Talent 100 – HSC Tuition | Tutoring | Coaching | Tutors

If you are currently in Year 10, you may be tempted to think that this is your ‘rest’ year – the final opportunity to take things easy, before the hard work that awaits in Year 11 and 12. However, the competition for places in top University courses is fierce, and it is often the most prepared students (rather than the smartest) that score the top ATARs.

At Talent 100, our Headstart Tuition programs provides students with a competitive advantage in Year 11 in the HSC’s highest scaling subjects, by starting early so that they can go on to score the top ATARs. In fact, our 2008 Headstart students out-performed their non-headstart peers in our standardised exams by an average of 6.5% in Mathematics and 5% in the Sciences. While this may seem negligible, in a competitive school, it could (and often is) the difference between a Band 5 and a Band 6.

The two critical mistakes that many students in Year 10 make are to:

Ignore the implications of scaling when making subject selections for Year 11. Whilst there are no “right” or “wrong” subjects, there are subjects that scale well and subjects that scale poorly. The scaling of your subjects has a very significant impact on your overall ATAR. If you are looking to score a high ATAR, performing moderately well in the right portfolio of subjects will ensure that you score a high ATAR, whilst even scoring very well in low scaling subjects may lead to a lower ATAR. (see the our HSC Study Guide for further details)

Procrastinating or believing that they should start studying some time in Year 11. Many students are tempted to think that they can take things easy now, and just start improving in Year 11. This expectation is unrealistic because the subjects become much more difficult at the Year 11 & 12 level, and more importantly, the competition becomes much more fierce as many more students start to compete for top ATARs in their later year. The result is that even students who have traditionally performed well until Year 10 start to perform suboptimally in high school’s most important years.

By accelerating our students’ learning, Headstart is able to give students a unique edge on their peers in school. We call this the ‘second-time advantage’. When you learn something the first time, you often expect just to pass the exam or score 60-70%.When you are learning something for the second time, you will be aiming to score 80-90%+.

Click on the subject headings to learn more:

Mathematics

Physics & Chemistry

English

Mathematics

3 Unit and 4 Unit Mathematics are almost definitely the highest scaling subjects available to most students, and scoring moderately well will help boost your ATAR significantly.

Headstart Mathematics aims to help Year 10 students looking to do 3U and 4U Maths in Year 12. The course develops strong foundations in mathematics, and helping students develop mistake-free processes when setting out solutions.

The course develops the fundamental skills needed to perform well in mathematics and has a strong emphasis in ensuring students are able to properly set out equations - an essential pre-requisite in understanding and performing well in mathematics. It will cover the basic topics of mathematics at a more advanced level, and will importantly introduce students to differentiation and integration - the topics that most students find difficulty with and which separates students in the later years.

Our course helps students:

Develop a solid first-principles understanding of mathematical principles that teaches student to understand formulae, rather than to memorize them
Reviews the work they will cover in Year 10 (Algebra, Geometry, Coordinate Geometry, Trigonometry) and extends them to the Year 11 Level
Familiarize students with the typical range of questions that are encountered in exams, so that they can select appropriate methods to solve them
Breakdown typical question types into easy-to-follow steps that students are able to repeat and internalise
Provides challenge questions akin to 'last questions' of exams to stimulate and advance students.
Present solutions in a logical fashion, with the correct setting-out, so as to avoid careless mistakes.

Students of the weekly success program receive:

A Talent 100 Mathematics Tutoring Workbooklet that methodically covers the topic area, with clear explanations of the key theory and skills required in the syllabus. During the seminar , the teacher will explain the theory and introduce typical question types, showing students how to attack such questions in step-wise fashion. Students are then required to perform examples to re-enforce their understanding and to give them sufficient practice to internalise these methods.

Talent 100 Headstart Homework that reinforces that helps students consolidate the theory and practice answer typical question types at home. Headstart Homework takes between 30-40 minutes each week.

Topic Tests, at the end of each topic, which students sit under exam conditions. This forces students to integrate their learning in an exam situation, and gives the student critical feedback on the type and variety of mistakes BEFORE they sit their tests at school.