Stop procrastinating and start studying today

Preparing for HSC Trials can often feel more stressful than sitting the HSC – many of our past students can vouch for this.

This can be especially nerve-wracking because it’s the first time you’re sitting a paper of this magnitude in HSC-style conditions. Rather than make you feel even more nervous (I promise, you really shouldn’t be!) here are a few tips to prepare your study schedule for HSC Trials:

Rate your subjects

As a general rule of thumb, you should always dedicate more time to subjects that you can better improve in. For example, if you’re feeling confident in Legal Studies (and your marks often reflect this), but your Chemistry marks have dropped, you should always prioritise study for Chemistry – simply so you can boost your marks! Keep this in mind when creating your study timetable for HSC Trials.

Understand the content you’re learning

For many students, learning or memorising the content is the easy part. Applying the content to questions and long answer questions is a completely different concept altogether.

Use this time to understand the concepts of what you need to know by referring to the syllabus dot points. From here, do as many short and long answer questions as you possibly can – and get them marked from your teacher!

RELATED: HSC Glossary of Keywords

Study in exam-style conditions

Speaking of practice papers, we highly recommend sitting these papers in exam-style conditions. This way, by the time Trials come around you won’t be too shocked or intimidated walking into class and starting your exams.

Try to turn off distractions such as music, movies, social media (put your phone on airplane mode) and don’t use your laptop if you don’t need to!

Time yourself for each section of an exam using your phone or laptop:

Quality over quantity

The purpose of your HSC Trials is all about practice. Don’t worry too much if your study plan isn’t perfect or you didn’t get to cover all the dot points of the syllabus. These are all important lessons that you will learn by the time the HSC comes around, and you can manage your time better.

Trials will give you a good idea of your strengths and weaknesses for certain topics and subjects, and where you need to refine your study to improve and overcome these obstacles before the HSC. Do what you can, work your hardest and HSC Trials as guide to better help you study for the final exams in October.

Need some extra help? We’ve got you covered at Talent 100

All of our Sydney learning centres are now open in Term 3 (Burwood, Chatswood, Epping, Hurstville & Sydney CBD), so you can brush-up on your skills before exams start.

We also have online classes available for students in NSW – so you won’t miss out on any valuable time this year! Take advantage of our 1-1 classes where you can get your past papers marked, ask questions about homework, or just speak to one of our Talent 100 Mentors.

Click here to find out more.