We are now into Term 4 of 2009. This means all year 11 have just moved onto year 12, and are in their first Term of their HSC. Now is the real thing - all school assessments count towards your internal rank. Your assignments and exams at school will affect your ATAR - and your final HSC exams are less than a year away.

It is time to get yourself into the right mindset in order to achieve the ATAR you want.

How to set goals

Goal setting is an effective motivational tool that can help you stay focused and on-track to your HSC success. Staying focused and motivated throughout the 2 years starting at the beginning of year 11 plays a large part to your eventual success in getting the ATAR you need for your ideal University course. Staying focused and motivated is also the biggest challenge students face. Here's where effective goal-setting can help.

There are many books written on this subject, but the key thing to learn is the ability to break big goals down into small actionable tasks. For example, suppose your ultimate HSC goal is to achieve the ATAR you need for your dream University course. This is a very common goal, one shared by all keen HSC students dedicated to their studies.

Breaking big goals into smaller goals

So how would you go about breaking down this goal into smaller actionable tasks?

First, make a commitment to end the habit of procrastination. Accept that for great things to happen, there must be a proportionately great amount of work that needs to be done - by you. Think of this as a 'law of conservation of effort and rewards', or the old adage: 'you reap what you sow'. In order to achieve a high ATAR, you need to study - there's no two ways about this. Do all your homework from school (and tutoring!), and ask questions until you completely understand every concept before moving on.

Now, since it's a given that hard work and study is required, you'll need to work out what you can do each day to work to your goal. The second step is to find out what is a sustainable amount of study you can do each day. Make a commitment to stick to this amount, everyday, for as long as you can. Work out a schedule in which to split your study time amongst your subjects. Put more time into your weaker subjects - generally this approach will maximise your aggregate mark (due to diminishing returns from excelling in each individual subject). Make a schedule, commit to it and STICK to it.

The third and final step is to START TODAY. Remember that there is no longer any reason for you to procrastinate as you've accepted the fact that hard work is necessary for great rewards.

Keep small goals realistic The thing to remember about setting smaller goals is to keep them realistic and achievable. For example, suppose your goal is to do well in an upcoming Mathematics exam, and you need to master Integration and Polynomials before the exam. Then what you can do is break the content and exercises you'll need to go through into daily portions and do those portions each day. Keep the amount achievable, but don't be lazy about it. Do the most you can - then have a break.

Rewarding yourself Rewarding yourself is an important part of the whole process. It is wrong to believe that HSC success comes from complete sacrifice of one's social life and leisure time for the entire 2 years.

While it is important to set goals, it is equally important to reinforce the achievement of goals with proportionate rewards. Decide to yourself prior to starting each goal what the reward for the goal is. For example, you may have a goal of achieving 90% in the next Physics exam. You may think this is particularly challenging for you, since Physics is one of your weaker subjects. Therefore you may decide that if you achieve this goal, you'd get to go out for a day or two, or throw a party, or buy yourself something nice. However it is also important that your activity is something that involves movement. Because study requires you to be at home / school / library, it is not a good idea to spend your breaks doing something at home, such as playing computer games for the whole day.

Study smart, study hard Have you heard some people telling you to "study smarter, not harder"? This is one of the most dangerous things to believe in, as it gets students into the wrong mindset. Yes, there are ways to study smarter, as it comes from understanding the way the HSC works, how HSC scaling works, what percentile is required for a certain aggregate mark, etc. As well, there are definitely great benefits in learning effective study habits such as how to set schedules, set goals (what this article is teaching!), and how to maximise the use of your resources (teachers, books etc). However, this does NOT mean you should not work as hard as you can. Instead, every time you hear someone say to you "study smarter, not harder", you should reply "why not do both?".

"Study smart AND study hard" - that's the way to get a 99.95.

Things you can do to study smarter:

Educate yourself of the way the HSC works, such as HSC scaling, how the ATAR is calculated, what marks are required for your required ATAR, etc
Make maximum use of your teachers at school and tutoring
Make use of quality textbooks for your subjects. Sometimes, notes from past students / friends etc, even teachers at school, are no-where near as comprehensive as the textbook
Study with friends who are as dedicated as you are

Things you can do to study harder:

Stop procrastinating - start today!
Make a schedule, stick to it
Set small realistic goals that are part of your bigger goals

Final thoughts

The key to HSC success is not how 'naturally bright' you are. It is not what school you go to either (although having great teachers helps a lot, you can always find great teachers from tutoring). The most important thing is consistency in hard work.

"Nothing worthwhile comes easily. Half effort does not produce half results, it produces no results. Work, continuous work and hard work, it the only way to accomplish results that last." -Hamilton Holt

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