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10 or 12 units ??? (2 Viewers)

Linee

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Since it's the beginning of a new year, i reckon it's a good opportunity for me to drop a subject so that my total units is 10. But i dont know whether i should...

One of my teachers told me to do 10 units so that I can have full concentration and that every effort put in is counted.

However another teacher told me to do 12 units so that if I bombed out on one subject - I can drop it, without jeopardizing my UAI.

What's your opinion ? How many units are you planning to do this year ?

The subjects that I could drop is either Chemistry, Physics or Biology. However I get about the same marks on them three and my interests is about the same for them three - in other words I can't decide on which one to drop. But if i'll have to choose one, it would probably be biology because the scaling is not as good as the other two.
 

wixxy2348

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~ 22 people got a UAI of 100 this year
Of those, ~3 had 10 units. The rest had more.
 

georgefren

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Our school doesn't even allow 10 units. And with good reason - unless you are REALLY struggling with the workload, doing 12 units (Im doing 14right now but thats excessive, stick to 12) is better. It's true you can concentrate more on each unit if you do 10 units, but with only 10 units there is a HUGE risk of not doing so well in an exam and of that driving your total HSC mark way down. If you are extremely confident that you will not make any mistakes in every single exam and will perform to your expectations in every exam, then doing 10 is fine. For most people though, there remains the chance of a screwup in an exam (or just even not quite up to par in an exam) and that chance more than justifies the extra work of 12 units.
 

~caramello~

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Depends how confident you are.
Are you absolutely sure you can kill the all 10 units with the extra time you have?
Are you sure theres not a chance you may screw up? or If you really hate a subject go for 10 units.
But its also good to have a safety net. You never know, what might happen in the exam. You might have misread like a 6 major question/essay and really screw up one of your subjects so 12 units definitely helps.
lol i'm personally doing 11 units. sorta inbetween ;)
 

Linee

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wixxy2348 said:
~ 22 people got a UAI of 100 this year
Of those, ~3 had 10 units. The rest had more.
Yeah I noticed that also. Although I have a friend whose brother got a UAI of 99.8 and he did 10 units.

I'm still undecided...
Anyway I'm aiming for a UAI above 95
 

Linee

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~caramello~ said:
If you really hate a subject go for 10 units.
That's the problem... I can't really say I hate one particular science subject of the three
 

HMF

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What about doing 11? Like soz If i got ur subjects wrong but fi your doing a 1u course you can use that as like an extra subject for ur uai to boost it up if its a decent subject of cause.
 

lyounamu

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georgefren said:
Our school doesn't even allow 10 units. And with good reason - unless you are REALLY struggling with the workload, doing 12 units (Im doing 14right now but thats excessive, stick to 12) is better. It's true you can concentrate more on each unit if you do 10 units, but with only 10 units there is a HUGE risk of not doing so well in an exam and of that driving your total HSC mark way down. If you are extremely confident that you will not make any mistakes in every single exam and will perform to your expectations in every exam, then doing 10 is fine. For most people though, there remains the chance of a screwup in an exam (or just even not quite up to par in an exam) and that chance more than justifies the extra work of 12 units.
Doesn't make sense at all. Doing more subjects restricts the amount of time you spend on each subject hence poorer work ethics on each subject. The end result = high chance that you will screw the exam over.
 

kaz1

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If you have to drop something drop Biology because it scales the lowest and you like your other subjects equally.
 

jamesishere

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wixxy2348 said:
~ 22 people got a UAI of 100 this year
Of those, ~3 had 10 units. The rest had more.
Naturally, because it's the people who are already smarter that do extra units
 

dp624

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Nevar! I did ten units.
I think if you're confident go for ten. =PP

Started with 12, went to 11, then 10
Best decision. EVER

(for me)
 

wixxy2348

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jamesishere said:
Naturally, because it's the people who are already smarter that do extra units
Or because they make smart choices, and ensure they have 'backup' units.
 

wixxy2348

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dp624 said:
Nevar! I did ten units.
I think if you're confident go for ten. =PP

Started with 12, went to 11, then 10
Best decision. EVER

(for me)
'sif you didn't have to study incredibly hard in every single one though, dp.

EDIT: oh, you edited. Yeah good decision for you but not for everyone.
 

Timothy.Siu

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dp624 said:
Nevar! I did ten units.
I think if you're confident go for ten. =PP

Started with 12, went to 11, then 10
Best decision. EVER

(for me)
yeah copy him, do the same subjects and then u can get 100!
 

wixxy2348

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Linee said:
However another teacher told me to do 12 units so that if I bombed out on one subject - I can drop it, without jeopardizing my UAI.
by that do you mean it won't be included in UAI calculation?
 

pyjamapants

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It really depends on the individual. Are you going to be able to keep up??
Especially because you're doing 3 sciences, subjects which tend to have a larger workload.
Plus, depending on what calibre of student you are, physics is a really hard subject to get a band 6 in (from what i hear anyways). there was only one at my school this year. In which case a band 6 in bio would probs outweigh a band 5 in phys when it comes to your UAI.
I'm pretty sure my band 5 in Phys didn't get counted in the calculation of my UAI. It got outweighed by my band 6 in Legal which doesn't scale as well (that's what sam told me anyways), and my UAI was still decent.
And one more thing: you might be enjoying a particular subject now, or may be understanding it, but you can't premeditate what will happen in the future. What if one of your teachers leaves and you get stuck with someone really crap who has no idea what they are talking about??? Better to have a safety net then.
 
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proringz

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Do 10 and drop Bio. With the rest of your subjects, unless you do horribly bad in Physics or Chem, Bio won't count in your UAI. I did 10 units with your subjects excluding Bio.
 

annabackwards

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wixxy2348 said:
by that do you mean it won't be included in UAI calculation?
It means the subject would be dropped so there won't be that work so yeah no UAI calculation seeing as the HSC for the drop subject would not be done.

I'd say stick with 12U unless you hate or are struggling with the subject. It's a "safety" net in case you bomb on of your subject in your HSC and it gives you the option of dropping throughout the year if you discover you hate one in particular.

But if i had to drop one of those three it'd have to be bio because i don't like bio and the scaling is the worse out of the three.
 
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hm....id say do 12.
if you're prepared to put in more work & you have the initative.
thats what im doing. im not risking stuffing up a subject. you might do well at school but who knows what happens on the day of the HSC exam, you could easily stuff up.
 

dp624

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For reasoning:
My maths and two sciences are very strong subjects. I have know for a very long time that no matter what other subject I did, for equal levels of effort i'd never beat maths and chem and phys. it also helps that they're relatively good scaling too.

i did bio and English EX1 in year 11. English EX1 counted, but bio was by far my worst subject (10~ aggregates behind). Granted I had an aversion to it but yea.

It all depends on the individual but. If you're more confident (but you aren't) i say go for it. if not, keep it. it's not that much more work to be honest.

your decision =P you still have ages to drop it if you want
 

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