Year 10 is a critical time for prospective HSC students. The reason is that the Preliminary subjects you choose in year 10 for year 11 will determine what subjects you ultimately do for the HSC. If you get your subject selection wrong, you may be stuck doing subjects you don’t particularly enjoy, or subjects that offer limited benefit in terms of scaling.

HSC scaling – a brief reintroduction

The subjects you choose in year 10 determine how much you will benefit from the process of scaling. Briefly, scaling refers to the process by which raw assessment marks (e.g. from your internal exams and external HSC exams) are converted into scaled marks, which are marks on a common scale that allows the degree of achievement in different subjects to be compared against one another in a statistically fair way. The scaling process is undertaken by the UAC and the result of this process – your aggregate scaled mark (out of 500) – is the sole determinant of your ATAR. Therefore we can safely say that HSC scaling is a big deal if you intend on scoring a high ATAR.

In order to maximise the positive effect of HSC scaling, one must choose courses that are ‘scaled high’ – or in technical terms, have a high scaled mean. The scaled mean for a subject is an important statistic, which tells us the average scaled mark obtained by the subject’s cohort. The higher this statistic for a subject, the higher the subject is scaled generally. Scaled means are publicly available in Table A3 published each year by the UAC.

For full technical details on how the scaling process works, see our article on the topic: http://www.duxcollege.com.au/hsc-scaling-i-49.html

So why is subject selection important

It’s important to get your subject selection right the first time, because there’s limited to no chance to change after you’re well into year 11. Also the beneficial effect of scaling could be huge, or could be non-existent, depending on which subjects you chose. If your goal is to maximise your ATAR, you should also consider the scaling of a subject on top of whether you think you’ll enjoy it. The general rule is to select subjects you’ll be good at, amongst the subjects that offer a scaled mean of 29/50 or above.

What are some good subjects?

Have you noticed a pattern with graduates that score an ATAR of 99+? A significant portion of them do a combination of the following subjects:

• English Advanced
• Maths Extension 1
• Maths Extension 2
• Physics
• Chemistry
• Biology
• Economics
• Modern history
• History Extension
• English Extension 1
• English Extension 2

What these subjects all have in common is that their scaled mean is all above 28/50 (most are around 30, with the best scaling from Maths Ext1 and Ext2 which goes as high as 45/50).

These subjects have higher scaled means due to the way in which the scaling process works. Year after year, the candidature of these subjects does comparatively better than their peers who do other subjects, including compulsory 2 units of English, which is used as a common scale to compare. What this means is that a high scaled mean often indicates higher subject difficulty, due to the fact that those students who do high-scaling subjects tend to do comparatively better than their peers in other subjects.

However, when it comes to advising students on what subjects to choose for year 11, we always advise students to go for as many of the aforementioned subjects as possible – so long as they can handle them.  For example, a student with aptitude and interest in maths should always choose Maths Ext 1 in year 11 – this opens the possibility to take up Extension 2 in year 12, which has a massively positive scaling effect (the majority of ATAR 99+ graduates have completed the Extension 2 course). If a student absolutely hates maths, that’s OK – choose some sciences and some humanities subjects (e.g. English Extension 1 and Modern History with History Extension, or Economics). Many graduates with a combination of humanities and social sciences have scored 99+ without having done any level of maths! What’s important is the ability to understand your own strengths and weaknesses, and choosing decently-scaled subjects based on this understanding.

The Christmas / summer holidays are the longest holiday period in your HSC year. You have about 6 weeks to relax and refresh yourself before the 2010 school year starts. However, students often use these holiday periods to gain a competitive advantage over their peers by reading ahead in their textbooks, or reading all of their English texts in advance. One of our students finished her entire English Extension 2 major work in these holidays!

Of course, the advantage with working harder in the holidays, is that it lightens the load later on in the HSC year. Given that you have 6 weeks of holidays in the summer, it is probably wise to spend 3 or so weeks preparing for your HSC. Every bit of extra preparation translates to results in the HSC, since you only have a year. Once school starts, you may find the pace very fast, and everything examinable is taught once only before the teacher moves on.

So how can you prepare for the year ahead? Study ahead, of course.

This is one of the examples of how successful students study differently from average students. By learning ahead, you gain familiarity of the topics and content that would be taught to your peers for the very first time later in the HSC year. Shortly after this event, the exam comes. So who would do better? The student who has seen the same material before, has experienced and overcome the common pitfalls and challenges, and has had plenty of opportunity to ask their teacher relevant questions before the exam? Or the student who let it all go during the holidays, and had a great time, then learnt the content for the first time at a rush-pace prior to the exams?

Of course, it is perfectly OK to relax during the Holidays – after all, it’s holidays! But now is early January, you’ve already had a couple of weeks to enjoy the Christmas and New Year festivities. You’re now well-rested, relaxed and refreshed. It’s time to get seriously serious!

What can I do in my holidays, on my own?

During the holidays, you’re all on your own. Most likely, your friends are still partying, and probably your teachers too. Tutoring colleges are closed, (except those few running holiday courses), and everyone’s still on holidays. So whatever self-study you do, it would have to be something you can do by yourself.

Luckily, for most students, teachers and tutoring helps most AFTER you’ve done some self-reading. With some self-discipline and solid effort, core content can be learned on your own.

For science subjects

Read a GOOD textbook.

For Chemistry, pick up a copy of Conquering Chemistry, or Chemistry in Contexts, and read as much as you can. For Physics, you can’t go wrong with Jacaranda, or Macquarie. As a guideline, completely revise the first module (you would have done this at school in term 4, 2009) and read the entire second module. If you have our notes from term 4, re-read all of them too! Avoid the Excel ones as they are a bit superficial in depth.

Don’t worry about practice questions yet, but make sure you UNDERSTAND concepts

At this early stage, don’t get too caught up with practice questions. Do one or two per section to test your knowledge, then move on. Remember, you have other subjects to study for! The most important thing is to UNDERSTAND the concepts. For example, make sure you KNOW how Lenz’s law works, how those right-hand push/palm/grip rules work, etc.

Read the syllabus and reconcile it with what you’ve read in textbooks

After you’ve read the textbooks, read through the syllabus for the modules you studied, and make sure every dot-point in those modules have been covered by what you’ve read. It’s a good idea to do this after you read the textbooks, as textbooks often give you richer background information necessary to understand the full picture of certain concepts. However you can choose to read the syllabus before you start reading textbooks.

For mathematics

Do exercises off a good textbook

Mathematics is really a practice game. The more practice you get, the more experienced you become. There are only so many ways a maths question can be designed for any topic area, and the more experience you have, the less likely you will be caught unaware in the exam. Simple, really, but success in maths requires dedication, which is easier said than done.

Good textbooks are Fitzpatrick (for 2U and 3U), Cambridge, and don’t forget the forgotten classics like Coroneos (excellent for 4 unit harder questions).

For English

Read your texts in advance

Find how what novels you need to read, and read through them these holidays. This subject is probably the easiest to study ahead for, as it involves a leisure activity (for some) – reading!

Just be aware of the thematic considerations that are relevant to your module as you read through your texts.