01 Feb 2018

As if six whole hours at school wasn’t enough, being a student in Year 12 now comes with the added expectation of allocating your precious me/meme-time to extra study. It often sounds like some people in your life (teachers, parents, Aunty Karen) are telling you to do a zillion weekly study hours. While they do have your best interests at heart, what your teachers say you should do doesn’t match what students are actually doing. So, how much study should you do in Year 12?

How much do teachers say to study?

 Okay, so a zillion hours might have been a slight exaggeration, but the truth isn’t that much more ridiculous. A common piece of advice is to study an extra hour at home for each class you had that day. That means if you have five subjects in a day, you’d be studying for five extra hours, and if you get home at 4:30pm everyday you’d have a grand total of zero hours to do anything fun. Another recommendation is to study two hours a week for each HSC unit, so if you do 12 units you’d study 24 hours a week, or roughly 3.5 hours a day. While this does seem like a lighter load, this approach assumes you’re studying on the weekends, and nobody wants to do that.

What do the stats say?

Our research on the study habits of Year 12 students show that the majority (53.48%) are studying up to two hours a day. About 18.55% are studying three hours daily, and this figure drops down to just 7.68% for students studying five or more hours a day. This means that you shouldn’t feel too bad if you’re not following the teachers’ recommendations, and that you’re right in the middle of the pack with a lower number of hours. Of course, it’s important to consider that the ATAR is a rank, and that those that rank highly can tend to be in that minority group of people putting in impossible hours.

So, what should I do?

At the end of the day, studying is a personalised kind of thing, and there are loads of different approaches to ensure you reach your goals. While it is important to find the amount of hours that works for you, the quality of study time is important too. This is why some high-achievers with ATARs in the 90s can get by with less than the recommended amount; an hour of switched on revision is better than five hours of procrastination. It’s also important to avoid burning out due to overstudying, since this can affect things like your mood, concentration, and performance in the actual exams.

My approach to the HSC involved a whole lotta f*cking around during the term and cramming before assessments (shout-out to the Last Minute Crew). While this meant that I wasn’t topping my year in any subjects, it did get me to the degree and uni I wanted. The real success story though comes from the high-achievers of my grade – you would see them get full marks in exams during the week, pursue their hobbies and sporting interests in the evenings, and still rock up to every party on the weekends. Their success wasn’t a result of prioritising study over a social life, nor was it at the cost of their overall wellbeing. It was hard work, sure, but it wasn’t just a simple matter of plugging in more hours.

I found that the high-achievers also thrived because they all had a rough post school plan. Me? I had absolutely no idea and got frazzled even thinking about career paths. This is where the Post-School Plan would have come in handy.

What’s this, you may ask? It’s like a fun quiz that gets into your inner psyche, figuring out your talents, values, interests and personality. Then, you’ll be given jobs that’d suit you perfectly as well as a plan on how to get there.

Having a little bit more motivation and clarity during high school will defiantly help your studying regime, so suss it out here!