How I boosted my ATAR by 10 marks

Ok so you’ve heard it before, over and over: “Start early,” “Don’t leave it to the last minute,”  “Start studying as soon as you can.”

Maybe you’re beginning to think that starting early is one of those endless HSC phrases that everyone just says and only those crazy 99.95 people actually do.

Well let me stop you right there.

Starting early is not just a helpful piece of advice to throw around casually. We spoke to a couple of the guys in the office and one of our content creators Liv had an interesting theory that starting early actually pushed her final exam marks up by 5, even 10 marks.

Here’s how:

1. More time to consolidate ideas.

Starting to make notes and learn new ideas outside of class means that when you get into class all the ideas and concepts aren’t new to you. I mean seriously, do you really know what on earth Shakespeare is hammering on about the first time your hear it?

I didn’t think so…

Now picture yourself, strolling into class, teacher’s like: “Does anyone know what Hamlet is on about in the ‘To be or not to be’ speech?”

You shove your hand up like heck yes I watched a summary video on this last night, the teacher looks dumbfounded, the whole class cheers, streamers, gold medal, band six.

Okay but seriously, other than being a legend in class, starting early means that the concepts have more time to consolidate in your head. When you learn them for the second time in class it’s revision. This cements those ideas into your memory, making it easier to remember for the next exam, and not as hard to revise for the final exams!

2. More time to focus on the hard stuff.

This one is a real kicker. So everyone knows, not every dot point in the syllabus was born equal.

It might be smooth sailing through learning how to write the chemical formula for sodium and then all of a sudden you find yourself strung out, lost and confused in the depths of trying to do a titration with diprotic acids (for those Chem nerds).

Starting on the easy stuff gives you the time to focus on the hard stuff, which is going to take a lot longer. And those hard bits? They’re normally the questions in HSC exams that most people lose marks on.

During term 1 and 2, before it got busy, I spent my study time focusing on the “easy” sections of exams, like comprehension in English, or multiple choice in Geography. That meant when trials came around, I didn’t need to revise those topics, and I could focus on the stuff that often got neglected.

For example, I had already done heaps of work early in the year on the first 4 topics of the Crime Core for Legal Studies. So instead I practiced essays on the small obscure topics that nobody else studied, like International Crime.

And what was the Crime Essay question on in my trial?

International. Darn. Crime.

Everyone else in my year got smashed in that section and I ended up doing really well.

So my theory is: cover the easy stuff early and then focus on getting those harder questions right.

3. Makes things less stressful.

It’s no surprise that sometimes the HSC just seems like it’s all too much. The mountain of work to do before the exams can easily build up and become a giant snowball, leaving you freaking out the night before an exam.

I’m definitely one of those night-before-exam freakout people, desperately trying to shove more English quotes into my exhausted memory.

But when it came to the Geography exam I was never too worried,because back in term 1 I had gone on a Geography blitz and written a whole bunch of essays that my teacher had marked. When I opened that paper one of the first essays I’d ever written was sitting there as the question, smiling up at me like: “Hey Liv, it’s me, old mate Mega Cities. Remember?”

Spoiler alert: I remembered. And to top it all off, I came first in the state in Geo.

There’s nothing more comforting in those stressful periods than not having to worry about a certain topic because you know you covered it months earlier. So by starting early, even if it’s just a little bit, you take that weight off, and can focus on really smashing the exam.

So what now?

Now that I’ve 100% convinced you that starting early is going to save your HSC by making you look like a boss in class, consolidating your ideas, smashing those hard dot points and making the whole journey of the HSC a little less stressful, what can you do?

Well starting early doesn’t mean you have to finish the course in term 1, in fact it doesn’t even need to be that hard! Little steps like watching a Atomi video or two a day, taking some notes and doing some reading from your texts are simple ways to get ahead now!

It can be as little or as big of a study as you want, but think of it like this:

If you watch 30 minutes of Atomi videos each day, maybe on the bus to school or while you wait for Mum to cook dinner, you could finish the Chem course in 18 days or the Advanced Maths course in 16 days.

Now that sounds more like it.