first time using this forum, hoping to get something out of it (1 Viewer)

[spice]

hi not sure if this is the right place to post this but whatever

so ive got a goal of getting into medicine after i finish highschool, im in year 11 term 2 as of writing this but my scores arent nearly good enough for such a competitive course, ive been getting very inconsistent marks between 60-80 on average in ext 1 maths right now and its roughly the same in all other subjects like chem physics bio jap ect. ive been trying hard to increase my marks/grades and although there is a slight somewhat noticeable difference compared to years 10 and before, im worried because its nowhere near what i need for medicine. although ive been enjoying maths jap and chem a lot more from last year its not gonna be enough if i cant actually get better marks, ik marks arent everything but thats whats tested in the HSC and thats what determines your ATAR and if i cant improve that then well, anyways i heard this is the place to go to find like actual highschool graduates/students who know what they are talking about and i figured i would at least try to get some advice from you guys, also im not saying getting into medicine is the only way for me to be happy and successful and whatnot, i just really want to get into the course because im genuinely interested and its the only thing i can imagine not being absolutely bored out of my mind doing for the rest of my life. so yeah if you have any advice/study tips or whatever i would love to hear them, thanks.

 

[aqwerty13402]

hi not sure if this is the right place to post this but whatever

so ive got a goal of getting into medicine after i finish highschool, im in year 11 term 2 as of writing this but my scores arent nearly good enough for such a competitive course, ive been getting very inconsistent marks between 60-80 on average in ext 1 maths right now and its roughly the same in all other subjects like chem physics bio jap ect. ive been trying hard to increase my marks/grades and although there is a slight somewhat noticeable difference compared to years 10 and before, im worried because its nowhere near what i need for medicine. although ive been enjoying maths jap and chem a lot more from last year its not gonna be enough if i cant actually get better marks, ik marks arent everything but thats whats tested in the HSC and thats what determines your ATAR and if i cant improve that then well, anyways i heard this is the place to go to find like actual highschool graduates/students who know what they are talking about and i figured i would at least try to get some advice from you guys, also im not saying getting into medicine is the only way for me to be happy and successful and whatnot, i just really want to get into the course because im genuinely interested and its the only thing i can imagine not being absolutely bored out of my mind doing for the rest of my life. so yeah if you have any advice/study tips or whatever i would love to hear them, thanks.

a few study tips that helped me improve my grades from failing half of my yr 10 classes, to going well for year 12:
1. Active listening in class. Absorb what your teacher is saying and ask questions for ANYTHING that you don't understand. It's so easy to just nod your head because you think you are 'listening' but u dont actually retain anything.

2. For maths: Practice. My maths results are what I saw the biggest improvement in, so I hope this advice helps (I went from 60%'s in yr 10, to straight 90s for most of yr 11 and all of yr 12). Just keep practicing over and over through past papers etc. Especially homework. Do every single question assigned to you for homework, and anytime you get sometjing wrong, figure out why. If you cant, meet with your teaching. You will start to identify patterns so quickly

3. Tutoring - For me, i got tutoring for a few subjects which helped heaps. Obviously there are people who do extremely well without tutoring, but for me, being slightly ahead of the class (since im not driven enough to do it myself) helps heaps because it allows you to more-so understand what's going on in class.

I hop this was sorta helpful, idk

 

[spice]

a few study tips that helped me improve my grades from failing half of my yr 10 classes, to going well for year 12:
1. Active listening in class. Absorb what your teacher is saying and ask questions for ANYTHING that you don't understand. It's so easy to just nod your head because you think you are 'listening' but u dont actually retain anything.

2. For maths: Practice. My maths results are what I saw the biggest improvement in, so I hope this advice helps (I went from 60%'s in yr 10, to straight 90s for most of yr 11 and all of yr 12). Just keep practicing over and over through past papers etc. Especially homework. Do every single question assigned to you for homework, and anytime you get sometjing wrong, figure out why. If you cant, meet with your teaching. You will start to identify patterns so quickly

3. Tutoring - For me, i got tutoring for a few subjects which helped heaps. Obviously there are people who do extremely well without tutoring, but for me, being slightly ahead of the class (since im not driven enough to do it myself) helps heaps because it allows you to more-so understand what's going on in class.

I hop this was sorta helpful, idk

throughout school ive been on and off different tutoring centres all the time, whether it was a large company or a private tutor they all seem to make promises that they cant keep, idk it never worked for me and i stopped tutoring about a term before year 11 and i noticed no decline in grades and plus i really dont want to divert my focus between tutoring homework/topics and the school ones that i desperately need improvement on and are already very content heavy

also for maths you stated you did past papers as in school assessment past papers or like actual HSC past papers

 

[aqwerty13402]

did past papers as in school assessment past papers or like actual HSC past papers

I mean now that I'm in year 12, HSC papers, but besides that I just tried to find prelim papers / redoing chapter reviews and my schools past papers.

