Things you've learnt from VCE exams

[vcestressed]

In my first chemistry test this year, we were sitting in a lecture theatre. Food is allowed (SACE is weird hahah) so this kid finished his test (well, i think he did because no one wastes time like that in a test that counts towards  ATAR) in the first 30 mins and started eating. I was only up to the 4th question and I started panicking so much and didn't pull off a very good mark. I remember my mum testing me on the topic a week before the test and I was getting every single question right, but hard work was not reflected. I had 2 mid years exams today, and my goal was to not look at anyone. I would not look at anyone's test paper and would not care if people flipped their pages because I get distracted that way. I think that helped.

[Joseph41]

Bumping this thread! Really think with the users we have around at the moment that we can make it an awesome, awesome resource for the Class of 2019 and beyond.

[Zealous]

Can't believe it's been nearly five years since I finished.

General Advice: During reading time, please make sure to flip through the entire exam booklet until you reach the back cover, don't stop flipping when you think you've seen all the questions. Do not miss out on any questions! Back when I was doing my Spesh Exam 2, I didn't even notice a 3 mark question on the last page right at the very top. Didn't even attempt it and it cost me 1-3 study scores.

Mathematics Advice: Doing the exams in order from start to finish, easy to hard is generally a good approach. Use the easy questions (such as multiple choice) to build your confidence up, getting your mind focused on the subject, before you tackle the harder questions at the end. Some people like to tackle hard questions first but I find it can be quite demoralising.

[Eucalypt]

MATHEMATICS:
Make the most of reading time to identify the questions that you can answer straight away. I know we like to consider that every mark on the exam requires the same amount of work, but it is simply not true. Some marks are going to take far more work than others and you want to identify which ones will take the least work to start off with. In practice, this means that I flip through the book, and only do the questions that I know how to do straight away. This also helps to build up your confidence; I find that in the first five minutes of an exam, I can be quite stressed and I'll look at a question and say 'there is no way I can do that', but generally after doing some questions first, I get more comfortable and will be in a better place to try and solve it. Once you have done all the ones you know how to do, go back and do the others that you might need to think about for a little bit. There will be some that you have no idea about. Skip those again and come back to them after doing the ones that you partially know how to do.

My next bit of advice relates to those questions that you're really unsure about. If you don't fully know how to do a question, don't be afraid to partially answer it in the hope of getting a couple of extra marks. For example, sometimes there will be a question like 'does an intersection occur? explain why or why not.' Don't leave these questions blank. At least take an educated guess at whether the intersection does or does not occur. You probably have better than a 50% chance of getting it right, so it pays to guess. This is the same for any other multi-mark question. At least start the question, as you might be able to get a couple of working marks, even if you're not quite sure how to finish it off.

Finally, make sure your working is nice and clear. It is so easy to lose marks because you used incorrect notation, or you made a small error, giving you the wrong answer but your working was hard to understand so the assessor doesn't give you working marks. Make it as easy as you can for the assessor to give you marks. One way to do this is simply drawing a box around your final answer, or by summarising them at the bottom of your working (eg. a=... b=... c=... and d=...). In terms of making your working easy to understand, you can talk to your teacher, and ask them to read over your working to say a practice SAC and get them to give you advice. If they're busy/you don't feel comfortable asking, give it to a friend (and offer to look at theirs) and get them to see if they understand what you're doing, and suggest how it could be easier to understand.