Just completed our Year 12 Readiness Quiz and feeling a little nervous or underprepared? Well regardless of whether you’re currently at a Readiness Score of around 20% or 90%, we know getting ready for Year 12 can be a bit daunting.
Which is why we’ve got you covered with our top tips and resources for lifting and maintaining your Year 12 Readiness! From finding motivation and dealing with burn-out to keeping a good study routine to get you ready for Year 12, we’ve got it all.
Let’s jump right in!
Motivation
Goal-setting (both ATAR and individual subjects)
Maintaining extracurriculars
Study notes
Study routines
Dealing with distractions
Burn-out
Sleep schedules
Motivation
Motivation is essential when it comes to achieving your goals and being ready for Year 12. Looking at the results from our Year 12 Readiness Quiz, it seems most Year 12 students are currently sitting at a motivation level of around 7.5.
If you said you’re feeling somewhere between 1-5, don’t worry! Realistically speaking, you will find that your motivation may rise and fall throughout the year. And we know that it can sometimes be a little difficult to find and maintain your motivation.
One simple way to boost your motivation is to set yourself an ATAR, career, or degree goal for the end of Year 12. This will help you put all that studying into perspective and give you something to work towards!
Whether you’re feeling an unmotivated 1 or a super-motivated 10 at the moment, you can find some more tips to help you build or sustain your motivation here!
Goal-setting (both ATAR and individual subjects)
As we looked at above, setting yourself goals is super important because it’s one of the best ways to stay motivated throughout Year 12. At the moment, 78.7% of Year 12 students DON’T have a clear goal ATAR written down.
This means that roughly 4 in 5 students may lack specific goals to work towards and lose scope of the marks they need to achieve.
To be like the 1 in 5 students that do have a clear idea of what ATAR they’d like to attain, the following are some areas you may need to work on:
- Clarifying your goals
- Understanding what marks need to be achieved in order to achieve a particular ATAR
- Improving your motivation so you have something to work towards
- Not setting unrealistic expectations for yourself
If you have your goal set too, you might find it useful to break it down and set yourself smaller short-term goals and map out key dates for each goal to help you achieve that dream ATAR. You can find some easy tips to achieve your goals here!
If you said you don’t yet know what you’re aiming for, that’s okay! You can spend some time this term to figure out your goal for the rest of Year 12.
Maybe you can use the Reverse ATAR Calculator to help you work out your ATAR and subject-specific goals. Once you’ve figured out your goal, try and write them down somewhere visible like a wall, your laptop background, or on your desk.
Looking for more ways to set achievable goals for your ATAR and individual subjects? You can find more tips and tricks here!
Maintaining extracurriculars
While it can be tempting to press pause on your extracurricular activities so that you can spend more time getting ready for Year 12, you actually shouldn’t quit your extracurriculars!
Maintaining activities such as music, dance, sports, or even a part-time job during Year 12 can be super valuable. From helping you look after your mental health to looking good on your resume and early-entry applications, those extracurriculars definitely have a lot of benefits!
Looking at the results from our quiz, 53.2% of Year 12s said they’re keeping at least 1 extracurricular activity while 32.5% said they’ll maintain at least 2!
Are you part of the 14.4% of Year 12s who quit all extracurriculars? If you’re starting to wonder if you should keep your extracurriculars, take a look at some more benefits here!
It might seem really tricky to maintain extra activities during Year 12, but there’s one big trick that will make a huge difference — learn how to organise your time effectively and find a good balance! The best thing about this is that once you start scheduling in time for extracurriculars and prioritise a balanced lifestyle, you’ll often find yourself feeling more organised with your work and study routine too.
Want more tips and tricks to help you maintain extracurricular activities? Take a look at how 99+ ATAR scorer Anika maintained her co-curricular activities during Year 12 here!
Study notes
Making study notes is key when it comes to getting ready for Year 12. After all, they’re your go-to resource to find all the content you’ve studied so that you don’t forget earlier material as the year progresses.
It’s important to remember that your final year assesses you based on all the things you’ve covered in Year 12! So you should definitely be writing study notes throughout the year.
If, like 18.3% of Year 12s who responded to the Year 12 Readiness Quiz, you’re currently falling behind on study notes and find yourself giving up on writing them, don’t worry! It’s not too late to get started and catch up on them.
You can check out the 3 big mistakes you might be making with study notes here, and learn how to write effective notes for any subject here!
Looking at the Year 12 Readiness Quiz, 56.3% of Year 12s are fairly consistent when it comes to writing notes, but might sometimes fall behind. Were you one of the 56% and need some tips and tricks to stay on top of your notes?
Essentially, 3 in 4 students aren’t effectively taking notes in class, and study can become increasingly hard, because the content piles up over time! To stop you from falling behind, we’ve got advice for various subjects.