 

[spice]

I mean now that I'm in year 12, HSC papers, but besides that I just tried to find prelim papers / redoing chapter reviews and my schools past papers.

i also see you do english ext 2 so can i just ask you. what about english? how do you improve that, for me english has never made much sense and i always feel like teachers be digging too deep and analysing too much. as much as i sucked at like every subject i sucked even more at english to the point where japanese made more sense than english. any tips on how to study for such a different subject?

 

[aqwerty13402]

i also see you do english ext 2 so can i just ask you. what about english? how do you improve that, for me english has never made much sense and i always feel like teachers be digging too deep and analysing too much. as much as i sucked at like every subject i sucked even more at english to the point where japanese made more sense than english. any tips on how to study for such a different subject?

Gosh i honestly have no clue - I fucking hate all 4 units of english. The only reason I do them and can do (sort of) well, is because I memorise my essays before exams and then adapt them on the day. This isn't the only way, since a lot of top schools don't teach their students to do this. But if im being honest, I cannot analyse/write on the spot for shit. Take English Ext 1 for example. It's 2 questions. You can be taught shit content all year, but if you have a good base essay and you understand literary theory / your texts + you can adapt its not too bad.

A lot of it has come from my tutor, since I have sort of acclimatised to how she thinks. And a lot of extension 1 bleeds down into advanced for me. I mean in the sense that some of the more complex concepts I can use in advanced to make me stand out. If you want me to go thru a few of them in dms i can but its a bit wordy.

sorry if this is not coherent, my eyes hurt

 

[iloveeggs]

hi not sure if this is the right place to post this but whatever

so ive got a goal of getting into medicine after i finish highschool, im in year 11 term 2 as of writing this but my scores arent nearly good enough for such a competitive course, ive been getting very inconsistent marks between 60-80 on average in ext 1 maths right now and its roughly the same in all other subjects like chem physics bio jap ect. ive been trying hard to increase my marks/grades and although there is a slight somewhat noticeable difference compared to years 10 and before, im worried because its nowhere near what i need for medicine. although ive been enjoying maths jap and chem a lot more from last year its not gonna be enough if i cant actually get better marks, ik marks arent everything but thats whats tested in the HSC and thats what determines your ATAR and if i cant improve that then well, anyways i heard this is the place to go to find like actual highschool graduates/students who know what they are talking about and i figured i would at least try to get some advice from you guys, also im not saying getting into medicine is the only way for me to be happy and successful and whatnot, i just really want to get into the course because im genuinely interested and its the only thing i can imagine not being absolutely bored out of my mind doing for the rest of my life. so yeah if you have any advice/study tips or whatever i would love to hear them, thanks.

hey im literally in the same boat as you, i also want to do undergrad med, and my marks so far have been ranging from 75-95 (in the 80s for most courses) which is bad by my school's standards because i am average/below average for most subjects and these assessments were simpler than our year 10 exams which i did great in. i went through the 5 stages of grief after seeing my half yearly report bc i've never flopped that hard in subjects/assessments that i previously found easy. i don't want to be dismissive of what you're going through but from my experience as well as others' it could just be because you're not used to the year 11 workload yet or are lacking study skills (maybe you're struggling with organisation, procrastination, time management etc.). so many of the people i personally know that got 98/99 atars have done badly in term 1 of year 11, even failing exams in subjects that they've later gone on to state rank.

i think the one subject i can really give advice to you about is math bc it's my best subject and i also accelerate 2u. For math it's really important that you first understand topics conceptually (i go to yt/teacher/tutors/seniors for that) and set aside time to do as many practise questions and papers as you possibly can. if you can get your hands on a cambridge math y11 textbook (you can pirate one off the internet for free) you could do some the last few questions in the exercises, you could go on https://thsconline.github.io/s/ and find papers to do. i find that you get better at recognising question types and how to approach them the more you do questions. its totally ok to not be able to do questions, it's just important to use solutions or ask for help and figure out how to do them and then seek out more questions like that so you can again get used to them. so basically if you're someone that understands topics but just can't get the exam questions right, practice will be your best friend.

