BlogStudyThe Comprehensive 7 Day Study Plan for HSC Advanced Maths

The Comprehensive 7 Day Study Plan for HSC Advanced Maths

English is done and Maths is next but you’ve only got a week to figure out your best plan of attack. This is why we’ve created a 7 day HSC Advanced Maths study plan to help you keep on track!

Depending on how long you originally intended to spend on maths, this guide is designed for you to study around 3-4 hours of Advanced Maths a week out from your exam.

We know that you will have other subjects too, which is why some areas are marked as ‘optional’ — it’s up to you to spend that little while longer if you so feel.

So, what are you waiting for? Let’s get started!

Day 1: Know Thy Enemy
Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4: Review the Content
Day 5: Complete a Practice Paper
Day 6: Complete Another Practice Paper
Day 7: Final Revision

Day 1: Know thy Enemy

Before you can revise, you need to know what to revise; there’s no point going over stuff you know really really well while neglecting the stuff you barely know about.

#1: Identify Your weaknesses

Throughout the year, you should have familiarised yourself with the Advanced Mathematics syllabus, which you can find here.

Go through each dot point and then on a scale of 0 to 5, rate yourself on your perceived level of knowledge and understanding.

0 = I know nothing about this dot point and unless I study, I am totally screwed

5 = I know this dot point back to front — I’m going to slay this exam!

This should take you about 10 minutes. When you’re done, it should look something like this:

Advanced Maths Study Plan - syllabus

#2: Ensure your notes correspond with the syllabus

Spend about 45 minutes going through the syllabus. Make sure that your notes accurately describe what is in the syllabus.

As you’re moving through, pay particular attention to areas that you rated less than 4 in your understanding and knowledge.

Using your maths textbook, go through questions next to the syllabus.

If you can’t figure out how to come to an answer within 5 seconds, highlight it. We’ll be filling them in next!

Need some help writing effective study notes for HSC Advanced Maths? Check out our How to Guide here!

#3: Start filling in the gaps

Now that you’ve identified your weaknesses, and the gaps in your notes, spend 2 hours going through your textbook for the theory.

As you’re going through, find 5 questions associated with that section in your textbook and solve them. Mark them.

For some questions, if you do not understand them, Wolfram Alpha can give you a step-by-step solution to help you understand the concept.

Action Points:
  1. Go through your syllabus and do a self-rating of your understanding of the topics from 0 to 5
  2. Make sure your study notes cover the syllabus and the weak areas — do a quick self test with questions from your textbook on the areas you identified yourself as weak
  3. Find 5 questions from your textbook for each of your weak areas and complete the questions, mark them, and then make sure you understand how to get to the solution

Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4: Review the content

Your HSC builds on your Prelim topics, so it’s probably a good idea to know your prelim content as well as your HSC content.

For the next three days, you will focus on the subtopics of the syllabus to practise on. This means you’ll focus on the right hand side column of your syllabus:

HSC Advanced Maths syllabus

Complete textbook review exercises

Depending on what textbook you’re using for the HSC, it might be an excellent idea to go to your local library and loan out a Cambridge Mathematics 2 Unit Year 12 textbook and start working through the exercises with your study notes.

Your study sessions should look like this:

SessionSub-TopicStudy time
Session 1:Working with functions25 mins, 5 mins break
Session 2:Trigonometry and measure of angles25 mins, 5 mins break
Session 3:Trigonometric Functions and Identities25 mins, 15 mins break
Session 4:Introduction to Differentiation25 mins, 5 mins break
Session 5:Logarithms and exponentials25 mins, 5 mins break
Session 6:REVISION25 mins, 5 mins break

Once you’ve finished a set, mark them. Highlight the ones you get incorrect — go over and do the same kind of question in the ‘REVISION’ session.

If you still don’t understand a concept, you should check out our FREE video resources for HSC Maths that explain Maths concepts according to the syllabus, dot point by dot point, here!

Action Points:
  1. Get your syllabus out and divvy up which topics you will cover over the next 3 days
  2. On each day complete the textbook review questions for the topics you’ve identified, focussing especially on areas you rated yourself weak in
  3. Go over the questions and mark them, highlighting any you got incorrect — flag these for study in your ‘REVISION’ session

Day 5: Complete a Practice Paper

You’re already more than halfway through your Advanced Maths study plan! Keep going, you got this.

Give yourself 20 minutes to revise all of your notes with the complete focus that you would have before the actual exam. Use it to go over the things you don’t think you’ll remember in your exam.

Check out our past papers for HSC Maths here and print one out! Then establish exam conditions: complete silence with no disturbances for the next three hours.

Why do this? Because you are getting yourself ready for the practical aspects of the exam and dealing with time management and attention span.

As you do the exam, if you absolutely can’t do a question, or do not understand it, mark the question with a highlighter.

Mark the paper

When you’re done, take a break. Then get to marking! You can find the marking guidelines here.

Use the following rating when you’re marking:

  • Silly mistake (SM)
  • Did not know answer (DNA)
  • Misunderstood question (MQ)
  • Incorrect knowledge (IK)

This way, you know how and why you got a question incorrect.

