The Most Personalised BSSS Specialist Maths Tuition, Designed For You.

“Specialist Maths can seem like a daunting subject for students in Canberra.

Everyone makes it out to be this ‘impossibly hard’ subject, where only the mathematically gifted students can do well.

An appalling first term:

I can tell you that at the beginning of Year 11, I was actually about to drop Specialist Maths as a subject due to performing poorly in the first exam… where I received an 18 out of 45.

And that’s going to reflect my first piece of advice: don’t focus on your raw marks just as a percent out of 100, but compare them to the average raw mark. The scores are usually very low for Specialist Maths and I came to find out the first exam’s average was actually a 12 out of 45.

But this was a bit of an outlier, so if you perform poorly in Specialist Maths for the first term of Year 11; don’t worry. This happens to everyone and you will have more than enough chances to pick your performance back up!

Now, how did I manage to turn my scores around and rank in the top 5 for Specialist Maths in Canberra by the end of Year 12?

That’s a secret…

Just kidding!

Myth Busting Memorisation:

The reason I performed poorly in my first term was because I overlooked the fundamentals. I simply memorised all the formula and methods without ever questioning why they worked. Considering Specialist Maths in Canberra is a very abstract subject, you need to understand the reasoning and derivation between every formula and method you use. This applies especially for the Proof and Logic, Vectors, and Complex Numbers unit; where you will have to complete some really tricky proofs during exams. 

Keep a summary sheet:

That’s why I recommend keeping a summary sheet of all the formulae, theorems and methods used, and then closer to the exams, re-deriving all of them. That is, knowing exactly why every single step works. This was an absolute game changer, especially for the Abstract Algebra unit at the end of Year 11 – where I ended up scoring one of the top marks.

Targeted practice using external resources:

And it goes without saying: you need to practice heaps! This should be very targeted practice and, excluding th Abstract Algebra and Statistics unit, you will need to seek external resources once you have finished the school textbook. I highly recommend MadasMaths for extra practice as it covers really good questions and also has worked solutions for each one.

Create revision questionbank:

Whenever you practice, you should also highlight of all the questions you are getting wrong as well as any tips or tricks you pick up along the way. This will make your revision 10 times easier, as you can simply reattempt the highlighted questions and memorise what you have written in your summary sheet!“