How to Study for VCE & HSC Exams: The 3 Key Steps to Success

Preparing for exams can be challenging, but the right strategy can make all the difference. Whether you’re tackling content-heavy subjects like Biology and Chemistry or math-based subjects like Physics and Math Methods, effective exam preparation comes down to mastering three key steps.

These three steps are:

1. Locking in Content

2. Practicing past papers

3. Reviewing your progress

At EdHub, we’ve seen firsthand how these techniques can lead to top-tier results, and in this guide, we’ll break them down, showing you how you can tailor them to different subjects - ensuring you’re fully prepared come exam day.

1. Locking in Content: The First Step for All Subjects

Whether you’re studying a content-heavy subject like Biology (or Business Management) or a math-based subject like General Math (or Physics), the first step is to organise and prioritise your content. This is where the colour-coding system (red, yellow, green) becomes invaluable, helping you structure your study sessions and focus on your weaknesses.

Colour-Coding System (Red, Yellow, Green):

No matter the subject type, use the following colour-coded strategy:

• Red: Topics you don’t know or struggle with. These need immediate focus.

• Yellow: Topics you’re familiar with but not fully confident in. These need more review and practice.

• Green: Topics you’re comfortable with. A quick review is all that’s needed here.

By breaking down your study material using this system, you can ensure that you’re spending the most time on the topics that will make the biggest difference to your overall understanding. This method applies to both content-heavy and math-based subjects, providing clarity and structure to your study sessions.

This colour-coding system isn’t a one-time activity but part of a long-term exam preparation strategy. As you study and work on your red topics, the goal is to gradually turn them into yellow and eventually into green. Over time, as you review and practice, you’ll see your red areas shrink, while your yellow and green topics expand, showing your progress. This approach ensures that you’re always moving forward and targeting the areas that need the most attention.

Okay but, how do you actually FIX the reds?

To lock in content effectively, it’s crucial to understand that different subjects require different approaches. While content-heavy subjects like Biology, Chemistry, and Business benefit from long-term & short term memory techniques such as active recall, spaced repetition or Feynman Technique, math-based subjects like Mathematics and Physics demand more problem-solving practice and application. Here's how to approach each type:

For Content-Heavy Subjects:

Simplify + Teach + Summarise (Shorter-Term Strategy)

Once you’ve engaged in active recall and spaced repetition, it’s time to further consolidate your understanding by simplifying the material and teaching it to someone else. Known as the Feynman Technique, this method forces you to explain concepts as if you were teaching them to someone else, which is an excellent test of your grasp of the material.

• Teach Someone Else:
  Teaching concepts in simple terms helps you solidify your understanding. This can be done by explaining topics to a friend, a study group, or even recording yourself. Teaching forces you to break down complex ideas and simplifies the material in a way that makes sense to others, revealing any gaps in your knowledge.

• Summarise:
  After teaching or simplifying the material, write a summary in your own words. Summarising condenses the information, focusing on the most important points and key concepts. This final step helps ensure that you can recall essential details when needed during your exams.

Why This Works:

• Teaching forces you to think critically about the material and how to present it logically, reinforcing your understanding. It also highlights areas where your knowledge may be weaker, allowing you to revisit and review those parts.

• Summarising helps you distill the content into its essential elements, making it easier to recall during exams. The process of summarising ensures that you’ve not just memorised the material but fully understood it.

Active Recall & Spaced Repetition (Long-Term Strategy):

Active recall and spaced repetition are highly effective long-term strategies designed to strengthen memory over time. Although they are highly effective, if your exam study has started off late and you’re behind - you would want to STAY away from these two strategies - as they require time to be effective.

• Active Recall involves retrieving information from memory without looking at notes. After studying a topic, close your book and try to recall key facts, processes, and concepts. The act of recalling information forces your brain to engage with the material, strengthening your memory connections.

• Spaced Repetition ensures that the information sticks in your long-term memory by revisiting the material at gradually increasing intervals. Instead of cramming the same material over and over again, you space out your review sessions—repeating them over days, weeks, or even months.

Why This Works:

• Active Recall forces your brain to work harder, deepening your understanding and retention of the material. The more you recall information, the stronger the memory becomes.

