NOTE: This article was first written in 2016.
Need some help with HSC content? Determined to gather all the pre-HSC study tips you can? Head over to our free online forums for all the answers you seek!
The next month is going to be stressful, boring, scary and cathartic. Now is NOT the time to stop studying, or to study unproductively, or to burn out. Now is the time for careful consideration of your study techniques, now is the time to pull yourself together for one last push before the HSC is well and truly over. Check out these pre-HSC tips from seriously high achieving students; you’d be losing marks if you didn’t follow these!
Elyse’s Pre-HSC Tips: Exam Rituals
The days leading up to an exam was always well planned, and on better days, well disciplined. My last minute pre-HSC study for subjects other than English was all about going through the syllabus in chronological order and working out exactly what would freak me out in an exam. Then I’d study that section intensely for perhaps half an hour until I felt like I could at least put words on the page if I was examined on that aspect of the syllabus. I was committed to ensuring that I wouldn’t be in an exam and kicking myself over leaving out one section of the syllabus from my study. For English, I was making sure my quotes were committed to memory and I was going through past papers to, again, work out what would throw me off in an exam. Allocating all of your panic-filled moments to the days before the exam means that you’ll be well adjusted to dealing with initial panic in an effective way – or at least that’s what I told myself.
Pre-HSC, I was eating three meals a day and snacking approximately 18 times a day (trips to the fridge were my preferred form of procrastination). Keeping your meals and water intake up to standard is super important. I wouldn’t go to sleep any later than 10pm, in fact usually it was closer to 9pm. Each morning I’d get up about 3 hours before my morning exam, keeping in mind it would take about an hour to get dressed, have breakfast, and travel to school. The first two hours? Study. But, at a leisurely rate. Nothing too intense.
If I knew there was something I hadn’t managed to cover properly in my study yet, I made sure I was up at 5am to iron out anything that could throw me way off the mark in an exam. This proved especially relevant for Legal Studies. I only had International Crime left to study the night before, and a little voice in my head said, “don’t worry – what are the odds that they’ll ask you about the one thing you didn’t study?” But the nerd in me took over, and I was up at 5am to study International Crime. Surely, we were asked about Transnational Crime, a section within the area I looked at the morning of the exam. You couldn’t believe the smirk on my face.
Alternatively, if I felt comfortable with my pre-HSC study, I would get ready in a super leisurely manner, trying to stay calm and briefly revise things. Just before the exam, I would sit out the front of the exam room and look over some revision sheets just to warm my brain up for the 3 hour marathon ahead. If anyone wanted to talk, I was polite, but also confident. I don’t know where the science is to back me up with this, but I genuinely think that faking confidence when talking to other people, rather than playing into the “y’know, I’m screwed” conversation, gave me the little extra boost I needed to walk into the exam, head held high.
It’s worth knowing that towards the end of the exam weeks, I was tired and exhausted. My plan was essentially the same the entire way, but the execution suited my daily feels. If I was too tired to study, off to bed. Even if it was 2pm. If I was feeling sad and in the dumps, it was time to watch a movie. You can plan every minute of this crazy period – but you have to be realistic about how much your mind and body will be able to go through. Treat yourself with care! Together, your mind and body have gotten you this far and they’ll take you through to the end.
Jamon’s Pre-HSC Tips: Understanding Your Strengths
Jamon chatted in detail about his pre-HSC rituals here!
I always save the most recent exam for the day before an exam. In the HSC, I saved the most recent two. So, on the day before an exam, I would wake up and do the 2012 and 2013 HSC Exams for that subject. I would mark them myself, and give myself a last minute self-evaluation. Where did I need to improve? Where did I lose the marks?
From there I’d spend the afternoon and evening doing some lighter revision. Brainstorms, reading over/writing out summary sheets, reading over past papers, some easier practice questions from the textbook, etc. Not intensive past papers, just something to keep my brain moving.
