Help with HSC Subject Selection?

Question

Hey,

I am about to make my subject selections for Years 11 and 12 and I am wondering if I am making the right choices. I have chosen:

English Advanced
Mathematics - 2 Unit
Economics
Business Studies
Legal Studies
Modern History

I'm not sure what career I want to pursue exactly but I know that it is going to be around the areas of commerce, business, law, economics, accounting, finance etc (well one of those areas at least). I want to keep my options open and hopefully achieve a UAI over 90, with the minimum being around a 75-80.

I would also like to know if you think that it is wise for me to do Economics, Business Studies and Legal Studies. Should I do all three? And what should my preference be for them?

I don't really want to be changing and dropping subjects once I begin, and I know that I am capable of achieveing good results in these subjects. I also want to know about scaling and how these subjects measure with that. I know you shouldn't choose subjects based on scaling but I still would like to know how the subjects I want to do would be scaled.

Any answers and information about these subjects/scaling/UAI etc would be greatly appreciated.

Thnx :)

Answer 1

I wouldn't recommend taking Advanced English unless you know you are going to get high marks on it; it's not a walk in the park. 2-Unit Mathematics looks like a good foundation for the type of university course you want to do (you'll find yourself applying exponential/logarithmic problems in the mathematical end of the business sector). All the others seem to suite your course also. So, apart from advanced English everything looks pretty in order.

Answer 2

You sound very organized and you're very articulate, I hadn't done half what you have now by the end of year 12 planning wise.



But yes those subjects look fantastic. As someone above me said, unless you're good at maths you'll get smashed. I did 2U maths and epically bombed out. I wasn't terrible at maths, I got a band 5 in the school certificate and studied my butt off but 2U maths is a LOT of work. I did 10 times the amount of study for Maths than anything else. And I got half the marks. I got over 85 in all my subjects. And 73 in maths. I wish I'd dropped to general. If you think you're ok and you go alright through year 11 though you should be fine. I mean you can always drop to general.



To the person who said do standard english, definitely don't. You seem very well spoken and can obviously string a sentence together. That's all you need for advanced maths. Only like 2% of kids get a band 6 in standard english. It's basically a subject for those who don't really care about their HSC. Advanced english really isn't that tough at all. I think I did about 5 hours of study for it the entire pre-hsc period. I got 88. And I'm not a natural at english either. I had a fantastic teacher and again, it's not that tough a subject really.



Another issue is MAYBE you'll have a problem with both economics and business. I didn't do either but so many people in my year hated economics and slept through business. I mean you can always drop a unit but still... Remember economics is a hard subject. It scales well but it's hard.



Modern history was my absolute favourite subject. It was a joy to study (that sounds so nerdy). But i honestly loved it. It was my best subject with 94. I honestly think I could have gone better but I spent all my time studying for everything else because I thought it would be a breeze.



I wish I'd done legal. Everyone in my year loved it.



As for scaling... I was obsessed with it prior to the HSC. In reality I found it was totally irrelevant. But this site has a full list of the scaling of courses. It's old because the board of studies are now nazi's about giving out RAW marks to people they think will use it to figure out scalings

http://www.boredofstudies.org/scaledmeans.php

Check out the other resources on that site. Got me through the HSC seriously



But yeah that's my opinion. If that's the path you want to go down then choose all three, what's the point in doing something else?

Answer 3

If you perform well at all the businessy type subjects then go for it. Myonly issue is the maths 2 unit



If you are really good at math and consistently score well then stick with it,. If however you are only middle of rung - do alright type of thing, then you will get smacked by the scaling and so would do better taking general math.



The thing that sucks about the HSC is that you have to way up - do you want to take subjects that you like (but only perform average in) or do you want to take subjects that you will be great at and so get scaled well.



I know people that did general maths, science for dummies and general english and got huge UAI's....but that was because they were very capable people doing subjects that were too easy for them....but you can take this path too and make year 11 and 12 alot less stress free.

Answer 4

wouldn't recommend taking Advanced English unless you know you are going to get high marks on it; it's not a walk in the park. 2-Unit Mathematics looks like a good foundation for the type of university course you want to do (you'll find yourself applying exponential/logarithmic problems in the mathematical end of the business sector). All the others seem to suite your course also. So, apart from advanced English everything looks pretty in order.



But yes those subjects look fantastic. As someone above me said, unless you're good at maths you'll get smashed. I did 2U maths and epically bombed out. I wasn't terrible at maths, I got a band 5 in the school certificate and studied my butt off but 2U maths is a LOT of work. I did 10 times the amount of study for Maths than anything else. And I got half the marks. I got over 85 in all my subjects. And 73 in maths. I wish I'd dropped to general. If you think you're ok and you go alright through year 11 though you should be fine. I mean you can always drop to general.



