This episode transcript has been AI generated and edited by our team, for your convenience and accessibility.

William Wadsworth (00:02)
Hello and welcome to the Exam Study Experts podcast, the home of smarter study habits and great results in your exams. From time to time on the show, I like to feature real students who’ve applied the kinds of ideas we teach on the show to their own studies and talk a little bit about the practical case studies of how they did it, what they did, the nuts and bolts of what worked for them, and ultimately get inspired by results that they’ve achieved.

So today I’m delighted to be welcoming a young scholar from Down Under Australia called Harry, who’s just graduated from high school there, where he came in the top 1 % of his state, which is obviously a very fine achievement. But as you’ll hear, that success was no accident. He worked consistently and was very smart about the way he learned and also tracking his progress, prioritising his time where it was most beneficial to make best use of study time each.

So regular listeners to the show will spot some of our favourite ideas popping up throughout the case study we’re going to dive into today. Things like the power of consistency, listen out for when Harry talks about his 300 day Anki Street, which I really liked, as well as of course the use of effective spaced retrieval practice based learning, really powerful way to go about your learning.

And as well as a really nice example, I thought of of metacognitive thinking in action. So to kind of how he tracks his strengths and weaknesses and his progress through through his kind of past paper practice in particular, which builds quite nicely on a conversation we had on the show quite recently with Nathan Burns talking about metacognitive strategies. That was a couple of weeks ago, back in episode two one five, if you missed that one well worth a listen if you you haven’t caught that yet.

And so lots to take away from today’s episode. Harry’s a really nice guy. think you’re going to really enjoy hearing from him. Let’s meet him and dive right in.

Harry Gill (01:59)
Yeah, so I’m Harry, I’m from Sydney, Australia. I just finished my year 12, which is the final year of high school, did my HSE. And so I’ve just been, you know, enjoying the summer since then, went away traveling to Asia with my girlfriend. And now I’m just getting ready to head off to university for next year.

William Wadsworth (02:22)
What are you going off to study?

Harry Gill (02:25)
I’m studying a course which is Bachelor of Finance, Stats and Economics down at ⁓ AMU in Camp.

William Wadsworth (02:34)
Amazing, Good. So you did quite well in your, for those around the world, the kind of the big exams you take at the end of your kind of high school days in Australia. So the big kind of final exams, of, I equivalent to A levels for UK students or equivalent to sort of your APs for perhaps for American students. So, you you did very well in those exams. So tell us a little bit about your results and kind of how you feel about that.

Harry Gill (02:59)
Yeah, so for like the final, my final rank was 99.05, which is my ATAR. So that was my percent out of the state. ⁓ And then the subjects I was studying was English, advanced, maths, extension one and two, economics and physics. And so I got a band six in all of them, which was a mark above 90. And yeah, that was my high school. So I ended up

ended off well. I had a goal of getting a 99 ATAR that I kind of set for myself at the start of year 12 really was when I set like my goal at 99. Before that end of year 11 it was like 98 and then I was like might as well bump it up see if I can you know prove to myself that I could get it so I just scraped it with 99.05 so I was pretty happy with that and yeah.

William Wadsworth (03:56)
Amazing, amazing. So I’m always curious about what kind of drives people. mean, you’re kind of aiming effectively to kind of be in that top 1 % of people taking the exams. That’s an amazing goal and congratulations for achieving it. That’s fantastic result. Yeah, tell us about your kind of motivations and drives behind that.

Harry Gill (04:07)
Hmm.

Thank you.

Well, at the start of year 11, everyone starts talking about uni and what courses you want to get into, which in Australia is pretty much like the main pathway into uni is through your ATAR. So your final selection, like your final percent out of the state is what you use to get into your course. So the course that I was like most interested in was a 98, which is where I kind of pulled the 98 number from. And then through year 11 was

Like when I first started applying myself at school, before that I was just cruising there for the fun. But year 11 I started pretty much applying myself and I was like, oh, kind of enjoy. I enjoyed the work towards the exams and doing well. So then going into year 12, I may as well go for a 99, see if I can prove to myself that I can get it. And…

Yeah, that was, I didn’t have much of a reason other than obviously to try and get into my course, which is like the easiest way to get straight in. And then other than that, it was kind of just wanted to see if I could do it for myself.