• Spaced Repetition is a scientifically proven method for moving information from short-term to long-term memory. Spacing out your review sessions allows your brain to strengthen memory pathways without overloading it, ensuring you remember the material on exam day.

By following this dual approach of simplifying, teaching, and summarising (for shorter-term) and active recall and spaced repetition (for long-term retention), you’ll build a solid understanding of content-heavy subjects and be well-prepared for your exams.

For Math-Based Subjects:

For math-based subjects like General Math, Math Methods, and Physics, where problem-solving is the key, your approach should be more practice-oriented. While individual book questions can be useful for targeting specific areas of weakness, focusing on end-of-chapter reviews and summary questions is often a more efficient and effective way to lock in content. Here’s why:

1. Testing Your Understanding of Entire Topics:
   End-of-chapter reviews tend to test your knowledge of broader topics, rather than isolated problems. This better reflects the structure of exams, where you’ll need to apply multiple concepts to answer complex questions.

2. More Challenging Than Individual Book Questions:
   These review sections are generally more difficult than the questions found within individual chapters, pushing you to engage more deeply with the material and preparing you for the complexity of exam problems.

3. More Time Efficient:
   Compared to book questions, which often focus on single concepts, end-of-chapter reviews allow you to cover more ground in a shorter amount of time. You’re working on bigger picture problem-solving, which maximises your study time and helps you understand how different concepts fit together.

Practice Wisely

Focus on mastering key formulas, techniques, and methods by consistently doing these chapter reviews and summary questions. This practice ensures that you understand how different problems are structured and that you’re able to apply your knowledge flexibly in different contexts.

Long-Term Strategy

For math-based subjects, starting early and practicing regularly throughout the year is the key to success. Building strong foundations in the basics will allow you to tackle more complex problems as exams approach. This long-term practice strategy ensures that by the time exams roll around, you’ll be confident and ready to handle a variety of problem types under exam conditions.

In the final month before the exam (October onwards), shift your focus from individual problems and long-term practice to practicing past papers and reviewing mistakes. By this point, your foundations should be solid, and your goal will be refining your exam technique and ensuring you can complete problems under time pressure.

2. Practice Past Papers: Refining Your Knowledge and Skills

As you approach exam day, practicing past papers becomes your most effective tool for testing your understanding and identifying weak areas. Ideally, by the final month (October onwards), your focus should shift almost entirely to practicing and reviewing. Here’s how to use past papers to maximise your performance:

Practice Past Papers Under Exam Conditions

Simulating exam conditions is crucial. Time yourself, avoid distractions, and complete the paper without breaks. This builds your ability to handle exam pressure and improves your time management.

Tracking Your Progress

Keeping track of your progress is essential. As you complete more past papers, you may forget which exams you’ve already done or lose track of your performance. This is where a spreadsheet comes in handy.

• Track Your Results:
  Record each exam you do in a spreadsheet (Google Sheets, Excel, or Word). Include the date, subject, score, mistakes, and areas for improvement. Over time, you’ll be able to see trends, such as specific topics or question types you consistently struggle with. Tracking your progress also keeps you accountable and helps ensure you’re focusing on the right areas.

Even Better: Download the EdHub Spreadsheet!
We’ve developed a progress tracking spreadsheet that you can download and use for free. This tool allows you to easily log your results, keep track of your improvement, and monitor areas that need further review.

Spotting Knowledge Gaps

As you work through past papers, you’ll start noticing gaps in your knowledge. Some mistakes will be technique-based, but others may reveal content gaps that require you to revisit certain topics. If you consistently struggle with a particular type of question, go back to Step 1—lock in the content. Strengthen those weak areas before moving forward with more practice.

3. Reviewing Past Papers: Where Real Improvement Happens

The final and arguably most important step is reviewing your past papers. It’s one thing to complete an exam, but real progress happens when you analyse your performance, identify mistakes, and use that feedback to improve.

1.      Thoroughly Analyse Mistakes

After completing a past paper, go over your mistakes in detail. Was the error due to a misunderstanding of the content, or was it a simple error under pressure? Did you misread the question, or did you run out of time? Understanding why you got a question wrong is crucial for ensuring you don’t make the same mistake again.

