The magic number of units

When it comes to HSC banter, all year 12 chat somehow manages to find its way back to the quest for those sneaky ways to outsmart BOSTES at their own game. But sadly, with regimented syllabus dot-points and minimal chances for creativity, finding shortcuts is easier said than done.

However, there’s one magic equation that no amount of BOSTES red-tape can stop you from trying to solve: the magic number of units.

The decision of how many units to do in year 12 isn’t one we make lightly. Do 10 units and you’ll shed some serious weight from your workload but pay the price of no margin for error. Do 12 and you get a safety net to fall back on at the cost of putting in some serious time and effort.

All pros and cons aside, we’ve come up with 3 main things to consider when thinking about how many units is the magic number for you:

1. Not all subjects are equal

When it comes to units 1 + 1 doesn’t always necessarily equal 2.

I know this sounds similar to what I just said, but we need to remember that even though 2 subjects are worth the same units, they rarely equate to the same amount of work. Think of your major work subjects, take drama and art for example. Both are worth 2 units which equates to 120 hours of coursework. But by the time you factor in all those hours spent on the major work - thinking about it, perfecting it and (in the all too common horror story) starting it again from scratch, this 120 has easily doubled without even including time spent watching videos on HSC Hub.

If we then compare this to any other 2 unit subject without a major work, the equal weighting doesn’t really seem fair and suddenly you can begin to see that these subjects are easily 3 units in disguise.

2. You never know what’s going to count

BOSTES HQ is pretty top secret. The mysterious calculation of the ATAR is something kept behind closed doors.

Seeing as the ATAR is a combination of our 10 best units, and seeing as most of us won’t ever get the golden ticket to be a fly on the wall when they’re working it out, the reality is we can never know what’s going to count.

So if you’ve ever said anything along the lines of ‘I’ve already stuffed this, it won’t count towards my ATAR anyway’ or ‘I’m going to do this extension unit to help push me in the 2 unit, but I don’t need to push myself because it probably won’t count’ then snap out of it. The magic of scaling inevitably comes into play and half the time your worst subject isn’t even your worst subject.

Unfortunately, as long as the BOSTES keep their operations underground, your only option is to put the same amount of work in for all your subjects throughout the entire year.

3. You can always drop but you can’t pick up

I know I’ve been beating around the bush when it comes to giving you a definitive answer of how many units to do, but the one biased opinion I will give you is don’t start on 10.

When walking into the HSC year, you have no way of predicting what’ll happen over the next 12 months. And I don’t mean to be a neg, but circumstances like suddenly hating a subject or falling behind to a point of no return aren’t exactly unheard of.

Thankfully, if something like this crops up you’ve got a get-out-of-jail-free card in that there’s always the option of dropping the subject. Unless, of course, you’re on 10 units. Food for thought.

The answer: there is no answer!

If you scrolled past the last 500 words looking for a simple answer to how many units to do then you probably won’t like what I have to say….

The truth is that there isn’t really a perfect number when it comes to how many units you should do - but if you keep those 3 things in mind when making the decision, then I guarantee that you’ll be walking into the HSC with the right amount of units for you.