How to study during the pre-HSC holidays

It’s your final couple of weeks of school EVER!

Just let that sink in for a second.

Ok now back to reality. You may have finished school, but now you have to figure out exactly what you need to do between now and the end of holidays. There are no more classes, no more school and that means no more structure or guidance. It’s all on you from here…

So we thought we’d give you a couple of tips to navigating your way through the ‘pre-HSC Holidays.’ Follow these and you’ll put yourself in the best position come October 12th. That’s the day HSC starts - if you don’t know that then you should be panicking:).

1. Identify weaknesses & prioritise

Before you go charging into study like a bull in a China shop, it’s worth taking a breath and considering what you should actually be working on.

First thing first. Get your trial exams and recent assessments and see where the holes are. Trust me, it shouldn’t take long to find your weak points. (Hint: it often looks like the one with the worst mark on the front). It might be the last few questions of Maths, your Module B essay or Core 2 of Chemistry. Whatever it is, use this as your base for prioritising what needs to be addressed first.

Resist the urge to spend the most time on things you are confident with, this is the least effective thing to do. It’s easier, that’s why people do it. But do the hard stuff first, it’ll pay off in the end.

So put the worst ranking subjects/topics/section at the top of the pile and start there.

Know what you know. But more importantly, know what you don’t know.

2. Brush over content & forget memorising

Most people think the best thing they can do is start pouring over their content and memorising as much as possible. Most people are wrong.

We are still a few weeks out from HSC, nothing you commit to memory is going to stay in your head for that long. So don’t bother.

What you should be doing is brushing over your content only enough so that you can start doing past papers. You still have to know your stuff, but not word-for-word. Not yet.

It’s important at this point to not only focus on the content, but focus on the structure of the content and how it all links together.

Luckily, for this part we can help you out. HSC Hub is the best way to achieve this part of your prep. Because our videos are so short and sharp it’ll give you the perfect overview of your content in a fraction of the time of any other method. If I was you, I’d be jumping onto my HSC Hub account and going through each of my subjects in the first part of the holidays. Because it’s as easy as watching 5min videos, it’s a light transition before moving onto the more intense stuff later on.

3. Practice papers - use pen

Once you’ve smashed through 100 hours of HSC Hub videos, it’s time to get to the most important part of your prep: Past Papers.

Doing practice papers is the key to success, they help you:

• Learn exam technique
• Show how the content is actually applied
• Give you exposure to different questions
• Practice timing
• Show your weaknesses (and strengths)
• Get your answers as efficient as possible
• Actually get used to the feeling of writing for 3 hours straight

They are just good all around. Practice papers are like squats for the brain, the more you do, the better you get.

But you should be doing as many past papers as you can get your hands on. Have your notes, HSC Hub videos and syllabus handy just incase you need to refresh your mind about something but only check when you absolutely need to. Try and do these papers as close to exam conditions as possible. That means timed, no breaks and trying not to use notes.

We can’t stress this point enough!

We’re actually going to release a post about the best way to actually do a Past Paper. So stay tuned!

4. Mark your sh*t

There is no use doing billions of past papers and simply throwing them aside whenever you’re done. That’s only 50% effective.

Saying ‘Yew, just smashed that Maths paper now I can throw it out’ is silly.

You should be going through each paper once you’ve done it and self-mark. Yes, that means getting the marking criteria off the board of studies website and actually going through it with your answers and ticking those boxes.

You’re in luck because we’ve included the link to the BOSTES Marking Criteria here.

Knowing where you’re going wrong is the key to perfection. If you can’t self-mark adequately it’s also really good to use and abuse your teachers at this point. They are always keen to help out their year 12 students and will normally mark your stuff leading up to the HSC (just don’t rely on them, they’re probably swamped with 100,000 English essays to get through).

Hint: A lot of the top students actually make a list of everything they got wrong in each paper. Then study that list. I guarantee you are 1000% less likely to make a mistake again once you’ve written it out and read it to yourself.

So I guess to sum it up - your goal these holidays is NOT to memorise your notes, it’s to find the holes in your knowledge and plug them. Then find new ones and plug those. And do that again, and again, and again. Until you have no more weak points.

Follow this process:

• Find what you don’t know
• Fix it
• Do past papers = more things you don’t know
• Fix them
• More past papers = fewer things you don’t know
• Fix them
• More past papers = very few things you don’t know
• Fix them
• More past papers = nothing you don’t know
• Memorise notes
• Dominate HSC
• Dominate life

Get the picture?

These holidays are crucial to HSC prep, so don’t waste them and get going as fast as possible. Only a few more weeks left. Get pumped!