William Wadsworth (05:35)
sense of, let’s just give it a crack and see how far we can push this, right? How good can we get it? Let’s give it our best shot and see where it takes us.

Harry Gill (05:42)
Yeah, cause I was… dunno.

Yeah, it’s not very often you do like exams where you actually get a percent out of the state, which is a pretty big bunch of people. So I thought it’d be quite interesting to see how well I could actually do if I tried. yeah, that’s kind of my reasoning.

William Wadsworth (06:06)
Amazing. And so you said, so through year 11, you were starting to, so you’re kind of penultimate year. through the kind of final couple of years, you were starting to get a lot more kind of focused and goal-driven on this. So, you know, what were some of the things in practice you were starting to do differently, you know, throughout the years? So kind of, we’ll talk about the kind of final.

Harry Gill (06:14)
Mm.

Yeah.

William Wadsworth (06:28)
weeks running up to the exam and your final exam prep process in a minute. But in terms of those final couple of years and day to day, week to week, what were some of the things you were doing differently, do you think, to help give you a chance at that high goal? were some of those extra bits and pieces? What did that look like in practice?

Harry Gill (06:33)
Mm-mm.

Yeah, so in

year 12 is when I started, like I found out about Anki. So I downloaded Anki, I was like, let’s see what this is about. And then, so I started using, I started, you know, set it up. And I like, like I was reading about it, was like, oh, this sounds quite interesting. Like quite a proper tool that like, you know, is obviously gets results.

And so I set that up and then, um, I just decided I was going to try and do my Anki every single day for year 12. So by the end of year 12, I had almost a 300 streak on it. So that was kind of my thing that meant if I was doing that every day, it was like that way I was, I was starting, I was down at my desk every single day, no matter what I’d do at least one thing. And that was what kind of, that was what.

Ultimately, like my Anki is what helped me do like really well because of the way it like I managed to remember all the content stuff like that. But aside from that, it meant that every single day I was down at my desk and I would do even if it was like the smallest bit, I’ll do a little bit of study every single day.

William Wadsworth (08:02)
That’s really cool. And the 300 streak, were the days in there that you were kind of sort of almost not going to get the day and then you were like, no, but I can’t break the streak. I’ve got to make the day happen. And you made it happen.

Harry Gill (08:12)
Yeah,

yeah, of course, like there’s quite a few days where I did not have much motivation or any real reason to study, like I wouldn’t have exams coming up in the near future, but I just didn’t really want to lose my streak. you know, that was just a final little push to just keep it going. So it made a difference.

William Wadsworth (08:36)
That’s very cool. And how long are you spending each day? So when you say you do your Anki each day, are we talking like five minutes, an hour? What kind of amount of time is that?

Harry Gill (08:43)
⁓

so during, during school, would like my first thing I’d do if I had learned new content as I’d make my new cards. So that the amount of time I’d spend on that varied a lot depending on how much I’d learned that day. And so I’d make my cards that I’d never spend more than an hour. Like after school, like usually less than half an hour, 20 minutes, cause you don’t learn.

boatload it each every day. So I’d make sure I’d get that done. And then actually doing my cards, maybe 20, 20 minutes, 20, 30 minutes, depending on how close to the exam I was closer to the exams I’d get, would like, I’d end up having more content pushed closer together that I had to get across then that meant I had more.

new cards that I was doing every single day. So it kind of bumped up how much I was doing, but I’d never end up spending more than really 20 or 30 minutes on average.

William Wadsworth (09:50)
20, 30 minutes multiplied by 300 days is quite a lot. There’s like 150 hours of practice at least. That’s pretty good. And so you were kind making your cards kind of on the new content as you were learning it, you know, going through the school year. Were you doing that across kind of all your subjects? it with a certain subject you were doing that for in particular, or was it just sort of everything?

Harry Gill (09:51)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so

I use my Anki for economics and physics, which are my main two subjects, which are like my content subjects, because English was about essays and short answers, which is pretty separate to what I was using it for. And then maths, I did use it, but not really for content. So it’s quite different. So for economics and physics, I was making cards about content.

It was, yeah, that was what I was using for.

William Wadsworth (10:49)
Any user tips for Anki while we’re talking Anki? So little hints, tips for sort of anyone starting out on their Anki journey. Any little bits of best practice you picked up along the way.

