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Want to ace your HSC like David did? Read this article to see all his best tips and tricks.
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Are you in search of great Physics hacks? Or maybe you’re looking for some awesome HSC tips? Either way, Matrix alumnus and Barker College graduate, David, shares his best tips for how he came 1st in HSC Physics and achieved a 99.95 ATAR with 4 State Ranks.
Name: Wenquan Lu (David Lu)
High School: Barker College
My ATAR: 99.95
Table of contents:
| Subjects | Assessment Mark | HSC Exam Mark | HSC Mark | State Rank |
| Chemistry | 98/100 | 98/100 | 98 | 16th |
| Physics | 99/100 | 99/100 | 99 | 1st |
| Maths Extension 1 | 100/100 | 99/100 | 100 | 10th |
| Maths Extension 2 | 98/100 | 98/100 | 98 | – |
| Chinese and Literature | 95/100 | 95/100 | 95 | 4th |
| English EAL/D | 91/100 | 91/100 | 91 | – |
My best-performing subject was HSC Physics, because it is one of my favourite subjects.
I have a solid foundation in Physics from my 12 years of schooling and extracurricular activities.
Physics became an element of my daily life, as I saw everything – both the natural and artificial world – through the scope of Physics.
To be honest, I only had 2 days to revise Physics during my HSC exam month, so I was quite surprised when I heard I had been ranked 1st in HSC Physics.
On the other hand, it demonstrates how important my daily efforts and contributions throughout the year were. All the prior hard work in Year 12, meant I could revise in the 2 days before the exam to get to the state top.
Our expert teachers will guide you through the content, so you can learn and consolidate your understanding!
I got first place in all of my school Physics assessments in Year 11 and 12, and finally topped HSC Physics.
Here are my tips for doing well in HSC Physics.
To be honest, studying is almost like a science subject.
You can design your study using the scientific method, like I did:
This loop effectively improves your study towards perfection.
Firstly, understanding the syllabus and its features is crucial.
HSC Physics is a pre-calculus and elementary, but comprehensive, course that covers topics from quarks to the universe.
It emphasises on both analytical and memorisation skills.
So, a top student should be excellent both quantitatively and qualitatively.
From my HSC experience, long response questions embedded with calculations are becoming increasingly common. They are much more complex than blindly recounting information.
Furthermore, the added module “Working Scientifically” is another major focus of the syllabus.
It focuses on processing, analysing primary and secondary data, and performing practical experiments. So, quantitative long-response questions and experiments are the two main focuses for the new syllabus. So, you need to work that focus into your schedule.
Since experiments are a major focus of the syllabus, I made many detailed experiment summaries.
This included analysing all the aspects of the experiment:
To give you an idea of my notes, below is my summary for the photoelectric effect experiment:
I also made many concentrated summaries to memorise for the historical part of long response questions.
I used them like palm cards!
Below are some examples:
My unique method of learning Physics is using mathematical derivations.
When I encounter a new formula in Physics, I always think:
So, deriving formulae became one of my hobbies.
I felt a sense of achievement after each successful derivation… Which further tempts me to deduce more formulae.
Moreover, the interconnection between different fields of Physics can be established by deriving formulae.
This is perhaps the most important skill in studying Physics…
You need to draw connections between everything.
Formulae, equations and theories are not scattered and arbitrary. They all connect to each other in some way; integrating into a consistent theoretical framework (I mean, high school Physics, not ToE, theory of everything).
I still remember how my Physics teacher, Mr Dearn, derived Rydberg’s equation from Bohr’s postulate on the board. This was proof that everything in Physics is interrelated!
Matrix students were lucky to have the Year 12 Matrix Theory Books, which have excellent derivations. Working through all of them can potentially improve your Physics.
Eventually, I achieved the top of the state for Physics!
I think this result was catalysed by all my experiences and education. But some key things helped me along the way:
Also, Matrix has fantastic HSC Physics Theory and Work Books, so I don’t need to hunt for the good questions.
I was also very lucky that I could have a Usyd PhD, Emma Lindley, teaching me Physics at Matrix.
I could always ask her those cutting-edge, high-level Physics questions.
Physics-related extracurricular activities
In Year 10, I passed the aeronautical engineering and astronautics courses provided by Delft University of Technology and MIT on edX.
I studied First-Year Uni mechanics and aerodynamics.
In Year 11, I participated in Imperial College London Global Summer School Physics stream.
I had to use computational language to simulate coupled oscillators & damped simple harmonic motion and solve differential equations.
Those were very valuable experiences that silently accumulated my Physics knowledge and improved my scientific thinking.
Time management is not my thing. In Year 12, I struggled with time management. I was just busy all the time!
Apart from my academic study, I was also the concertmaster of chamber and symphonic orchestras in my school.
After tutoring classes, I usually got back home at around 8:30 pm. Then, I would do my homework and practice violin until around 1 a.m.
I still remember that during my trial exams, I slept around 3 a.m. Many people doubted this way of studying. However, I still got first place in all of my subjects in my trial exam.
In reality, all my ‘excellence’ in violin was cultivated in my early years of schooling.
Again, this demonstrates the importance of completing work prior to Year 12 as it gives you time to focus on your studies in the crucial year.
So, I actually didn’t balance academic work and extracurricular work in my final year. It was completely tilted towards academic work.
Well, my philosophy of time management isn’t recommended for everyone.
If you don’t want to suffer from sleep deprivation, you probably shouldn’t try it.
However, I still stuck to a timetable during my HSC revision time:
Written by Guest Author
We have regular contributions to our blog from our Tutor Team and high performing Matrix Students. Come back regularly for these guest posts to learn their study hacks and insights!
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