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March 29, 2024, 01:22:59 am

Author Topic: 101 Days Before VCE Maths Exams (Methods/Specialist) [Guide]  (Read 7144 times)  Share 

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Sine

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That is right it’s 101days before methods exam 1 and hopefully I can divulge some tips for your methods and/or spec exams. (not commenting on Further since I didn’t do it although some parts may still be relevant). Right now, you would be somewhere in probability/statistics for methods and maybe finishing up applications of integration for specialist if I were to take a guess. What you do in the next 3 and a bit months is arguably more crucial than what has happened in the past 6 (barring sac marks of course).

Small note on sacs
Whilst we are on the topic of sacs they are nearly over once they are done there is no going back and changing those marks so give a final push in your last sac (If you haven’t done it yet) to improve you rank or maintaining rank 1 hence improving the chance of a higher study score. You will also presumably have a practice exam run by your school maybe a month out this might just seem like a trial run but it is actually very important. Even though schools/teachers shouldn’t do this they sometimes use the trial exam to sort out ranks so even if you aren’t ranked that highly if you do well on your trial there may be a chance you get moved up This shouldn’t technically be done but it happens.

Practice Exams
Not everyone learns best through practice exams but this is what works for most people. The number of practice exams is not necessarily correlated to your end study score. Also this may not work for everyone but this is what I found to work best.

Now since the majority of work is already done practice exams will be your main resource. One may ask where you find them? Ask your teacher for these exams, we can’t post them on AN due to copyright laws but your school should have them and if you are super keen ask them nicely to buy more. On the other hand, you can always ask anyone else doing/has done the subject and they might be nice enough to give them to you. If you don’t do too well on your first one don’t worry. Very rarely does anyone do extremely well on their first go but it is a very steep learning curve and you will see improvements just by getting more familiar with the exam style questions.

One thing about practice exams Is that students don’t take it very seriously sometimes doing a few questions at a time having a break, coming back a few days later and continuing. To put yourself in the best position you are best off doing some of your exams under full exam conditions. This is what I did for all of my VCAA 2006-2015 + sample exams for maths so once you get to the actual exam nothing changes. You are using the same watch, using the same pen and you have a rough idea of how long it takes you to finish. You can do plenty of exams but what exactly are you getting out of it? You are getting the experience – which gets you more comfortable, you are getting exam style questions which is very similar to the actual exams in most cases and you are also getting to know what mistakes you make under pressure. More often than not if you are aiming highly your stupid mistakes is what dictates your study score. So, what I did was use a logbook to track all my errors as well as input any questions that I found very hard. This logbook can also be used as your bound reference which I will get to later.

Right now, before you have completed the course It may be wise to start doing parts of practice exams (the questions which you can do) just to get familiar with it. If you are super keen try to aim to have completed VCAA 2000-2005 exams which is 2 study design old just to get a feel of the exam style questions and which topics you know well and others you don’t. Once you have finished the theory the main form of revision is usually practice exams.

You really shouldn’t “save exams” but try to leave VCAA exams last but you need to time it carefully. Along with the recent VCAA exams you can also keep the 2016/2017 company exams – this is only because they are a part of the new study design and anything older than this won’t have the complete syllabus.

For practice exams sometimes you don't actually have to sit down and do them if you are feeling confident that you know everything the best option would actually be to read through these exams and just make sure you can answer the questions and then maybe just attempting the questions that you are not sure of. The number of practice exams you actually do is really up to you some people will do as little as 1 and others over 100 and both may end up with the same score, so it really depends on what works for you.

CAS calculator
It’s the time now to refine your CAS skills if you aren’t great at them. The speed with CAS skills can save anyone heaps of time during these exams and can be improved just by practice. At times in year 12 it was just muscle memory on the CAS, but be careful the slightest error on the CAS will give you an entirely different answer (or no answer at all for that matter) so make sure to check what you have typed before you set enter. What’s great is the CAS commands you will be using will be used repeatedly. Some MCQ’s will be pure CAS questions that can be completed in the matter of seconds so make sure you know how to use it very efficiently.