If you’re getting less than 70%, you may want to do some more revision. Identify your weak and strong points once more, and do practice questions on them. If you’re in need of some targeted guidance, check out our HSC Maths Tutors Sydney!

Solve the incorrect answers

Depending on how many questions you got incorrect, use your notes to solve the questions you could not do, or got incorrect. Make sure that you really get to the root of the issue by understanding exactly where you went wrong.

Action Point:
  1. Revise your notes, focussing on areas you think you’re still struggling with
  2. Complete a past paper in exam conditions
  3. Mark the paper, rating why you got particular questions incorrect
  4. If you’re scoring less than 70%, go back to revision with textbook review questions for this topic
  5. Solve any of the questions you got incorrect

Day 6: Complete Another Practice Paper

#1: Make yourself a formula sheet

Imagine you had to write your own formula sheet to bring into the exam, and it could only be one page long, and by one page, I mean with content only allowed on one side of the paper.

Write yourself a formula sheet, and be very discreet about what you put on it. This will force you to think about what content you are still a little bit unsure about (NOTE: Consider what you got wrong on the last paper — it may help you now!).

#2: Do another paper

The more papers you do, the more you are familiarising yourself with what they will be asking you in the actual exam.

In the same way you did yesterday, print out another past paper and do it under exam conditions — only this time, use the formula sheet to help you.

If there is a question which you complete using the formula sheet which you could not otherwise do without it, mark it. Again, highlight anything you do not know, or could not answer.

#3: Mark it!

Now, have a go at marking your paper. Like you did yesterday, mark your paper using the same comment system:

  • Silly mistake
  • Did not know answer
  • Misunderstood question
  • Incorrect knowledge

This time, if you’re getting any less than 80%, you should definitely consider doing some more study.

#4: Solve the incorrect answers

Depending on how many questions you got incorrect, use your notes to solve the questions you could not do, or got incorrect. Make sure that you really get to the root of the issue by understanding exactly where you went wrong.

Action Points:
  1. Create a 1 page formula sheet — this will act as revision for all the key formulas. See if you can do it from memory.
  2. Do another past paper in exam conditions
  3. Mark the exam paper, using the rating system
  4. Scored less than 80%? Go back and do more textbook revision questions on these topics
  5. Redo any questions you got incorrect until you solve them correctly!

Day 7: Final Revision

We’re finally on the last day of your HSC Advanced Maths study plan — the final stretch! Revise each syllabus dot point and conduct a self-rating.

You should hopefully have seen a huge improvement since Day 1!

Now, create a hit list of the topics you’ve rated yourself the lowest on.

SubtopicRating
Differential Calculus3
Random Variables3
Trigonometric Functions2

Conduct a Q&A session across the syllabus focussing on weak areas

Starting with the topics you’ve written down in your hit list above, go through the list of HSC Maths past papers here and identify any questions that relate to these topics.

Practise completing these questions.

Once you’ve completed these, move to the rest of the syllabus and pick 1-2 questions per topic area from the past HSC papers and complete it.

Mark your work and fix your mistakes

Mark the questions you completed and then focus on the ones you’ve gotten incorrect.

Fix them, making sure you’ve got the process memorised for responding to them again.

Go through a past paper in fast forward

Now, go through the one final past paper! Complete it in fast forward, so don’t worry about proper working out.

Just identify the following:

  • The formula you would use
  • The steps you would take
  • Can you answer it or not?

If you cannot answer it, spend some time solving it to make sure you can get it correct!

Action Points:
  1. Revise each syllabus point and conduct a self rating, writing a hit list of trouble topics
  2. Conduct a Q&A session focussing on your weak topics, using past HSC questions to test yourself
  3. Mark your work and fix any mistakes making sure you’ve memorised the process
  4. Complete one final past paper in fast forward, identifying the formula, steps and whether you can solve each question

Remember that they can only ask the same question so many ways so if you can get used to the past paper, they can’t blindside you in the exam!

And that wraps up our 7 day HSC Advanced Maths study plan! Good luck with your exam!

Looking for some extra help with your HSC Advanced Maths study plan?

We pride ourselves on our inspirational HSC Mathematics coaches and mentors!

We offer tutoring and mentoring for Years K-12 in a variety of subjects, with personalised lessons conducted one-on-one in your home or at one of our state of the art campuses in Hornsby or the Hills!

Stay accountable to your study guide with one of our expert HSC maths tutors in Blacktown! You can also get the right support from one of our Maths tutors in Penrith.

To find out more and get started with an inspirational tutor and mentor get in touch today!

Give us a ring on 1300 267 888, email us at [email protected] or check us out on TikTok!


Caleb Barber feels that one of his biggest achievements in high school was that he did Year 12 in 2012. Not able to decide on one thing that he wanted to do, he decided to go to university and become a teacher so that he could have an excuse to keep learning everything. So he moved from Nambucca Heads to Sydney and is now half way through an education degree at the University of Sydney. Caleb still sometimes feels like the country lad lost in the city. He is a coach of Mathematics and English with the Art of Smart and loving every minute of it.

45,861 students have a head start...

Get exclusive study content & advice from our team of experts delivered weekly to your inbox!

AOS Website Asset 2

Looking for Maths Support?

Discover how we can help you!

AOS Website Asset 1