Standard or advanced maths? (1 Viewer)

[panikinprogress]

I'm contemplating moving to standard maths for year 12, because I've heard a lot of good experiences with it from other people. The main benefit I'm interested in is the fact that I'll have more time freed up if I move to standard, because of the decreased workload. My maths advanced results have been basically whatever the average of the grade is for each assessment task, but I feel like the amount of work I put in does not measure to that mark. I am wondering if it would be more beneficial if I moved to standard and just did really well there? Any thoughts or advice is appreciated.
For context, I go to a top 10 selective school, so nobody really slacks off, even in standard, and I'm doing very well in all my other subjects.

 

[jimmysmith560]

Mathematics Standard is generally considered to be easier than Mathematics Advanced. Scaling may be inferior, although this should not be a primary consideration when making this decision, especially given that favourable performance means that the effect of scaling will likely be negligible. From your post, there seem to be two important advantages that you would benefit from should you choose to drop to Mathematics Standard, being:

• Since Mathematics Advanced is a more difficult and demanding subject than Mathematics Standard, dropping it will reduce some of your workload (as you mentioned), which can not only give you more time to focus on each individual Mathematics Standard topic, but also on your other subjects.
• Being a slightly less difficult and demanding subject than Mathematics Advanced, you will have a greater opportunity of performing well in Mathematics Standard throughout year 12. Of course, this still requires you to be committed to regularly studying (including completing practice material), just as you would if you were still taking Mathematics Advanced. Other than the fact that you attend a highly-ranked school and considering your performance standard in the rest of your subjects, you definitely seem like someone who is ready to put in the appropriate time and effort to ensure the best possible performance in Mathematics Standard.

I hope this helps!

 

[Nezuko----]

I think first what you need to do is find out why you are hitting that average mark. amount of work does not always equal greater results, but more about effective work (do you know what you got wrong? are you finding a particular concept hard?). Generally, most of my friends that find the subject difficult have come to realise that they don't full understand the topic and haven't been exposed to harder questions, hence not being able to complete their exam.

Of course, this can be easily fixed and you can start increasing your marks when this is established as well. this is in parallel for any subject, but for math in particular. If you don't effectively work in standard this can produce the same outcome as in advanced.

But of course, it is up to you. If you really can't cope and you feel it's better to allocate your time into better areas of study then that may be effective to you.

 

[Vall]

Make sure you check any pre-requisite / recommended subjects for any uni courses you’re interested in before dropping. And if you’re aiming for a pretty high ATAR I would very much recommend sticking with advanced as standard with its worse scaling can limit you a bit.