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15 units for HSC, am I crazy? (1 Viewer)

stillthinkin

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I think its because relative to your other subjects, society and culture is perceived to be one of those things that are not really a subject. Like abo studies. Or whatever cafs is. (No offense)

I reckon if you genuinely enjoy all your subjects and can manage your time well, then go for it,, but constantly be thinking about which course you are worse at/find hard to manage and drop it. Because in year12 some courses likee physics get significantly more difficult or content heavy compared to preliminary

Like you can try out history extension but remember it is a ridiculous amount of work for one unit. In addition to learning a whole course you have to do a project. My history extension class started off with 20ish people, and now only has around 5 (I dropped too)

15 units for the hsc is a lot of unecessary extra work and pressure. Especialy if you're gonna be school captain, that will take up a lot of your time if you take it seriouslly.
I guess it's just the workload I was worried bout, cause if I take history extension that means two majors :/
 

aphorae

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I did 16u in yr 11 and I'm doing 14u this year... that's the max they let us pick up for y12 otherwise i'd have a full timetable PLUS morning/arvo classes

but tbh i'm doing eng ext 2 which is my backup (haven't spent more than 15hrs on it all together... do other stuff in class), geo's pretty light work and maths I learnt the whole course with my tutor a year early, so I don't have geo hw and i don't do maths hw (except tutor hw lol)

personally i do 14u because i know i'll end up procrastinating no matter what and my subjects range from super high scaling to low scaling so no idea what's going to happen there, and just in case I bomb an assessment for some reason.

if you're a solid worker i wouldn't be wasting my time doing 15u... unless you don't care about the HSC mark and just care about enjoying the subjects, or unless you're a machine and you think it won't affect your ability to do well overall.

history sounds like a lot of theory though, dunno if I'd want to do that with 2 sciences... how many ppl in each subject? if it's like rank 9/60 for phys I suppose keep it for now, but if it's like 9/12 maybe not. same for mx1.

most people in our school went from 14u -> 12u in yr 12 after a term though so I wouldn't worry right at this moment which one to drop etc.
 

stillthinkin

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I did 16u in yr 11 and I'm doing 14u this year... that's the max they let us pick up for y12 otherwise i'd have a full timetable PLUS morning/arvo classes

but tbh i'm doing eng ext 2 which is my backup (haven't spent more than 15hrs on it all together... do other stuff in class), geo's pretty light work and maths I learnt the whole course with my tutor a year early, so I don't have geo hw and i don't do maths hw (except tutor hw lol)

personally i do 14u because i know i'll end up procrastinating no matter what and my subjects range from super high scaling to low scaling so no idea what's going to happen there, and just in case I bomb an assessment for some reason.

if you're a solid worker i wouldn't be wasting my time doing 15u... unless you don't care about the HSC mark and just care about enjoying the subjects, or unless you're a machine and you think it won't affect your ability to do well overall.

history sounds like a lot of theory though, dunno if I'd want to do that with 2 sciences... how many ppl in each subject? if it's like rank 9/60 for phys I suppose keep it for now, but if it's like 9/12 maybe not. same for mx1.

most people in our school went from 14u -> 12u in yr 12 after a term though so I wouldn't worry right at this moment which one to drop etc.
English Advanced - 1/62
English Ext - 1/18
Maths Advanced - 15/68
Maths Extension - 20/41
Physics - 9/35
Chemistry 7/43
Modern 1/58
Society 1/60

Freaking about maths atm, it's the only thing that I have to keep to get into the degree that I want to do. Need to get tutoring ASAP
 

nb2594

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maybe drop society or maths extension to advanced .. 15 units is too much u won't have enough time to study each subject
 

alstah

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Dude I would drop Physics and Chemistry. Your strength obviously lies in the written and spoken word. Don't drop Society and Culture if your ranked 1.

If you drop physics and chem, you'll have a lot more time for studying maths. You might consider picking up English Ext 2, as well as History extension.

Seriously, 15 units is ridiculous and I think it's stupid any school would allow it!

If you were at uni, and you had 5 subjects per semester, would you do 6?

IT's STUPID how people say 'Oh i'm going to have these extra subjects as backups' -> WHY!? The HSC is a time game, and only 10 units count, doing 15 is crazy because 5 units, which is sometimes 50% of a person's HSC, wouldn't even count.
 