To the person who said do standard english, definitely don't. You seem very well spoken and can obviously string a sentence together. That's all you need for advanced maths. Only like 2% of kids get a band 6 in standard english. It's basically a subject for those who don't really care about their HSC. Advanced english really isn't that tough at all. I think I did about 5 hours of study for it the entire pre-hsc period. I got 88. And I'm not a natural at english either. I had a fantastic teacher and again, it's not that tough a subject really.



Another issue is MAYBE you'll have a problem with both economics and business. I didn't do either but so many people in my year hated economics and slept through business. I mean you can always drop a unit but still... Remember economics is a hard subject. It scales well but it's hard.



Modern history was my absolute favourite subject. It was a joy to study (that sounds so nerdy). But i honestly loved it. It was my best subject with 94. I honestly think I could have gone better but I spent all my time studying for everything else because I thought it would be a breeze.



I wish I'd done legal. Everyone in my year loved it.



As for scaling... I was obsessed with it prior to the HSC. In reality I found it was totally irrelevant. But this site has a full list of the scaling of courses. It's old because the board of studies are now nazi's about giving out RAW marks to people they think will use it to figure out scalings

http://www.boredofstudies.org/scaledmean...

Check out the other resources on that site. Got me through the HSC seriously



But yeah that's my opinion. If that's the path you want to go down then choose all three, what's the point in doing something else

Answer 5

You should know that you can't choose 4 unit english until year 12. So if you're in year 10 going into year 11 then you can only choose 3 unit english for year 11 and then in year 12 you can add the additional unit. So in reality you have... 3 units of english, 2 units of art and 2 units of religion. Meaning you're going to have 13 units. It sucks but it gives you the experience in year 11 to know what you're good at. So if you pick up 4 unit english you'll be able to drop 2 subjects as you only need 10 units for year 12. Just for the record, are you sure you don't want to do any units of maths? I mean I hated maths and absolutely wished I had dropped it but for a LOT of university courses that involves anything to do with science or engineering, maths is a prerequisite. But if you know what you want to do then go for it. Also if you're worried about essay writing then... 4 unit english? You know that for 4 unit you have to do all the work of advanced, plus 3 unit, plus 4 unit. English has FAR more essays than either histories (I did both). For 4 unit you need to do a major work, whether that be a story, an essay, a speech. It's long and you need to put a lot of work all year into it. But you don't have to do an actual exam during the HSC which takes a lot of pressure off. So as it stands you need to choose 3 more subjects to get your 13 units. So you can choose both histories and something else (whether that be a humanities, science or math is your decision). I absolutely adored modern history. I chose it last minute. I always knew I wanted to do ancient but chose modern only because I went amazing in SC history and was like... meh. Modern history was fantastic. I'm now studying modern history at uni because of it. It was so interesting and relevant. I would highly recommend that. I also did ancient history. It was fairly good. I didn't mind it. I had a very bland teacher so that probably didn't improve my enjoyment of it. It's very evidence based. Like in your essays you have to do a lot of "from this evidence we can summate that... blah blah". In the end I went better in ancient then I did in modern (don't ask me how). Both were my favourite HSC subjects but i am a history nerd so maybe I'm a bit bias. As for 4 unit english, history extension can only be added in year 12. So maybe say you do 3 unit english for year 11, you can then choose whether you wish to do 4 unit english or 3/5 unit history. I wanted to do ext. history but at my school you had to have an average of 95+ and there were only three of us that did so they refused to run the class. Look don't worry about scaling. My best subject was my worst scaling and my worst subject was my best scaling. Don't even get it in your head. Although I will add that sciences are some of the best scaling subjects, particularly physics and chem. I did chemistry in year 11 and despised it. I was terrible. I thought it would be all adding chemicals together and watching them explode. It was fairly mathematical/formula based. There was tons of obscure info that we had to learn like about neutrons and instability of elements. I can't even remember, it was that traumatic. But my best friend loved it, it was her favourite subject. It depends what type of person you are really. I'm not a science person but I really enjoyed biology. Biology was really straight forward. There were very few difficult ideas to get your head around and it was just stuff like learning about the kidney and plants. I found biology to be a real break from everything. I was doing lots of essay writing subjects and would just go to bio and chill out. I had a fantastic teacher and before the HSC i bought the macquarie study guide which helped me out 100%. So yeah basically you have 3 not 2 subjects to choose. So branch out. I personally did (other than maths and english), modern, ancient, bio and chem. Nice little balance between science and humanities there. I wish I'd done legal studies instead of chem though and then completely not done maths. But that's just my 2 cents.

Answer 6

Forget about scaling firstly. I guarantee that you will only have 10 units in Yr12 and remember Yr11 nothing counts but it is a good indicator. Do what you like and things that you think you can succeed in