2.      Linking Practice Back to Content

One of the key benefits of reviewing is identifying gaps in your understanding. Sometimes, despite having studied a topic, you’ll find that you still don’t fully grasp certain concepts when it comes to applying them in an exam. When this happens, loop back to Step 1 and review that topic again, ensuring it’s fully locked in before you move on to the next exam.

3.      Track Your Review Progress

Just as with tracking your practice papers, keep a detailed log of your reviews. Include notes on what went wrong, why it happened, and what you’ll do to avoid the same mistake next time. This way, you’re not just practicing blindly but actively learning and improving with every exam.

The Continuous Improvement Cycle: Linking Practice and Review

What makes practicing past papers and reviewing them so effective is how they create a continuous improvement cycle. Here’s how it works:

• Practice to Identify Weaknesses:
  Every time you do a past paper, you’re gathering data on your strengths and weaknesses. This provides a clear picture of what you know well and what needs further work.

• Review to Improve:
  By analysing your mistakes and understanding why you got them wrong, you’re able to refine your study approach. The goal is to learn from each mistake, ensuring that you don’t repeat it in future exams.

• Practice Again to Test Your Improvement:
  After reviewing and strengthening your weak areas, move on to the next past paper. You should see improvement as you apply what you’ve learned. Over time, this cycle of practice, review, and application leads to steady and measurable progress.

How Many Exams Should I Do?

One of the most common questions students ask is, “How many exams should I complete before the actual exam?” The answer isn’t a one-size-fits-all, as different approaches work for different students. Broadly, there are two main strategies:

1. The "Lock in Content First" Approach

This approach focuses on mastering the content before doing too many practice exams. Students who follow this method typically complete fewer exams, around 5-15, but focus heavily on making sure they’ve locked in all the necessary knowledge before moving on to practice.

• Why It Works:
  By ensuring the content is solid, you reduce the likelihood of making mistakes during practice exams. This method allows you to be more confident when you start practicing, as you already have a strong foundation.

• For Whom It’s Best:
  This approach is ideal for students who get discouraged by lower scores in practice exams. If getting bad marks impacts your motivation or confidence, focusing on content first ensures you’re better prepared and less likely to feel overwhelmed by early practice exam results.

2. The "Smash Out Exams" Approach

Some students prefer to complete as many exams as possible, using each one as a learning opportunity. These students might do 30, 40, or even 50 exams, focusing on improving through repetition and review. They spend less time on content review upfront and more time practicing and learning from mistakes.

• Why It Works:
  This approach is great for building familiarity with the exam format and time management. By practicing extensively, students become comfortable with the types of questions and exam pressure, improving gradually over time.

• For Whom It’s Best:
  This method works well for students who are comfortable learning from mistakes and staying motivated through gradual improvement. If you thrive on feedback and can handle seeing low scores initially, this approach allows you to build confidence as you improve.

Personal Preference: My Approach to Exams

Personally, I preferred the "Lock in Content First" Approach. I hated doing an exam and getting a bad mark, so I always tried to make sure my content was locked in before diving into past papers. This gave me the confidence that I had a solid foundation, and I didn’t have to deal with the frustration of repeatedly seeing low scores. However, I personally know lots of high achievers who prefer, and thrive, on the "Smash Out Exams" method which they find keeps them motivated and helps them improve faster. This is as the "Smash Out Exams" approach tends to offer more validation and immediate feedback. Seeing progress over time, even if gradual, can be a powerful motivator. Hence., each completed exam is an opportunity to see improvements, and tracking that upward trend can provide reassurance that you’re on the right track. This is particularly beneficial for students who thrive on external validation and need to see tangible results.

Final Thoughts: How to Study for Exams

In conclusion, your exam success depends on how well you lock in content, practice past papers, and review your performance. These three key steps create a continuous improvement cycle that ensures you’re always progressing. Whether you prefer the "Lock in Content First" approach, the "Smash Out Exams" approach, or a combination of both, the key is consistency and self-awareness. Understand what keeps you motivated, track your progress, and adjust your study strategy as needed.

At EdHub, we’re committed to helping you succeed. With resources like our custom progress tracking spreadsheet, expert tutoring, and a well-rounded study approach, you’re setting yourself up for exam success. Download the spreadsheet today, keep track of your results, and watch as you steadily improve.

Good Luck, and remember: the right approach is the one that works best for you!