ATAR Notes: Forum
VCE Stuff => VCE Mathematics/Science/Technology => VCE Subjects + Help => VCE Mathematics => Topic started by: SelectEntryTryHard on August 13, 2020, 07:38:01 pm
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So I am in year 11 currently doing all 3 maths and is probably going to drop one. Personally I think general is very easy but spesh and methods are a bit more challenging but similar in terms of difficulty. Grades wise getting very good grades for general doing less than minimal and good grades on methods and spesh doing not too much work. Which one do you think I should drop? Thanks
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I did/am doing all 3 maths too. I finished methods in year 11 and am currently doing both spesh and further. I would consider the workload of all your subjects combined, further is significantly less time consuming compared to methods/spesh, but the scaling for spesh is very significant.
I personally prefer spesh over further purely based on the type of contents, you could say that spesh is sorta building upon methods whereas I consider further independent for the other maths. I personally really enjoy the stuff we learn in spesh, but I must admit there is a level of difficulty and it can get really stressful. Whereas for further, I guess it's a safer choice(?) considering you have you calc and bound reference all the time and there is a set format which almost always applies without necessarily understanding the question(?)
Hope that helps?
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Without going too into it, here's the grades you needed in your exam last year to get a 30 in each subject:
Further: B
Methods: B
Specialist: C+
And that's before scaling. So like, unless you're doing AMAZINGLY better in Further, you're better off doing specialist - because you'll get higher study scores with lower marks, and then having scaling to boost it even better.
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One thing you should really consider is the workload you have with other subjects as well.
I’m not sure why other subjects you’re doing, but my massive assumption from your name tells me you’d be doing some very heavy subjects on the side.
It is really nice to have a subject you can put relatively less effort into and still get a decent score in. It allows for more focus on other subjects while maintaining score.
For me this was both Further Maths and Legal studies. Collectively I’d say I put about 70% of my effort into the rest of my subjects, 20% into further and 10% into legal studies. It really went a long way in allowing me time to put into the others.
Lastly, take this with a pinch of salt due to its anecdotal nature, but I went to a selective school like yourself and from what I’ve heard and been told, a general rule is that it’s easier to get a 45 in Further Mathematics than a 30 in specialist. I’m not sure how reliable that is ¯\_(ツ)_/ but it seems to me at least that unless you’re very interested in specialist, further might be the way to go.
Also, I might be a bit biased.
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A general rule is that it’s easier to get a 45 in Further Mathematics than a 30 in specialist. I’m not sure how reliable that is ¯\_(ツ)_/ but it seems to me at least that unless you’re very interested in specialist, further might be the way to go.
While acknowledging that your claim is anecdotal, it's worth commenting on it:
It's easier to get 45 in Further compared to 30 in Specialist if you're already quite strong at maths and don't need to put any time into understanding the content, and can focus your time just on doing exam questions and working on minimising errors (since the difference between 40 and 50 in Further is not really about understanding the content, it's about not making mistakes on the days of the exams)
There is an important respect in which getting 30 in Specialist is "easier" than getting 45 in Further - you have more margin for error on the exams. And typically Specialist exams are not that tricky (Further isn't either, of course, but typically about 5-10% of the marks can be curveballs, and if you're aiming for a 45+, that matters).