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March 29, 2024, 03:02:16 am

Author Topic: How to do well on the economics exam  (Read 5132 times)  Share 

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IThinkIFailed

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How to do well on the economics exam
« on: January 16, 2020, 12:30:09 pm »
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Hey guys, I did economics in 2019, and I got a raw score of 43 (which is currently being fixed as my school has made an error in sending sac marks)

However, I managed to get a 156/160 on the final exam, which would place me around the same study scores as people who got 47-49 this year.

Now, the economics exam is quite a daunting prospect at first. You only have 2 hours to write, and there are about 65 marks worth of short answer questions waiting to be answered.

This is why preparation is very important.
In my opinion, all questions that are 4 mark or less should be able to be answered in a minute to mark time ratio AT LEAST. So for example, you should be able to answer a 4 mark question in less than 4 minutes. Now you might think, what if I have no idea how to answer it, so I gotta plan to answer it before I actually write anything down. NO. This is an absolute no-no. An easy way to judge if you are actually prepared for the economics exam is to see if you already know the answer to these 4 mark or less questions without even putting pen to paper. The way you can develop this skill, is constantly practicing and doing these kinds of questions. Luckily for you, VCAA doesn’t tend to switch it up much, even though they really tried their hardest to in the 2019 exam. For example, there will always be a 4 mark question that asks you to link an Aggregate supply policy  and their hypothetical effect on an economic variable (e.g aggregate supply, economic growth) or a domestic macroeconomic goal (e,g strong and sustainable growth). You should be able to knock out an answer for these kinds of “formulaic” questions very quickly, so make sure you practice them TONS in your exam preparation, and time yourself doing so.
Occasionally, VCAA will throw something at you that is unlike previous years exams. That’s what happened in 2019, with VCAA dedicating 15 marks to the business cycle, which is a topic that is usually not even explored in the exam, or at the most, a multiple choice question or two. This tripped up quite a few students,  especially with this question:

2C: “Explain the likely effect of a business cycle expansion on the rate of economic growth and on the rate of inflation”. (4 marks)
This question actually required bit of in depth knowledge for a concept that is pretty neglected when people are studying economics. You needed to know that when a business cycle is in the expansionary phase, consumer confidence starts to pick up and the rate of inflation is actually fairly low at this point in the cycle. Thus, the combined effect of rising consumer confidence and low inflation
Serves to increase spending and aggregate demand in the economy, increasing economic growth and inflation. (This is a very basic summary of what I wrote during the exam)

So, how do you make sure that you don’t get “cheesed” by these kinds of unexpected questions?

Study the course in depth. You don’t have to make notes on everything, but at least read about each and every dot point of the study design using your textbook or cpap study guide. If I hadn’t read about the business cycle and how the cyclical movements worked a week before the exam, I would have dropped some marks on this question for sure.

Also, do practice exams in timed conditions. So many people are reluctant to time themselves when doing practice exams, and I think it’s a bad habit to get into. When you aren’t timing yourself, you aren’t simulating the pressure of an exam situation well enough.

Another thing I recommend when preparing, is creating little “models” to answer many of the formulaic questions that you will see during the exam. This will help structure your response, and make it flow better and thus the examiner will view it more favourably. These structures will often let you write an answer faster as well, and without these structures that I used, I don’t think I would have finished the exam.
An example of a structure to a question like “Explain the impact of increased consumer confidence on Aggregate demand” is:
1: Define consumer confidence
2: Outline how a rise in consumer confidence impacts the C component of Aggregate demand
3: Outline how this impact on an Aggregate demand component impacts aggregate demand.

Having a structure like that will make sure you tick off all the boxes when writing a response go these formulaic questions.