tutoring certainly helped for me (not sure about other subjects but it did for math). i used to go to this place called kurt's mathematics centre from just before yr 7 to the start of 11 and just dropped out last term. i wouldn't recommend this centre to my worst enemies unless you're in a top selective school and already have a band 6 in ext math. but the one thing they got right is practise. i got massive amounts of homework each week which took a toll on my mental health and my grades in other subjects but it constantly made me revise concepts we covered from ages ago, made me used to harder hsc questions and things like that. obviously i wasn't coping well with this tutoring and their extreme measures to get us to be better and had to drop out but it made me very good at math in my school (top 50 selective school). just to reiterate i DO NOT recommend this place and i DO NOT think that they are reasonable in the slightest. im currently at dr du, which i can't really give you a review for bc i haven't been here long but the general trend i notice in tutoring centres for math is that they spam you with practise often from trials/internal assessments/past hsc tasks etc.

that whole last paragraph isn't me trying to persade you to go to tutoring though, that is totally up to you, and seeing your reply about not going to tutoring bc it didn't help and you want to focus on school is prefectly reasonable and i think you should make that call for yourself. my point is that math tutoring is typically just them explaining concepts to you and then giving you tons of practise, and so if you can learn topics yourself or with the help of teachers/seniors/yt etc. and find the practise yourself (thsc and textbooks) you can essentially tutor yourself loll

good luck!

 

[spice]

Gosh i honestly have no clue - I fucking hate all 4 units of english. The only reason I do them and can do (sort of) well, is because I memorise my essays before exams and then adapt them on the day. This isn't the only way, since a lot of top schools don't teach their students to do this. But if im being honest, I cannot analyse/write on the spot for shit. Take English Ext 1 for example. It's 2 questions. You can be taught shit content all year, but if you have a good base essay and you understand literary theory / your texts + you can adapt its not too bad.

A lot of it has come from my tutor, since I have sort of acclimatised to how she thinks. And a lot of extension 1 bleeds down into advanced for me. I mean in the sense that some of the more complex concepts I can use in advanced to make me stand out. If you want me to go thru a few of them in dms i can but its a bit wordy.

sorry if this is not coherent, my eyes hurt

oh ok, yeah cause mostly im struggling with like mystery questions, where they give you an unknown question on a book/play/piece that you analyse throughout the terms and you have to write an essay on that just on the spot. so what if you get an unknown question type assessment are you basically saying your screwed?

hey im literally in the same boat as you, i also want to do undergrad med, and my marks so far have been ranging from 75-95 (in the 80s for most courses) which is bad by my school's standards because i am average/below average for most subjects and these assessments were simpler than our year 10 exams which i did great in. i went through the 5 stages of grief after seeing my half yearly report bc i've never flopped that hard in subjects/assessments that i previously found easy. i don't want to be dismissive of what you're going through but from my experience as well as others' it could just be because you're not used to the year 11 workload yet or are lacking study skills (maybe you're struggling with organisation, procrastination, time management etc.). so many of the people i personally know that got 98/99 atars have done badly in term 1 of year 11, even failing exams in subjects that they've later gone on to state rank.

i think the one subject i can really give advice to you about is math bc it's my best subject and i also accelerate 2u. For math it's really important that you first understand topics conceptually (i go to yt/teacher/tutors/seniors for that) and set aside time to do as many practise questions and papers as you possibly can. if you can get your hands on a cambridge math y11 textbook (you can pirate one off the internet for free) you could do some the last few questions in the exercises, you could go onand find papers to do. i find that you get better at recognising question types and how to approach them the more you do questions. its totally ok to not be able to do questions, it's just important to use solutions or ask for help and figure out how to do them and then seek out more questions like that so you can again get used to them. so basically if you're someone that understands topics but just can't get the exam questions right, practice will be your best friend.

tutoring certainly helped for me (not sure about other subjects but it did for math). i used to go to this place called kurt's mathematics centre from just before yr 7 to the start of 11 and just dropped out last term. i wouldn't recommend this centre to my worst enemies unless you're in a top selective school and already have a band 6 in ext math. but the one thing they got right is practise. i got massive amounts of homework each week which took a toll on my mental health and my grades in other subjects but it constantly made me revise concepts we covered from ages ago, made me used to harder hsc questions and things like that. obviously i wasn't coping well with this tutoring and their extreme measures to get us to be better and had to drop out but it made me very good at math in my school (top 50 selective school). just to reiterate i DO NOT recommend this place and i DO NOT think that they are reasonable in the slightest. im currently at dr du, which i can't really give you a review for bc i haven't been here long but the general trend i notice in tutoring centres for math is that they spam you with practise often from trials/internal assessments/past hsc tasks etc.

that whole last paragraph isn't me trying to persade you to go to tutoring though, that is totally up to you, and seeing your reply about not going to tutoring bc it didn't help and you want to focus on school is prefectly reasonable and i think you should make that call for yourself. my point is that math tutoring is typically just them explaining concepts to you and then giving you tons of practise, and so if you can learn topics yourself or with the help of teachers/seniors/yt etc. and find the practise yourself (thsc and textbooks) you can essentially tutor yourself loll

good luck!

lol the tutoring part and the amount of homework you get + mental health problems is relatable af. ig my biggest issue is prob/definitely procrastination, i mean i dont mind doing maths homework i actually am starting to enjoy the harder questions and i feel like the practicing part of maths i can do by myself IF i dont procrastinate. im just worried that i wont be able to catch up to the top of the class which seems unreachable if that makes any sort of sense. also as much as im worrying about maths im more worried about like physics and chem and bio and such.

