Only one week left to study for your VCE Physics Exam and have no clue about your study plan?
You’ve come to the right place! This article provides a 7 day study guide which outlines exactly how you should prepare for your upcoming exam, while only committing 3-4 hours each day to the subjects, so the rest of your time is free for your other subjects!
So, what are you waiting for? Let’s get started!
Day 1 of the VCE Physics Study Plan: Syllabus Review
Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4: General Revision
Day 5 of the VCE Physics Study Plan: Try a Practice Exam
Day 6 of the VCE Physics Study Plan: Try a Second Practice Exam
Day 7 of the VCE Physics Study Plan: Final Revision
Time Management Tips for Practice and Actual Exams
Day 1 of the VCE Physics Study Plan: Syllabus Review
Step #1: Review the Study Design
Firstly: make sure you’re all good with the content. The best way to do this is performing a review of the VCE Physics syllabus, which can be found here.
One efficient way to review the study design is by rating your knowledge:
- Rate your knowledge on each dot point in the Physics Unit 3 and 4 section on a scale from 0 to 5.
- Don’t spend too much time thinking about each point, just get a quick guess as to how much you know.
- You should be able to finish your syllabus review within about 10 minutes.
Step #2: Check Your Notes
Next you should make sure that your summary sheet is up to snuff. While keeping an eye on the lower rated (0-2) points from Step #1, check how well your notes cover these difficult areas.
In particular, make sure you understand every Physics experiment described to you in, and what each experiment implies. These are some difficult experiments that you should know.
- Double-Slit experiment
- Photoelectric experiment
If you can’t remember the definition of anything, make sure that you add it into your notes!
Step #3: Work on your weak spots
Now that you’re aware of your blind spots, it’s time to go back through the 0-2 points.
Refer to the textbook for each of these topics.
For your 0’s and 1‘s, take some time to read back through the text, while taking some quick notes in order to improve retention.
For your 2‘s, you can just jump straight to the questions.
Try out our Multiple Choice practice questions for VCE Physics here!
Take as much or as little time as you need to with this activity: the whole goal to make sure that you understand the material before Day 5.
Tip: Pay particular attention to the sample answers which are given in the textbook, as these tell you both how to solve the problems and what sort of working or arguments will be expected on the exam.
Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4: General Revision
For the next three days, you’re going to spend your time improving your knowledge of the subject’s entire content.
For the most part, the exam will focus exclusively on Unit 3 and 4 content — that’s why we recommend that you focus purely on reviewing questions from your Year 12 textbook. That way, you’ll focus on the content that’s going to be on your exam.
Once you’ve written it, your study plan should look something like this:
| Session | Area of Study | Questions | Estimated Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Session 1 | Fields | Ch 5 3-6, Ch 6 Q 7 & 8, Ch 7 Q2-14 | 1 hour |
| Session 2 | Electromagnetism | Ch 9 Q 4-9, Ch 10. Q5-11 | 45 minutes |
| Session 3 | Kinematics 1 | Ch 11 Q 4-6, Ch 12 Q 13-18 | 30 minutes |
| Session 4 | Kinematics 2 | Ch 2 Q4, 6 & 8, Ch 3 Q10-12, Ch 4 Q18-22 | 1 hour |
| Session 5 | Waves and Matter | Ch 14 Q4-6, Ch 15 Q 1 & 5, 7-11 | 1 hour & 15 minutes |
| Session 6 | Special Relativity | Ch 16 Q 5-9, Ch 17 Q8-13 | 45 minutes |
After you’ve finished the exam, go back and mark it using the solutions given on the same VCAA page. Make sure to pay close attention to the ways in which students generally went wrong and the working required for each question.
How to Plan Your Study Sessions
Tip #1: Make Them Achievable
Design study sessions that last for 30 minutes to an hour, and include 15 minute breaks in between.
It helps to write down the questions you want to get done in these sessions, and then adjust your time that up or down as required.
You can finish a study session early if you feel confident enough in the subject, and want to go to something else.