Skriker

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I think its because relative to your other subjects, society and culture is perceived to be one of those things that are not really a subject. Like abo studies. Or whatever cafs is. (No offense)

I reckon if you genuinely enjoy all your subjects and can manage your time well, then go for it,, but constantly be thinking about which course you are worse at/find hard to manage and drop it. Because in year12 some courses likee physics get significantly more difficult or content heavy compared to preliminary

Like you can try out history extension but remember it is a ridiculous amount of work for one unit. In addition to learning a whole course you have to do a project. My history extension class started off with 20ish people, and now only has around 5 (I dropped too)

15 units for the hsc is a lot of unecessary extra work and pressure. Especialy if you're gonna be school captain, that will take up a lot of your time if you take it seriouslly.
+1 exactly.

EDIT: Please don't choose 15 units, it can put huge amounts of pressure on you, I was really struggling in the prelims and was only doing 13 units, 15 units is ALOT of content which more work and more pressure especially during your trial period. But I guess if you only really love the subjects and are taking the HSC seriously then go ahead!
 
Last edited:

LoveHateSchool

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I wouldn't drop society-your school rank is good and you're coming out first out of 60!!! (Such a big SAC cohort, -must be a big sub at your school). I'd drop one of your science or maths ext.

15 units means 33% of what you do won't count for your HSC. (10/15 count, thus 66% will count)

aphorae, dying of curiosity, what 16u did you do in prelim and what 14u you do now? What is a full timetable at your school? At mine it's 12 units, so 13u + means you'd have morning or arvo classes. (That's because stupid sport is mandatory in yr 11-but maths ext have their class there this year for some reason, so spose that could count as 13u is the max without arvo or morning, but it's still offline).
 

Absolutezero

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Dude I would drop Physics and Chemistry. Your strength obviously lies in the written and spoken word. Don't drop Society and Culture if your ranked 1.

If you drop physics and chem, you'll have a lot more time for studying maths. You might consider picking up English Ext 2, as well as History extension.
This is actually pretty good advice.
 

Bored_of_HSC

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You crazy!!!

It might not seem too much to you now but come HSC time you dead!!! I just suggest you keep as many subs as you can for now but term 2 HSC drop down to 12 units. This way you can still keep what you like/what you're good at. Though your teachers may hate you for it :p.

TBH No point in doing it if only roughly 2/3rds of the effort actually counts.
Whatever you do, good luck.
 

Shadowdude

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There is a lot of stupidity in some of the advice in this thread <_<


No, you're not crazy for doing 15 units. If you manage your time well - you will do well. Do NOT listen to anyone who says there is a 'magic' number of units because just because you drop 2 subjects and free up two hours of free time per day DOES NOT mean you automatically spend time studying for them. That's a silly assumption. In personal experience, those who did 14+ units got the highest ATARs at my school because the ones who did 10 units just spent all their 'study time' chatting in the library or surfing the internet.

Seriously. You gave us no indication that you didn't like any subject or want to drop any subject in the OP - so keep with them. If the workload gets too hard, then drop it. I came into the HSC with 16 units and I dropped Economics because I didn't like it. I kept on with 14 and was close to dropping Physics or Legal but kept both because I liked the subjects.

However, if you feel you need to drop something - then the advice would naturally be to drop Physics and Chemistry as your ranks are lower there.
 

LoveHateSchool

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^I don't think it's stupid to make some small concession for the fact that their ranks in subjects may be better off if they do less...like totally hypothetical, they could come 5th in 15 u, where they could potentially come 1st/2nd in 10-12 units....the latter is obvs more beneficial. This person is obvs motivated and I don't think they'd be complacent in any studies they got-they obvs care about school.
 

Garth satan

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the question you need to ask is what you want to, you don't need a million subjects, for what you want to do you may only need half of that other then that your just wasting your effort and time with subjects you may not even need to do unless you extremely like doing so much, and you like the challenge and the hardwork
 

Shadowdude

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The person's coming first in all their subjects essentially. I think "oh you should drop some subjects to give yourself more time" is only valid really if you're struggling in a few subjects.

Here, this person can drop Chemistry and Physics - subjects where she (?) isn't coming first in and still have enough units to do the HSC.
 

13abie

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no matter what you think now, by the time you're in the HSC you will see that 15 units is just absolutely impossible. You cant do well in that much
 

Uzername

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You obviously know where your strengths lie, your science/maths subjects need more work but your literature subjects are great. It's all a matter of what you want to do in the future, 15 units is a lot of work, I was thinking 12 was too much as it is! Seems like you enjoy writing/creating more so I would drop either a science or math subject.
 

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