Harry Gill (10:59)
Well, the most important thing is that you stick to it. as long as you stick to it, it’ll do well. But I, I set my like maximum, like length of time that I could do a card was at 30 days. So the longest I would have, like the furthest away I’d have a card would be 30 days. That meant that I was at least seeing each card once a month, which ended up working out quite well for the

timeframe of year 12, like it being a full year, you have quite a lot of time to prepare, but you also don’t, you don’t want to have too massive a gap which can end up happening if you don’t, if you don’t like go and set a limit on it. So I found, I found that quite useful.

William Wadsworth (11:46)
Yeah, that’s good, that’s good. So go into your settings and find what’s gonna work best for you and your needs, Good, okay. So let’s talk about when we get a little bit closer to exam season then. So when we’re in that kind of…

know, a couple of months, few weeks leading up to the final exams. Typically things sort of shift a little bit. What in hindsight were the things you did to prepare that helped you?

as far as you believe, well, you what do you think led to kind of your final success in terms of how you prepared in those final few weeks?

Harry Gill (12:21)
Yeah, so in year 12, we have our trial exams, which are the exact same format as the HSC. So you’ll have your proper full length three hour exams for your subjects. So the gap between that and the HSC is quite a long time. So I thought that’s like the time where you really need to like lock in and crack down if you want to do well. So coming out of my trials, I got my results back and

It varied a lot by subject as to what I was doing. So for English, I didn’t do as well as I’d hoped in my trial. So I spent for quite a lot of like the early days before the HSC, I spent a lot of time on English working on my essays. So refining them, sending them to my teacher and working through the actual like base essay that I had for my texts to kind of pull that up to the level where

Like I was like competitive at the top of the table, like English students that I never really was. So I spent quite a lot of time actually working on my essays. But then when it came closer to the actual HSC, to the point where people start memorizing essays, I found it helpful. So I tried to get my essays

to a really good standard quite quickly. So then I could memorize them, which is a bit of a slog. And however you want to do it, some people memorize them. Some people can just, you know, whatever your English strategy is. So I had a base essay that I was more or less memorizing, maybe like 85, 90 % memorizing. So I’d get that done and then spend almost my entire time studying English was adapting that to different.

exam questions. So I’d have my essay in my head and I’d go and I’d write out the full thing to different questions. So that was maybe two or three weeks into the HSC, like leading up to the HSC, I’d be writing a full essay to different types of questions. And then the final, the final week really was when I knew all my essays, I knew how to adapt them to different questions. I was just working on seeing like

a very large volume of questions. So I’d look at a question and I wouldn’t write a full essay. I’d write an intro, topic sentences to my paragraphs, and then like just any really like notes under each topic sentence of each paragraph about how I would, you know, adapt to that particular question. So that way I could see more questions and adapt my essay to like a larger number of questions before the actual HSC.

William Wadsworth (15:12)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I liked, one the things I particularly liked in there was kind of identifying, okay, I’m not quite where I wanna be with this particular skill yet. And really kind of grasping the nettle by the, but grasping the nettle and going, right, okay, right, what can I do about this? Let’s fix this. Rather than just sort of settling for, okay, I’m not so good at this and I’m just gonna kind of live with it sort of thing. Really figuring out, okay, what do I need to do to get where I want to be? I really like that approach, that’s great.

Harry Gill (15:13)
Yeah.

Mm.

William Wadsworth (15:42)
growth mindset in action, brilliant. When it comes to, because I know you’re obviously doing a lot of kind of past paper practise across not just English, your other subjects as well. And how did you organise, you what was your system for organising all that sort of past paper practise?

Harry Gill (15:45)
Yeah.

Yeah, so for my like the maths and physics and echo, I’d be doing past papers for all of them. And so I’d have a big table for each for like maths extension one to physics, etc. And I’d have the name of the paper I’d done. So whether or it was a past HSC or a different school’s trial paper, I’d have the name of it, the mark that I

like got when I marked it myself, the mark that I got out of 100, whatever, ⁓ the time that it took me to finish it. And then I’d write down notes about each individual exam that I’d sat, like the different topics that I found hard, or if there was a really interesting question about a particular topic that I wanted to redo. And so, like leading into the HSC, I’d have this big table of all these different past exams I’d done.

