definitely go through and make sure you don’t make those mistakes again.

But the thing you might not be focusing on so much is where your skills are not up to scratch. Stand back for a sec and look at your overall results for all your subjects and see if you can pick up any patterns. Are all your long-responses too waffle-y? Did you keep misreading questions and not giving the answer they were looking for? Do you always forget to add in evidence to back up your answer?

Yeah, well, those skills need to be worked on as much as the content you got wrong! Mid-year exams are great because you probably didn’t realise that you a weakness like that but it would be losing you marks across all your subjects. Yikes.

But now you know! So you can practice those skills or even just ask your teacher/tutor to teach you exactly how to pull them off.

Remember

No, you haven’t messed up your HSC already just because your mid-year results are basically 💩 . Just remember to really take note of your lowest subjects, your least effective study habits and your exam skills that need a bit more work. Besides, the results probably weren’t even as bad as you think AND you have plenty of time and plenty of assessments left to still crush your HSC!