Also, use EXAMPLES. especially for “distinguish” questions. I fully regret not writing an example for the question 4A: Distinguish between trade liberalisation and barriers to trade (3 marks)
I neglected to write an example for both trade lib and barriers to trade, which meant that one of my examiners was inclined to remove a mark, luckily for me, my other examiner was nice and gave me full marks, meaning I only lost half a mark. You might not be as lucky though, so don’t drop silly marks by not writing examples.
Statistics: In my opinion, these are kind of overrated, but i do recommend remembering all the key indicators (Economic growth, employment rate, inflation, cash rate, budget outcome, underemployment rate) and their trends over the past 2 years.
I probably spent too much time remembering all the economic statistics like consumer confidence, terms of trade etc. and I even remembered the peaks and troughs in those trends. In the end,I only used 1 statistic in the exam, which was the figure for the 2019 budget surplus :|

Knowledge of the economic situation in Australia and the world:
I highly recommend that people who truly want to excel and gain the highest study scores should read into the RBA governor’s speeches and other news articles. I also recommend reading the entire textbook and study guide, because they sometimes have interesting articles and such which will help you gain greater insight into the subject. I actually ended up using my knowledge about the economic situation australia is in in the exam, with this question:
2E: Assume an economy is experiencing a fall in the rate of unemployment but a weaker than expected growth in wages.
Explain how this scenario might influence the setting of aggregate demand policies (6 marks)
I wrote a little introduction, where I basically exposed the examiners by saying this essentially reflected what Australia is facing currently. While I don’t know if this introduction ensured I got full marks or whatever, it did make my response unique and stand apart from the other students for sure, which is generally a good thing.

Time management:

 time management on the exam is incredibly important. However, I don’t think that people should allocate time to questions based on a mark to minute ratio. I think it’s better to allocate time based on the rough importance of the question. During the exam, I spent about 13-15 minute average on the 6 mark questions. This might not sound like a smart idea at first, but I can tell you, if it wasn’t for me doing that, I’d have definitely lost a mark straight up for those questions. However, this leaves very little time for the other, lesser mark questions. But this is not necessarily a bad thing either, as most of these lesser mark questions should be very simple and easy to write answers to because of how formulaic they generally are.

Also, try not to neglect on polishing your answers in the exam. The 2 marks I dropped on the exam weren’t actually because the two examiners that reviewed my paper agreed on a consensus that I deserved 2 marks total taken off for a question or 2, rather, it was because my examiners “argued” over whether I deserved full marks, or a mark taken off for some of my responses. When this happens, they average it out to be a cumulative half mark loss. Thus, for my exam, I lost 2 marks total because my examiners “argued” on 4 questions. I chalk this up to my general rushed state during the exam, meaning sometimes I’d kind of skip a few trains of logic here or there, or have not so coherent structure/flow to my responses, and this made it hard sometimes for the examiner to straight up give me full marks. So if you are aiming for a 100% (which is definitely possible), try not to write yourself in circles, or write very long winded sentences. Also make sure you fully flesh out your discussion, so you don’t give any room for examiners to “argue” over your response.

Another thing, make sure you have a game plan during the exam. This game plan should be based on what your strengths and weaknesses are. For example, my strength was being able to do multiple choice very quickly and have perfect accuracy with it. However, my weakness was finishing short answer on time.  So what did I do? I endeavoured to finish multiple choice in less than 5 minutes, and spend the rest of the time on short answer. However, don’t just copy my plan, tailor it to your weaknesses. Some people are easily tricked by multiple choice, and need extra time to do it accurately, however they are swift in short answer. If you are that kind of person, spend more time on MCQ, like 10 minutes, and the rest on short answer.

Conclusion:
Economics is a fun subject if you truly try to like it. It’s easy to just say “oh it’s just about money,  that’s so boring”. Instead, focus on the “people” aspect of economics, and you’ll start to appreciate it more. When you appreciate a subject, you will be more willing to do more studying, and when this happens, your marks will definitely be higher.
2019:
Biology [42]   Economics [46]

2020:
Methods[41 :( ]
English [42]
Chemistry [47]
Legal studies [44]

ATAR: 99.00

pahm

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Re: How to do well on the economics exam
« Reply #1 on: January 22, 2020, 09:02:00 pm »
+1
Thank you so much for writing this up!! Really appreciate it :)
❝ Everything is possible for one who believes ❞
Mark 9:23
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Economics [45] • Legal [47] • English • Methods • Specialist