Dropping 4u maths to 3u? or keep it... (1 Viewer)

[The Savior]

Hi all, I started 4u maths complex numbers about 6 weeks ago and I am already starting to struggle with some of the 4u questions in the terry lee book. I can do most of them but then I get some of the induction questions or some of the really hard geometrical applications, and I just can't do them. Is it important to be able to do every single question if I want to score a e4?
Do you guys reckon I should drop 4u because I do physics, chem, bio and advanced English as well, so I got a pretty heavy workload. I find 4u maths is consuming too much of my time. So is it better to just do 3u, cause I averaged 99% in my assessments in 2u and 90% in 3u, so should I just forget about 4u?

 

[astroman]

if u get 99 in 3u u can get a 90+ in 4u

 

[seventhroot]

drop it. 12 units is 2 too much

 

[astroman]

keep 4u and drop bio

 

[callipygian]

key question: do you enjoy maths?

 

[The Savior]

To a degree, I enjoy it enough so that I can confidently sit down and work hard, but not enough that I don't get sick of it. And I can't and do not wish to drop biology. It is by far my favourite subject and I got an awesome teacher, and it's one of my best subjects. Plus I want to do medicine and a friend who is doing med right now told me that biology would really help with starting off in med

 

[astroman]

keep 4u then, med is basically 99.95 atar and 4u maff will scale high

 

[callipygian]

To a degree, I enjoy it enough so that I can confidently sit down and work hard, but not enough that I don't get sick of it.

nearly everyone gets sick of maths tbh

I'd keep it and see how the term goes, if nothing else 4u is way more fun than 3u

 

[siggy]

Drop 4U if you think you won't get at least 70. If you don't get 70 it probably won't count.

Keep in mind 70 is pretty hard to get and you can out scale 4U by doing well in other things anyway...

 

[The Savior]

is that 70 as in a raw mark of 70% in assessments? because I reckon I can get that but the amount of work that is needed would probably set me back for other subjects

 

[iStudent]

Drop bio or another science. If you drop 4u you'll only regret it in the end when all those mx2 kids get e4 or even e3s and still get the same atar equivalent as your b6 in a science subject (plus their 3u counts for 2 units!).

Also, 4u is supposed to consume a lot of your time. If you feel you can stay on top of it throughout the year, then keep it!

 

[siggy]

is that 70 as in a raw mark of 70% in assessments? because I reckon I can get that but the amount of work that is needed would probably set me back for other subjects

Well yes of course it's easy to get 70 but at what cost to your other subjects as you said...

 

[funnytomato]

I think one of the issues here is not having that sense of satisfaction of being able to solve all(or most) of the questions.
And getting a relatively low raw mark in 4u (as opposed to the 90's in 2u and 3u) does seem disappointing.
However as they've mentioned above, you do have to take into account of the scaling factor. Many people who need a higher ATAR(e.g. for a medicine degree) do exploit this feature of 4u maths even though they might be "sick of it" as well.

Having said that, I am NOT implying that doing a high-scaling subject will definitely give you a higher ATAR. You still have to be above a certain rank to "scale up" , also you need some degree of interest and self-belief so that you don't just totally give up because of the "bad" marks.

If possible, would you be more specific about your problem ?
like, you've mentioned it is consuming too much of your time, so how many hours are you spending on maths each day (or per week) ?
and how many hours are you spending on the other subjects?

also, what are your rankings like in each subject? (ranking and school and size of cohort are probably helpful as well)