Tip #2: Don’t Make Your Study Goals Based on Time
When setting study goals, it’s generally a better idea to focus on the work you will complete rather than the time it will take.
This way, you’ll be focused more on getting through revision than on filling time, and hence there will be less pressure!
Tip #3: Leave time to Mark Questions
Make sure to leave some time to mark the questions!
Tip #4: Make Sure You Write Your Working Out
Be aware of how much working out you’re including.
The majority of your marks come from the working out! Only one mark for each question is awarded for the correct answer.
Day 5 of the VCE Physics Study Plan: Try a Practice Exam
Once you’ve completed your revision, you should be ready to give a practice exam a go!
Step #1: Review Your Notes
Before tackling the exam, briefly review your notes as you’re going to on the day.
Step #2: Find a Quiet Space
Make sure you can find a distraction-free environment to complete the exam, such as the library.
Step #3: Treat it like a Real Exam
Try and complete the exam under exam conditions: only using your allotted summary sheet and a scientific calculator.
Use your 15 minutes reading time effectively by locating the questions you can complete easily and focusing on these first.
You can find our master list of past VCE Physics exam papers here!
Day 6 of the VCE Physics Study Plan: Try a Second Practice Exam
So you’ve completed your first practice exam, now you should have a much better idea of what you need to do for the exam. Let’s put this into practice by doing another practice exam!
Firstly, do some pre-exam revision and review your practice exam from Day 5. Keep track of where you did well and where you struggled.
As with the previous practice exam: treat this like the real exam, and follow all exam conditions.
After this exam is done, mark it as well. Figure out where you improved and what you need to focus on.
Consider whether you need to improve your notes and add it in!
Have a go at our VCE Physics External Assessment practice questions here!
Day 7 of the VCE Physics Study Plan: Final Revision
For the final day, go back to the syllabus review activity from Day 1. Repeat the rating alongside your old ratings. Hopefully they’ve improved!
Choose a couple of areas you still want to work on and a practice exam you haven’t attempted yet.
Complete any questions on the exam that pertain to these focus areas. After completing each question, review the answer in the solutions to see how you’re going.
Keep at this until you’re confident about your knowledge in these areas.
On the night before your VCE physics exam, take a break and relax — give yourself a pat on the back for putting in all this effort!
Time Management Tips for Practice and Actual Exams
- On any exam, there will be a number of ‘top 10%’ questions which are significantly more difficult than the rest. It pays to leave these until last — aka, when all other questions are complete.
- Make sure to use some of your reading time to calculate how many minutes you have for each mark. For example, if there are 40 marks in total and 60 minutes writing time, then you have 60/40 = 1.5 minutes for each mark.
- Use the minute per mark to figure out whether you’re taking too long to complete a question. Using the example above, a 2 mark question should take 3 minutes to complete.
And, That’s Your 7-Day Study Plan for VCE Physics!
As a final word of advice, your Physics exam is about not just being able to answer the questions, but also understanding and explaining what those solutions mean.
To get the highest mark possible, try and really understand what’s going on in the question!
Check out more of our resources and guides to VCE Physics exam:
- The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Scientific Poster for VCE Physics
- How to Ace Your End of Year Exam for VCE Physics
- The Definitive Guide to Effectively Using the VCE Physics Formula Sheet
- Everything You Need to Know from the VCE Physics Study Design
- Check out our list of all past VCE Papers
- The Ultimate Guide to Units 1 and 2 VCE Physics
- The Ultimate Guide to Units 3 and 4 VCE Physics
Also studying VCE Chemistry? Learn how to use the VCE Chemistry data book effectively so you can ace your final exam!
Are you looking for some extra help with preparing for your VCE Physics exam?
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We can help you master the VCE Physics study design and ace your upcoming VCE assessments with personalised lessons conducted one-on-one in your home or online! We also have an awesome tutoring team in Essendon ready to help you ace Physics!
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Scott McColl is a content writer with Art of Smart and a Civil Engineering student at Monash University. In between working and studying, Scott enjoys playing music and working on programming projects.