Time Constraints
Get used to the timing now without waiting for a few days before your exam and panicking. For time constraints you have been given 1.5 minutes per mark but you still want some time at the end to check your answers, right? Aim to be going at a pace of 1 mark per minute. Often in the actual exam most people go slower since they are trying to be much more careful so this gives you enough leeway but also giving some time at the end to check answers. Now a very common question is what should I do if I can’t do a question? I feel if you aren’t making any progress on a question within the “allocated” 1 mark = 1 minute you should just fudge some working out a move on and of course coming back to it later if possible. 1/3 is much better than 0/3 for a question and typically if you have some relevant working out the assessors are quite reluctant to give you 0 for a question. This 1 mark can be gained by knowing exactly what concept this question is on and writing a few relevant formulas and having a good attempt.

Reading Time

Reading time is a very important part of the exam and will set the tone. Just as you can practice the actual exam you can also practice reading time. Although I feel that it is overkill if you do reading time for every single exam (that is if you do a lot of them). The biggest trap most students fall into is superficially skimming over the question and kind of guessing which concept this is covering. You need to be reading the question to its full extent and doing it in your mind. That is not actually getting the answer but knowing the main steps. Although this can’t be done for some applications questions it can be done for the majority. Once you have the steps you want to be thinking “Have I made a mistake on a question like this before?” this way you are already thinking of possible stupid errors (which everyone hates) before you even make them.

Bound Reference
Most of you would probably have worked on this throughout the year whilst preparing for sacs and tests. All this theory is important to understand but rarely will you have to memorise any of it. The most important thing inside your bound reference would be a list of common mistakes you make and also very tough “differentiator” questions that you may have seen in company exams or VCAA exams. A differentiator question is usually a question where a low percentage in the state receives full marks. Often, they require a higher level of thought and may take longer than the “usual” 1 mark per minute scenario. Bound Reference is usually just a fall back in case that you have a brain fade during the actual exam and if you have learnt the content well enough you probably won’t use it. However, make one or buy one just in case because you never know what can happen under exam conditions. A final thing I had in my bound reference was the study design. This was in case I was completely stumped on a question and had zero idea on how to proceed. I would go to the study design and check what concepts are on it and which ones may the question relate to. Usually over the 2 exams (tech free and tech active) they will test each concept, e.g. Average value, two tailed tests at least once.

Hopefully everything here will give you more focus for your study until the exams. Potentially I will write another one closer to the exams if anyone finds this useful.

Feel free to post below if you have any questions


brenden

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Re: 101 Days Before VCE Maths Exams (Methods/Specialist) [Guide]
« Reply #1 on: July 22, 2017, 04:41:55 pm »
+7
Get around the upvotes!!
✌️just do what makes you happy ✌️

Joseph41

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Re: 101 Days Before VCE Maths Exams (Methods/Specialist) [Guide]
« Reply #2 on: July 22, 2017, 04:52:13 pm »
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Great post, Sine!

EDIT: Do you mind if we promote this? I'm sure it would help a lot of people. :)
« Last Edit: July 22, 2017, 06:16:52 pm by Joseph41 »

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Sine

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Re: 101 Days Before VCE Maths Exams (Methods/Specialist) [Guide]
« Reply #3 on: July 23, 2017, 01:37:03 pm »
+7
Great post, Sine!

EDIT: Do you mind if we promote this? I'm sure it would help a lot of people. :)
please do hope it helps as many people as possible :)

Erstwhile

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Re: 101 Days Before VCE Maths Exams (Methods/Specialist) [Guide]
« Reply #4 on: July 23, 2017, 10:55:16 pm »
+5
I'm going to bookmark this thread so I can use it next year. Thanks for the great post Sine!  ;D
#nerdlife 2019