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Advice from past 3U Maths Students? (1 Viewer)

Heresy

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There is a lot of stigma surrounding 3U Maths... My questions are:

- How heavy is the workload for 3U?
- How often did you guys study for 3U during your Preliminary Year?
- What topics should I go over during these school holidays to ace 3U?

Thanks!
 

tazhossain99

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1. not heavy, if you have an aptitude for maths and work hard
2. not much compared to HSC year (thats just me tho, coz i like maths and didn't need to study loads to understand stuff)
3. Go over your simple yr 10 maths, as it is the building block for prelim. Maybe learn about the concepts of differentiation and integration, through google searches? Take your time, as i did, and learn everything correctly and practice!

also, do a crap ton of past papers (1000+) during these 2 years. Trust, it helps.
 

pikachu975

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There is a lot of stigma surrounding 3U Maths... My questions are:

- How heavy is the workload for 3U?
- How often did you guys study for 3U during your Preliminary Year?
- What topics should I go over during these school holidays to ace 3U?

Thanks!
1) It's same as 2u probs or less. Most topics are just adding on to 2 unit so it's alright.

2) Didn't do 3u in prelim

3) Do the topics your class will do next for half yearly prep
 

Martin_SSEDU

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There is a lot of stigma surrounding 3U Maths... My questions are:

- How heavy is the workload for 3U?
- How often did you guys study for 3U during your Preliminary Year?
- What topics should I go over during these school holidays to ace 3U?

Thanks!
1. For HSC I would say I studied as much for 3U as i did 4U as I wanted to guarantee I scored really high. Then again, the topics were easier to grasp since I treated it this way so when it came to revision I would see myself doing a 3U past paper as the easier part of my study and doing a 4U paper the harder portion. Of course for preliminary though I had the benefit of studying 3U in Year 10 so I just put all my efforts towards it, was pretty manageable though.

2. I'd definitely keep on top of class homework and even assign additional study, you'll find that some 3U topics are simply harder 2U topics so it sort of doubles up.

3. Really get a hang of your 2U concepts so that you don't have to worry about them when school starts. But if you're talking about testing yourself in terms of 3U knowledge I'd recommend to get a hold of a 3U book and just start working through it according to your Term 1 school syllabus.
 

integral95

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There is a lot of stigma surrounding 3U Maths... My questions are:

- How heavy is the workload for 3U?
- How often did you guys study for 3U during your Preliminary Year?
- What topics should I go over during these school holidays to ace 3U?

Thanks!
There's actually not that much content in 3U itself compared to 2U, since it's just 1 extra unit, but some people tend to struggle since they have to understand the 2U content in order to do 3U.

My advice is consistency, do your homework every week and understand them and you should be fine,should you fall behind, that's where the true test begins.

Well basically you need to know all of your year 7-10 stuff, although it does get taught again in 2U math(but you'll have an advantage).
It also helps when you've mastered your algebraic techniques, so make sure you can expand and simplify harder algebra questions fast and accurately.

You can disregard the statistics topic from year 7-10, however I believe this could change due to the new syllabus coming soon ( I don't know the details of that)
 

fluffchuck

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There is a lot of stigma surrounding 3U Maths... My questions are:

- How heavy is the workload for 3U?
- How often did you guys study for 3U during your Preliminary Year?
- What topics should I go over during these school holidays to ace 3U?

Thanks!
1. there is not much work

2. once a week

3. get an early start on circle geometry and permutations & combinations. those topics require a lot of past papers to excel in.
 

Heresy

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1. not heavy, if you have an aptitude for maths and work hard
2. not much compared to HSC year (thats just me tho, coz i like maths and didn't need to study loads to understand stuff)
3. Go over your simple yr 10 maths, as it is the building block for prelim. Maybe learn about the concepts of differentiation and integration, through google searches? Take your time, as i did, and learn everything correctly and practice!

also, do a crap ton of past papers (1000+) during these 2 years. Trust, it helps.
Will do, thank you for your response!
 

Heresy

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Joined
Nov 13, 2017
Messages
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2019
1. For HSC I would say I studied as much for 3U as i did 4U as I wanted to guarantee I scored really high. Then again, the topics were easier to grasp since I treated it this way so when it came to revision I would see myself doing a 3U past paper as the easier part of my study and doing a 4U paper the harder portion. Of course for preliminary though I had the benefit of studying 3U in Year 10 so I just put all my efforts towards it, was pretty manageable though.

2. I'd definitely keep on top of class homework and even assign additional study, you'll find that some 3U topics are simply harder 2U topics so it sort of doubles up.

3. Really get a hang of your 2U concepts so that you don't have to worry about them when school starts. But if you're talking about testing yourself in terms of 3U knowledge I'd recommend to get a hold of a 3U book and just start working through it according to your Term 1 school syllabus.
Will take this under consideration, thank you!
 

horse9996

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1. Reasonable heavy, there is a reasonable amount of content and you get 30 mins+ of homework pretty much every day. On days that you don't get homework I'd recommend doing some maths anyways
2. Probably studied 5-7 days a week, more around test/exam periods
3. Anything from year 10 that your not as confident with/didn't do as well in as year 11 3u builds heavily on year 10 and gets quite a lot harder in comparison
 

supR

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Hey man, glad to see you are doing 3U :)

1. Everyone feels different about the 3U content and workload. Personally, as I have a grand passion for mathematics, I did not find the workload to be overwhelming. You will typically get homework everyday, and it is best to complete this as consistently, and don't let it pile up.

2. It is best to be consistent in your study. This DOES NOT mean that you have to study everyday however. Consistency is different from person to person, so if you like to study Mon, Wed and Fri for maths, as long as you keep that up every week it will be effective. Personally, I studied 2-3 weeks before the smaller (35 mark) exams that our school had each term. I would allocate a lot more time (6-8 weeks) in advance in order to give myself enough space to work through all difficulties and attempt a large amount of past papers.

3. Depending on your schools roster for each subject, my advice may become redundant. I assume however that your school will cover functions and trigonometric functions first, so I would suggest that you learn those now.

Best of luck :)
 

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