Randomhuman24

Hi guys! I am a year 10 student currently doing my VCE subject selection, and would like some advice on which English subject I should do. For some context, next year I will be doing 3/4 bio, 3/4 philo, 1/2 methods, 1/2 chem, and 1/2 Japanese, so although I am willing to spend a lot of time dedicated to English, I do have a relatively heavy subject load. I have spoken with my English teacher, and she recommended that I do both English and Literature (but obviously, I have no space for both), as they would complement each other well. So far, I have been a pretty strong English student, with my teacher saying that I would probably enjoy the less structured writing approach and detailed analysis of Lit, which I agree with. I also have a passion for English, and it is one of my favourite subjects. My only concerns are the fact that in whatever English subject I do, I would be aiming for a 40+ (ideally 45 - but 40+ is the goal). The scaling difference between English and Lit is very small, so I am wondering if perhaps it would be more rewarding to just do mainstream, as it is a lot less work, and easier to get a higher SS in ? Can anyone that has done Lit, or both Lit and English give some advice? Tysm!

MMHS hello! I don’t think my testing experience would be that similar to yours, as the test has shifted over to ACER. However, I’m still happy to give you my perspective!

For me, I found reading comprehension and numerical reasoning to be the easiest sections, although generally the difficulty wasn’t too bad across the board; it’s more so the time pressure that makes it difficult. I didn’t go to tutoring or anything for the selective exam, so I didn’t really have an expectation of how difficult the tests would be aside from comparison to the sample tests on the government website, in that the real test was definitely much harder than these. It was definitely still doable though. If you do tutoring (esp. at James Ann and Henderson), I’ve heard the real exams were of similar difficulty.

As for Verbal Reasoning, most of the vocabulary was pretty comfortable and familiar to me, so I wouldn’t say it was overly difficult (probably above your standard year 8-9 level though - as expected). Also, even if you don’t know what a word means, the process of elimination always works as a backup (which word doesn’t fit in, what do you know about the prefix/suffix/patterns within the word, etc.). I think the best thing to do to prepare is to expand your vocabulary naturally by reading some high level novels.

I honestly don’t remember much of what we were tested on in math, but the concepts weren’t overly difficult (just revise year 8, year 9, and year 10 concepts -> nothing over that was really on the test), probably most important to work on your algebra skills. Finding tricky questions in your math textbook (or a year 10 one) or from math olympiads is helpful. Again, the time limit was what really got me for math, but I think the best thing to do would just be practice questions and practice papers under timed conditions to get used to the real exam conditions. There are some free ones online on the government website (which from my experience, are pretty easy compared to the real thing), but there are other paid resources you could buy if you wanted to get more practice.

As for writing, I think it has changed quite a bit since I did it, but we were given a sheet of paper with images and text as our “prompt”, and we had to write a story on it (a full story). Many people, including myself, didn’t finish it though. Doing well in this section definitely helps you stand out, as it was the worst section for most.

If you have any specific questions please let me know, I’m happy to answer!

AngelWings thank you !!

studyhard_77 thank you so much! I’ll definitely be checking out all of these programs

hello all (sorry if this isn’t specifically related to VCE/ATAR stuff)
I am going into year 10 in 2024, and our school requires us to do work experience. Personally, I am very interested in the medical field, and would like to do work experience at a local hospital or clinic of sorts. However, I am not really sure how to go about finding places that are actually open to year 10 work experience (so far - most hospitals don’t have very many specific details or don’t allow work experience from students my age) so I would appreciate any suggestions of where to apply and/or some guidance regarding how to find these positions.

So far, the one place I know for certain accepts year 10 work experience is Monash Health, which I will be applying for, but obviously as it will be quite competitive I would like some backups, and also it seems as though the locations/options are quite limited.

Anyways, thank you for reading - any sort of help regarding this would be much appreciated

Hello all! I’m currently a year 9 student at Nossal, and I am planning to double accelerate seeing as I meet the standards for it (likely in biology and philosophy?) , but I do have some concerns regarding the workload and how it would affect my ATAR. Is taking on two 1/2 VCE subjects in conjunction with regular year 10 subjects going to be extremely difficult, and do you think it is generally a good idea (specifically targeted towards those who have done this, but all opinions welcome)? The school sets the standards for double acceleration reasonably high and stated in assembly that it is “high pressure”, but I would prefer to hear opinions from students to gain further insight.

I’ve been asking a lot of questions, so sorry to be a bother haha! I just wanted to ask what math is like at Nossal; is it standardised to the normal year 9 curriculum in class?

Yolk15 thank you so much for your help!!

Hello all,
Are exercise books for each class necessary in year 9, or is everything more so done online? Is it recommended to bring an exercise book or a binder for every subject, or would these end up not really being used?

justaperson_ I forgot to reply to this but I am in 0S7 for tutorial I believe

Fish on a somewhat similar subject, as for the annotations of the novel, do the teachers look at them or grade them?

Fish ah okay thanks for the clarification! I must have gotten confused, as I had heard we were supposed to annotate both.

justaperson_ thanks so much!

Hi all,
I have started reading the book of Australian poetry, but nothing has really stood out to me, and I’m also not sure how to go about annotating them, as poetry really isn’t my strong point. Can anybody provide any help with this?

Yolk15 thank you so much! I just wanted to ask a couple of last things about Nossal; what is the workload like? Is there a lot of homework? And in class, is it very fast paced?

justaperson_ Ahh okay, I think I’ll go with Frankenstein then. As for assessments at Nossal, what are they like? Are they tests or essays or something else? I’m in Pegasus house by the way

monket honestly yeah I agree

justaperson_ Orientation day was pretty good, I really enjoyed it! They gave us donuts, fruit, juice boxes and varied burgers for morning tea and lunch, all of which was delicious (well I was also really hungry, so I’d eat anything at that point). I don’t know what book to choose for English though, any recommendations? I was thinking either Jane Eyre or Frankenstein.

Hi all,
Should I call the school to get help in this situation? I got put into Japanese Beginner, but that wasn’t in my preferences. I put Japanese (intermediate) as my first preference, and French beginner as my second, so I am unsure how this could have happened.
Has anybody faced an issue like this as well?