Click on the links below for our tips on creating study notes for different subjects:
- HSC Standard and Advanced English
- HSC Standard Maths
- HSC Advanced Maths
- HSC Modern History
- HSC Ancient History
- HSC Chemistry
- HSC Legal Studies
- HSC Economics
- HSC Visual Arts
- How to Write Notes Using the QCE Syllabus for Maths
- How to Write Notes for QCE Humanities and Social Sciences Subjects
- How to Write Notes Using the QCE Syllabus for English
- How to Write Notes Using the QCE Syllabus for Science Subjects
Whether you’re currently part of the super consistent 25.4% or feel like you’re falling behind, take a look at some simple ways to organise your study notes and keep on top of them here!
Study routines
When it comes to staying on top of study and being ready for Year 12, having a solid study plan is essential. It’s also important to make sure your study routine is personalised and works with your interests, study preferences and lifestyle, so that you’ll follow it consistently!
If you currently find that you don’t have a study plan in place, it’s not too late to create one. In fact, around 20.6% of Year 12s responded to our Readiness Quiz saying they don’t have a study routine, which means you’re not alone!
You can take a look at 10 easy steps to creating your study plan here.
If you’re one of the 62.7% of Year 12s who have a study plan but don’t consistently follow it, we’ve got you covered! Start by taking a moment to reflect on your current routine — what works? What do you find ineffective?
With about 4 in 5 students not having a consistent study routine in place, this can lead to a lack of preparation before exams and the accrual of unnecessary stress.
Whether you’re having a hard time beating procrastination, setting goals, or finding time for relaxation, there are plenty of ways to customise your study routine so that it’s easier to stick to!
Looking for simple tips to create a study plan you’ll stick to? Take a look at our step-by-step guide here!
Dealing with distractions
As you set up a good study routine, maybe you find that distractions and procrastination are your biggest challenge. Every time you get distracted, it takes over 23 minutes to regain focus, which is a pretty big chunk of your study time!
Looking at what people said in our Year 12 Readiness Quiz, it seems as though distractions are a huge part of almost every Year 12 student’s study routine! In fact, only 4.8% of Year 12s said they rarely get distracted due to maintaining a distraction-free study space.
But if you find yourself getting distracted or endlessly procrastinating, you can get back on track and beat procrastination with some easy goal-setting.
Another way to improve studying and reduce procrastination is to make sure you have a good, effective study space. This means studying in a dedicated study place that’s clean and tidy with little to no distractions!
Here are more tips on how you can stop procrastination from ruining your final year!
Burn-out
As you power through the year, you might start feeling burnt-out from all the studying and assignments. It’s super important to think of Year 12 like a marathon, not a sprint!
Make sure you look after your health and wellbeing to help maintain a good consistent energy level throughout the year.
If you’re one of 32.3% of Year 12s who said they’re exercising at least 3 times per week, keep it up! And remember that wellbeing also includes finding time for hobbies, family and friends, and rest days.
Around 40.3% of Year 12s said they try to exercise occasionally but don’t have a consistent plan and 27.4% said they’re not really doing any exercise. If you find yourself ticking one of these boxes, you can start prioritising health and wellbeing more by adding just a bit more physical movement into your weekly routine!
You can take a look at some other ways to recognise and prevent burn out here.
Are you feeling some early Year 12 burnout? Take a look at how Katelyn extinguished her burnout here!
Sleep schedules
When you’re trying to juggle all these different things from studying to extracurriculars, you might find that your sleep schedule ends up getting sacrificed. But that’s not the way to go!
A lack of sleep can have a range of different consequences on your personal and academic life, including a lack of concentration and memory retention. When you’re awake for over 17 hours, your cognitive performance is actually equivalent to being over the blood alcohol limit!
So while it’s tempting to ignore sleep when you have other priorities, it’s super important to maintain a healthy sleep routine during your final year of schooling.
Looking at the Year 12 Readiness Quiz, most Year 12s currently have an OK or good sleep routine, which is great to hear!
Were you like the 49.6% who often go to sleep later than 11pm? Or the 11.2% who are getting less than 7 hours of sleep?
You can take a look at some simple ways to maintain a healthy sleep schedule here!
Looking for more help to improve your sleep routine? Here are the Top 5 Apps for Improving Your Sleep Routine.
So there you have it!
Now you’ve completed the Year 12 Readiness Quiz and had a chance to look at how your responses compared to other Year 12 students.
Use these tips and tricks to lift your Year 12 Readiness in the coming few weeks and you’ll be ready to ace your end of year exams!
Check out our ultimate guide to ace the first term of Year 12 here! Or if you’re doing the QCE, check out our resources here to ace Term 1!
Are you looking for some extra help to get ready for Year 12?
We pride ourselves on our inspirational coaches and mentors!
We offer tutoring and mentoring for Year 12 students in NSW, Queensland and Victoria in a wide variety of subjects, with personalised lessons conducted one-on-one in your home, online or at one of our state of the art campuses in Hornsby or the Hills (for our NSW students)!
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!
Maitreyi Kulkarni is a Content Writer at Art of Smart Education and is currently studying a Bachelor of Media and Communications (Public Relations and Social Media) at Macquarie University. She loves writing just about anything from articles to poetry, and has also had one of her articles published with the ABC. When she’s not writing up a storm, she can be found reading, bingeing sitcoms, or playing the guitar.