 

[aqwerty13402]

oh ok, yeah cause mostly im struggling with like mystery questions, where they give you an unknown question on a book/play/piece that you analyse throughout the terms and you have to write an essay on that just on the spot. so what if you get an unknown question type assessment are you basically saying your screwed?

Not at all. Yes I memorise essays, but on the day I always adapt to the question. What I'm memorising is just a base essay that I can usually tweak to throw in words of the question etc.

 

[iloveeggs]

lol the tutoring part and the amount of homework you get + mental health problems is relatable af. ig my biggest issue is prob/definitely procrastination, i mean i dont mind doing maths homework i actually am starting to enjoy the harder questions and i feel like the practicing part of maths i can do by myself IF i dont procrastinate. im just worried that i wont be able to catch up to the top of the class which seems unreachable if that makes any sort of sense. also as much as im worrying about maths im more worried about like physics and chem and bio and such.

i have the same problem with procrastination lmao. i set deadlines for myself but never meet them bc it doesn't feel like the work needs to be done asap and put it off. idk how to manage that either but i told my parents ill get a band 6 in everything this term so that's what's been motivating me to actually do work this term lmao

i study for physics in a really similar way to math and it works fine for me. i go to a tutor for it and do loads of practise. im actually flopping chem tho and idk how to study for it either, i just memorise notes and pray that the test isn't too bad so i can't say anything abt that. and i don't do bio but i hear its really important to keep great notes and do active recall and spaced repetition.

 

[youraverageangel]

Not at all. Yes I memorise essays, but on the day I always adapt to the question. What I'm memorising is just a base essay that I can usually tweak to throw in words of the question etc.

what do u put in a base essay

 

[carrotsss]

what do u put in a base essay

mostly full paragraphs with quotes and analysis in a way where there’s space to link to the question. a lot of adapting is also just changing words of ur analysis so they seem more geared to the question words to give the impression it’s super adapted

 

[foxisaro]

hi not sure if this is the right place to post this but whatever

so ive got a goal of getting into medicine after i finish highschool, im in year 11 term 2 as of writing this but my scores arent nearly good enough for such a competitive course, ive been getting very inconsistent marks between 60-80 on average in ext 1 maths right now and its roughly the same in all other subjects like chem physics bio jap ect. ive been trying hard to increase my marks/grades and although there is a slight somewhat noticeable difference compared to years 10 and before, im worried because its nowhere near what i need for medicine. although ive been enjoying maths jap and chem a lot more from last year its not gonna be enough if i cant actually get better marks, ik marks arent everything but thats whats tested in the HSC and thats what determines your ATAR and if i cant improve that then well, anyways i heard this is the place to go to find like actual highschool graduates/students who know what they are talking about and i figured i would at least try to get some advice from you guys, also im not saying getting into medicine is the only way for me to be happy and successful and whatnot, i just really want to get into the course because im genuinely interested and its the only thing i can imagine not being absolutely bored out of my mind doing for the rest of my life. so yeah if you have any advice/study tips or whatever i would love to hear them, thanks.

For bio, I find that it's rlly helpful just to review your notes regularly- whether that's every week, or every new topic, etc just because bio is so content heavy. Quizzing yourself and your friends and answering the way you would in a test, or explaining concepts to someone who doesn't know them is also rlly good since it forces you to actively recall the content and actually put it into words. But tbh the most important thing is doing past papers and practice questions for bio!! It's rlly helpful in helping you understand the kind of questions you're going to see in the test, what you need to work on, as well as the kind of answers the markers will be looking for in response to different kinds of questions.

In the tests themselves, it's important to know the specific terms and names of the concepts bc that's what the markers are going to be looking for in your answers. One of my friends likes to make a list of the key terms that we learn each module so she doesn't forget. Also, this is more general and applies to most subjects, but make sure to check how many marks a certain question is! The number of marks will give you a sort of idea of how much you should write and what you might have to write about (e.g. a 4 mark explain question probably needs you to describe the situation, explain the bio concept you're going to talk about and then explain how this concept is represented in the situation). Hope this helps and best of luck!