And so I could see not only like if my marks were more or less getting better, I could also see like that I was getting it done in less time. And then I could go through like the notes section and pick up on different topics that I’m repeatedly finding hard or like holding me back. So that sort of thing. And then leading in to the HSC, like within the last couple of weeks, I

started for maths, I actually started keeping track of actual questions that I wanted to redo. So I had a table of, you know, just like a screenshot of the question and the answer, and then also like some notes about whether or it was like a mistake I made or something I didn’t see. And so I’d go like quite a while after I’d done the actual questions, then that way I didn’t just remember exactly, you know, what the solution was. I’d go and I’d redo.

particular questions that I found quite interesting. And so I thought that was really helpful to make sure that there isn’t topics that you don’t like and so you’re just not doing them. It meant that you were actually going back and doing the topics that you don’t like and that find hard. And also specifically the question types that you don’t like and that you find difficult. Yeah.

William Wadsworth (18:17)
Yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah. No, I really love all that. mean, the number of people, there’ll be a bunch of people listening to that and they go, well, that all sounds very sort of, you know, sounds like common sense, sounds quite obvious. But the thing is, like so few people actually are that rigorous in practice. Like actually that level of rigor and systematization is quite unusual in practice. So I mean, it sounds like when you sort of put it all in, like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, have a tracker for it all. Well, yeah, but.

Harry Gill (18:31)
Yeah.

No.

William Wadsworth (18:43)
no one’s actually doing that or very few people are. If you are already, then brilliant, you’re doing a great job, keep going. If you’re not, I think that’s seriously, that’s great advice. I think that’s such good advice. ⁓ I liked how we often talk about on the podcast when it comes to maths questions, we wanna redo those tricky questions again.

Harry Gill (18:45)
Yeah.

William Wadsworth (19:03)
have a way to record them. I really liked how you described that system, very clear, very robust, really make sure you kind of come back and do those practice questions again, where you’ve struggled, where you’ve tripped up, make sure you’ve learned from those mistakes, learned from those, know, so something like that in the exam comes up, you know what you’re doing. And being really kind of clear on tracking all the different past papers, what you’ve done, how you do it, are you recording the kind of time it took, you know, that’s nice. And that kind of notes column for, am I right in thinking that?

You headed that column, that was your vibe column. You call it your vibe column, had a column on vibe.

Harry Gill (19:36)
I

actually, I did have a vibe column, which was not only like the vibe, like there’s two senses to the vibe. There’s the vibe in which I took the exam, whether I took it like proper exam style, no notes, like time three hours, or if I took it as an exam that I’d like broken up across a couple of days that I was coming back to and spending like more than the allocated time to properly go through it. I did have my.

there was that sense of the vibe and then there’s also the vibe of the exam which was like was this like a brutal you know selective school pass paper or was this just a you know one of the easier years of HSC you know like a COVID year HSC which are like on average a little bit easier and so there was that as well yeah.

William Wadsworth (20:25)
Okay, yeah.

Yeah, give it a bit of context. Give it a bit of context. ⁓ Yeah, all of that and then the kind of the you’re describing like topics you found easy, hard, know, things, specific lessons learned. That’s really classic and really nice use of kind of that. We’ve spoken about metacognition on the show recently, you know, that kind of thinking about thinking, understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, you know, that’s a really effectively really nice kind of metacognitive exercise. That’s a really nice job on that. That sounds great.

Fantastic, so bring us into exam season itself then. So, you know, we’re in the exam hall, we’re taking the exam. Were there any kind of particular tips or tricks that you were thinking about actually while you were sitting the exams themselves that you think helped you pick up as many marks as possible on the day?

Harry Gill (21:11)
I think, well, a lot of people, they talk about how they’ll do their exams in like out of order, they’ll, whether or not it’s for English where paper one, there’s two sections, paper two, there’s three sections, they’ll go and they’ll do either the easiest section first or the hardest section first. I never did any of that. I always just did the exam back to front for English and.

more or less for maths, but it’s a bit different when you skip questions that are smaller. But for English, I always just did the exam front to back to spend that way. I wasn’t spending half my time thinking about which order should I do the exam in. I just was thinking about the exam and I just did the exam. And so I thought that was like, it’s such a small thing, but people talk about before the exam, like, or after like, what order do you do it in? And I always just did it front to back. And it was just simple and

it worked. And the exam strategy, I think, like such a large part of it is time management, which kind of plays into what I was just talking about. But

Being aware of how long you’re spending on questions and being willing to skip questions that are taking too long than what they should be is really important. just having in the back of your mind that is a timed exam, they’re all timed. So I think that’s quite important.

