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March 19, 2024, 04:01:00 pm

Author Topic: Was it me or this year's Bio exam was rather more abstract?  (Read 1227 times)  Share 

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Was it me or this year's Bio exam was rather more abstract?
« on: November 13, 2019, 05:55:03 pm »
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Compared to the previous years, the 2019 VCAA bio exam was rather..... weird.
Hardly any 'hard' content on the study design was featured on it.
There was a lot of thinking questions, like the economic and social factor for zika spreading or the frozen steppe bison question.
A lot of them I found were rather open ended.

What was your opinions on the exam?

Erutepa

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Re: Was it me or this year's Bio exam was rather more abstract?
« Reply #1 on: November 13, 2019, 06:11:08 pm »
+4
Compared to the previous years, the 2019 VCAA bio exam was rather..... weird.
Hardly any 'hard' content on the study design was featured on it.
There was a lot of thinking questions, like the economic and social factor for zika spreading or the frozen steppe bison question.
A lot of them I found were rather open ended.

What was your opinions on the exam?
I agree - I didn't think that there was much hard content content questions. I think there were a couple question where it was hard for me to justify 4 marks for (such as the BMP4 question and the Fossilisation question) and I think the vaccine against allergens was an application question that may have tripped up quite a few people.
I am not sure if you are aware, but you can find more discussion about the exam here https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=188419.0
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Sine

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Re: Was it me or this year's Bio exam was rather more abstract?
« Reply #2 on: November 13, 2019, 11:02:46 pm »
+6
Compared to the previous years, the 2019 VCAA bio exam was rather..... weird.
Hardly any 'hard' content on the study design was featured on it.
There was a lot of thinking questions, like the economic and social factor for zika spreading or the frozen steppe bison question.
A lot of them I found were rather open ended.

What was your opinions on the exam?
I think for quite a few years now VCAA has made an effort at moving from a definition/memory-based testing into more application/understanding style questions which really need people to think - rather than just regurgitating information that they have memorised. E.g. in 2014 I don't think there was single questions that students needed to actually think about or have a though process - it was basically whether they knew it or not which yielded a very high A+ cutoff of 96/110 (87%).

Genshai

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Re: Was it me or this year's Bio exam was rather more abstract?
« Reply #3 on: November 15, 2019, 09:27:12 pm »
+1
yeah, i found this years exam unlike any other vcaa bio exam i had done (or any trial exams from other organisations). People said it was easy, but i was kinda unprepared for the questions. i guess i should have prepared better ahah !! from what i gather, a lot of the exams this year were 'weird' - many of friends experienced similar problems in psych, legal, vis comm etc.
2019: Biology [40]
2020: English [35], Methods [27], Art [36], Revs [38], Chem [29]

ATAR: 87.85