But shouldn’t I do heaps the day before, smash out a whole bunch of past papers?
Not necessarily! It is really important to make sure you are well rested the night before an exam. There is almost no benefit to staying up until 1am doing past papers. You’ll wake up feeling stressed, overworked and exhausted; definitely not a good frame of mind for sitting an exam.
So instead, get your practice down earlier in the day, and keep it light in the evenings. Then, I’d stop work 12 hours before the paper starts. Give or take, obviously, but stopping at this point was really important to me. I wanted to ensure that I had adequate time to recharge. You know that feeling you get at the end of a textbook section, that feeling of, “I really just couldn’t care less right now?” That is the feeling I wanted to avoid.
I got to bed at a decent hour and woke up fairly early for my HSC Exams. I never did past papers/practice before an exam. I would only ever read over summary sheets or palm cards; doing actual practice always stressed me out way too much.
I would get to the exam about an hour before it was due to start (better safe than sorry!). When there I would chat to others in my subject, but I’d always make a point of avoiding the really stressed people who I knew would bring me down. I needed my calm environment, and I made sure I got it.
Hang around, go to bathroom, etc., and eventually you get called in. The last thing I did (and this is the big thing I want to stress), is that you need to walk in feeling confident. I’d even say strut! If you act confident on the outside, you’ll feel confident on the inside.
Someone asks how you feel? You are great.
Studied enough? Sure have!
Feeling nervous? Not really, just want it done!
Ooze confidence from start to finish. Physical actions translate into a psychological advantage for you!
Jake’s Pre-HSC Tips: Effective Cramming
There are certain things that I strongly believe you shouldn’t be doing with a day or so to go before an exam. You shouldn’t be writing extensive notes, and really you shouldn’t be revising using a massive set of notes either. You probably shouldn’t be researching information. By this point, you really need to have some sort of comprehensive set of notes, whether they’re your own, a friends, or some that you’ve downloaded for FREE. Your pre-HSC study needs to be more effective than that, and more targeting at your weaknesses. So, how exactly did I do it?
I would recommend writing a set of what I call ‘super notes’. Take your set of complete notes, and run through them quickly. Using paper and colourful pens (I know, old school), write a super succinct set of notes. The notes should only contain information that you don’t know yet. If you completely understand a dot-point, it shouldn’t be in your super notes. If you can summarise a dot-point into 2 words, do it. Use colours of different sections of the curriculum, or different types of information. Draw flow-charts, diagrams, whatever you need to do to make the notes make sense to you, and no-one else. Then, use these notes to study. Read from them, talk to yourself outline and elaborate the 2-3 written words for as long as you can. Once you learn some info, re-write the entire set of super-notes. Basically, for each subject, you want to aim to get these notes down to the absolute minimum length. I had all of my subjects down to one page or less by the time the HSC comes around.
Obviously, you need to be doing past papers. They are the best way to identify gaps in your knowledge, and the best way to practice and plan responses to particular questions. Most of the questions you get in your actual HSC will be directly copied and pasted from past exam papers! When you’re doing past papers, make sure to mark them, do them under timed conditions etc. etc. I wouldn’t be using notes at this stage, EXCEPT for your super notes. Obviously, those notes contain information that you don’t know yet, so it would be silly not to use them! By applying them to questions, you’ll be able to remove them more quickly.
If you get a question wrong in a past papers, write it in a ‘bank’ somewhere. Repeat the question the next day, and make sure you get it right. If you don’t, repeat it the next day. And the next. Basically, keep doing it until you understand that answer perfectly. That’s the best way to actually learn from past papers, rather than just doing them! Obviously, this is something you need to do BEFORE the night before an exam!
Finally, make sure you get a good night’s sleep. Relax, grab a cup of tea, and sleep as much as you can. That way, you’re less likely to make a stupid mistake in the exam!
Those are my best pre-HSC tips. If you have any specific questions, make sure to head over to our free online forums, where you can ask literally any question about any subject!
