Exam Tips

[coblin]

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This thread is for the obvious exam/study tips that places like TSFX and other companies will try to sell to you for some amount of money (or sometimes give away the lectures for free, to promote themselves)

It's a bit late for study tips, but exam tips:

My advice is to build up confidence. Confidence is the most important part of an exam. It determines your ability to think under pressure, to improvise a response and believe in your own answer.

If there is one key pattern in my study, it would definitely NOT be rote-learning. I got through my exams largely on improvisation and application of ideas from extremely central ideas/themes/concepts. It was my confidence and general self-belief in my thought process that allowed me to write these answers on paper.

Secondly, use reading time. This synergises nicely with confidence. People who have no confidence will crack under pressure and nerves in reading time. They'll think "oh no, how do I do this??"

Look up "heuristics" on Wikipedia and read the introduction or something. It is the process of problem solving. You need confidence and a bit of academic initiative to start poking around your mind to try and get out an answer. Logically and systematically think about the problem, squeeze out a possible pathway to do the question. Don't remember how to do particular questions, but be prepared to do any question by simply mastering the art of problem solving.

Reading time is critical for identifying your weak spots. Combined with confidence, and some intuitive problem solving skills, you should aim to work through the "easy" questions (the ones you know how to do) first, then come back and spend your time trying to solve the trickier problems. Reading time is your planning time. You use it to map out what questions you will target first. For the middle-of-the-range students, this is critical! You must work out the order you will complete the questions. However, for the top students, this doesn't matter that much since they'll read the questions then attempt the paper in order since they can handle every question anyway :P.

Also use reading time to gain a bit of foresight into the depth of the question. Particularly in Specialist Maths, start solving the problem in your mind and thinking about what sort of substitution could work, or what integration technique, or what trigonometric identity to use, etc.?

[Strawbaby]

Greatest tip: ear plugs. Seriously. I don't know about other people, but coughing/sniffing/gum-chewing/foot-tapping just completely distracts me from my work, to the point where good trains of thought disappear when someone starts making noise. Chuck in some ear plugs and it's like the rest of the world doesn't exist.

And always expect to blindly panic in the first five minutes or so of reading time. It doesn't mean you won't do well!

[enwiabe]

ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS use EVERY last minute in a maths exam.

I checked back over my working in the last 10 minutes of methods exam 2 and found THREE mistakes that I fixed up. If I had not found and corrected them, I may have scored below 40!

[w2dot]

I found doing past exams most helpful...gets you used to the style of vcaa exams.

Practice papers by various companies are also useful but you've got to be careful with those - you can't rely on them too much because they can be irrelevant or poorly written

[bethb02]

Thanks for the tips everyone. I'm likely to panic so confidence will be key.

[liverpool3k]

Check you haven't missed any questions/page... And leave (some) time to check your answers.

[Matthew89]

Originally Posted by Strawbaby

Greatest tip: ear plugs. Seriously. I don't know about other people, but coughing/sniffing/gum-chewing/foot-tapping just completely distracts me from my work, to the point where good trains of thought disappear when someone starts making noise. Chuck in some ear plugs and it's like the rest of the world doesn't exist.

That might be a problem if the exam supervisor makes an important announcement (as was the case in this years physics exam)

[Strawbaby]

Originally Posted by Matthew89

That might be a problem if the exam supervisor makes an important announcement (as was the case in this years physics exam)

It doesn't completely block sound, it just dulls it. You can usually hear what people are saying.

[Midas Touch]

Completely agree with using reading time. It effectively give you an extra 15 minutes on the exam. In general, you should use it to plan the order in which to do the questions, but in exams such as spesh/methods/chem where there are multiple choice questions, use the reading time to try and do the answers in your head. For english, use this time to read over the articles, etc, as well as figuring out what questions you intend to do on the text response section.

Knowing the material inside out is also a must, but do not rote learn 83178376421 different examples. As long as you explicitly know the syllabus material, you will be able to handle every question thrown at you.

And one last thing, get a ton of practice under your belt. You should aim to do a good number of practice exams, as well as questions from checkpoints/smartstudy. This is to ensure that you thoroughly know the material, as well as to try and minimise those silly mistakes which can happen no matter how well you the content. It's these little mistakes here and there which can ultimately decide whether or not you get 45+ or under 40, so developing a methodical approach to tackling questions to ensure that you minimise making errors should be a priority.

[Toothpick]

Exam tips:
http://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/l...sources/exams/

[khangfu]

Since we talknig about exam tips does anyone have any tips, tahts worked for them, on how to overcome Insomnia? the only other things i found on this forum is extreme ....... exhaustion.

[Capricious]

^^ I agree I literally have to work myself to the ground to be able to sleep, but then I'm exhausted the next day and my study is inferior. It's a vicious cycle gah.

[Odette1990]

Originally Posted by Capricious

^^ I agree I literally have to work myself to the ground to be able to sleep, but then I'm exhausted the next day and my study is inferior. It's a vicious cycle gah.

Same here, im just so tired lately ...

[Cara.Mel]

I don't know if any of this will help, but:
Ages ago I tried to find on the internet how to sleep better but none of them worked. Things like if you're not asleep after 20mins get up and do something then try again later etc. Then not long ago I realised that I take an hour minimum to get to sleep because bed has become the only place I stop and think about things (mainly little stuff like what I did today, the study I *should* be doing etc). And that if I set aside time during the day to do that and didn't think of anything at all when trying to get to sleep it took about 15 mins.
Most of the time I don't have the self control to actually do that though xD I probably will when exams get closer and sleep becomes more important.

So maybe if you try to look at what exactly is making you not able to sleep (I know it sounds incredibly basic and stupid, sorry) it will help it a little bit at least


When I try making myself exhausted to sleep, it makes the next day crap so I gave up on that

[Trigger_003]

Yeah... try to get some things out of the way over the holidays if you have a load of excess worries that are keeping you awake. It could be due to diet and lifestyle as well. If it's really bad you might want to go get some medical help with it.

... anti-stress tablets?

I find that if I've done some exercise during the day it's much easier to get to sleep. Just a 15 minute run or a quick swim can do wonders, seriously.