Whether you've already picked biology or are thinking about which VCE subjects you'd like to do, you probably want to know what's in store for you.
Most students will choose subjects based on what they want to do in the future. Picking subjects related to what you want to study at university or in areas you're interested in is always an excellent idea, but some students also think about choosing subjects based on difficulty so that they can ace their exams and secure a place on a university course.
While this sounds like a smart strategy, you'll see shortly how you can't really do this. Nevertheless, it's still important to think about how difficult the subjects you choose are.
So How Difficult is VCE Biology Really?
The difficulty of any subject is always going to be relative. Every student is different and what's easy for one student mightn't be easy for another.
The VCE Biology course will be more difficult than the biology you've seen so far in school because it'll be at a higher level, but if you've always enjoyed biology and found it quite easy, VCE Biology should be interesting while also providing more of a challenge than what you've seen so far in school.
How difficult VCE Biology is will depend on the study score that you want to achieve and the amount of work and studying you're going to have to put in to get it.
What Is a Study Score?
When it comes to any kind of assessment, exam, challenge, or competition, there are two main ways to judge performance.
You can either give an absolute score, such as the number of questions answered correctly, for example, or you can grade the results. With VCE exams and assessments, students are given a numerical score but this score is actually a numerical representation of how they performed in comparison to all the other VCE students.
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Basically, the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) in charge of the VCE will use compare the results of students in Units 3 and 4 of each subject against all the other students.
So while you'll be given a number somewhere between 0 and 50 for your study score, it's actually a representation of where you ranked. This isn't the result of a single exam or assessment, but rather where you placed against other students as a whole.
Students are then placed on a distribution curve and the very best students (the top 0.3%) are given 50. The top 9% are given 40 or more.
The average student receives 30 and most students will likely get a study score and most students will be given study scores between 23 and 37. Your study score will be used to calculate your VTAC ATAR.
How Do They Calculate Study Scores?
Study scores are quite simple to calculate and only use the four main mathematical operations (addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication).
They subtract the state average from the student's score. They then divide it by the standard deviation. Finally, they multiply this by the weighting of the assessment taken.
Once the VCAA has all the scores from all the assessments, they simply rank all the students and allocate them the aforementioned study score.
Across different subjects, students may think that by picking subjects they can get a high study score in, they can play the system through their subject choices, but there's one more thing you have to consider that makes this strategy quite redundant: scaling.
How Does VCE Scaling Work?
With 90 subjects to choose from, there will be certain subjects that draw in more academically gifted students or subjects that are naturally more competitive.
If a particularly gifted group of students are all studying a particular subject, it wouldn't be fair to give the bottom-ranked students the same study scores as another subject when the competition was much fiercer.
The account for this, study scores are scaled. How this works exactly is down to some mathematics that we needn't get into in this article. What you need to know is that if you took a subject with a relatively impressive cohort of students, it's likely that your ultimate study score for that subject will be shifted upwards to account for the competition.
Conversely, if you took a subject and the overall performance of the other students in other subjects was particularly low, your study score could be scaled down.
Don't worry too much about all of this, though, as your goal is just to perform to the best of your abilities and even if you've taken a subject that will be scaled down, as long as you perform well, you'll still have a good study score.
What Is a Good Study Score for VCE Biology?
We can't stress enough how different every student is and what's good for one student mightn't be good for another based on their academic history, aspirations, etc.
The median score is 30 and to get 40 you're going to have to be within the top 9%. To work out what kind of score you should be aiming for, it's probably quite wise to speak to the teachers at your school. They'll have a much better idea of your academic ability and what kind of results you'll likely be able to achieve if you apply yourself and work hard.
How Do You Prepare for VCE Biology?
There's no secret formula to doing well in VCE Biology. The students that work hard, revise, organise their time, and pay attention in class are likely to perform better than those who don't.
As we've already mentioned, every student is different so it's important to work out which approaches are effective and which approaches are a waste of your time.
When it comes to the end-of-year assessment, revision will help you get the best study scores.
Revision
Put simply, revision should be about testing your knowledge and making sure it lines up with what you'll need to know for the VCE Biology exam.
During your biology classes, you'll have been studying the topics and concepts that you'll need for the exam, but it can help a lot to know exactly what the VCAA is looking for in your assessment.
Fortunately, you can refer to the VCE Biology Study Design which outlines the entire course, the Units, the Areas of Study, and the internal and external assessments, and explains the key knowledge that students should have and exhibit in their assessments.
It's also a good idea when you revise to refer to what you need to know and regularly go back to the topics and concepts you struggle with. While it can be nice to revise all the stuff you're comfortable with, you should always focus on the toughest parts of any subject when revising.
What Is the Best Way to Prepare for the VCE Biology Exam?
Exams aren't really the best ways to assess students as they tend to force teachers to teach the exam rather than the subject, but until there's a better way to standardise assessments for lots of students across the whole state, we're sort of stuck with them.
This means that you'll have to learn the key knowledge for VCE Biology, but you'll also have to learn how to master the exam so that you get as many available marks as you can.
The VCE Biology exam lasts two and a half hours with 15 minutes of reading time and focuses on Unit 3 and Unit 4. Be sure to refer to VCE Biology Study Design to find out exactly what this covers.
Not only should you make sure that your revision focuses on everything you need to know for this exam, but you should also practise with VCE Biology past papers.
Past Papers
Past papers and sample papers are a great resource for students in any subject. Not only will they help you to familiarise yourself with the format of the exam (provided the exam hasn't changed since this exam was issued), but they'll also allow you to practise exam technique and do exams under exam conditions.
As your end-of-year exam approaches, you'll want to do more exam practice. Try to take representative past papers and sample papers in exam conditions. This will help you gain a better understanding of how long the exam is and also make it so that you can manage your time better during the real thing.
This will feel like a lot at first so you'll probably want to sit down for shorter spells and do the exam in several sittings and build towards sitting sample papers in their entirety.
Of course, if you need help with any of this, look for help from your teachers or from private VCE Biology tutors. There are tutors for all budgets and levels so browse the available tutors and find the one that's right for you!
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