William Wadsworth (22:43)
Fantastic. Well, Harry, top 1 % in your state off to university next, well, off to university tomorrow. ⁓ So, ⁓ know, many congratulations is there sort of, is there anything that you did in the course of your exam prep or taking the exams themselves that no one sort of told you to do? You just.

Harry Gill (22:49)
Mm.

Smart.

William Wadsworth (23:07)
figured it out and you found it really worked for you.

Harry Gill (23:09)
There’s one, there’s stuff that I don’t like, when my friends would ask me like, what are you doing? There’s one thing that I’d, I’d never, I’d never recommend it to anyone because it, they, you can take it such the wrong way. But there was a lot of points, especially towards the end of school where I wouldn’t take notes at all, which sounds, you know, it’s not, it’s not as simple as not taking notes, but

It meant that in class, I wasn’t sitting there writing down what the teacher was saying. I’d sit there and I’d just listen and I’d sit there and all I’d do is I’d just listen and think about what they were saying and I wouldn’t write down anything. ⁓

Like, I think for me it really worked because it meant that after school when I was by myself I could go and I could put my stuff into my Anki or I could work on questions and not like have this like these gaps where I wasn’t paying attention to what the teacher was saying because I was busy writing down like some note that I’m not going to go like never going to go and look at. So that was one thing that I found helpful but I’d never

I’d never really tell people to do it because there’s a lot of people that would hear don’t take notes and they’d sit there and not listen and not take notes, which is, you know, the worst of both. So that was one thing that I, you know, I found helpful, but it’s not as simple as just not taking notes.

William Wadsworth (24:43)
think it’s an interesting consideration actually. We talked to Professor John Donlosky about the science of note making back in episode 164. And one of the conversations we had as part of that was sort of when’s the best time to take, you when should you be taking lots of notes? When should you be sort of sitting and listening and what are the sort of circumstances under each? So if that’s something, you know, if you’re listening to this and sort of prompted, I wonder whether I should be writing less notes or no notes.

Maybe have a follow-up with episode 164 as well and have a think about whether that’s gonna be the right move for you as well But that’s yeah, definitely definitely a really good consideration. So so thank you for that Brilliant. Okay. Well, look, thank you once again for coming on the show and sharing all your ideas and how you you’re looking forward to looking forward to heading off to University tomorrow. Tell us about that

Harry Gill (25:08)
Mm-mm.

Thank you.

I

am, a lot of people, like I know a lot of people going there and it’s out of state, so moving out of home, which I think would be just as exciting as starting university itself. you know, there’s a lot to look forward to, but you know, a lot to get done before then.

William Wadsworth (25:49)
me are you going to be keeping your Anki Street going or are you going to be getting your new Anki Street going?

Harry Gill (25:54)
I’m actually, I’m very looking forward to starting my Anki again. I’ve been missing it over summer. I was gonna keep it, but then I was like, I should probably get away from my laptop and, you know, do some other stuff while I’ve got the time.

William Wadsworth (26:07)
bit of a break is important too and I think you earned it. So well done again and thank you for coming on the show wishing you every success over the next few years with your degree. Thanks again.

Harry Gill (26:11)
Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

William Wadsworth (26:21)
And that’s a wrap for today folks. Thanks again to Harry and all best wishes for university. Remember if you are among our wonderful Patreon supporters who make everything on this show possible, you’ll find a great walkthrough on how to set up your Anki settings for best results. That’s as part of our tech vault, part of our supporter bonuses for our highly valued Patreon supporters. And you’ll also find in that similar walkthroughs.

for some of the other most popular learning platforms among the Exams Study Expert community. So Quizlet is there and we’ve got one for Brainscape as well. If you’re using any of these tools, it’s really worth taking the time to learn how to get the most out of them. So we’ve recorded a couple of walkthroughs there to help you do just that. So if you’d like to check that out along with a host of other great benefits for supporters, head to examstudyexpert.com forward slash Patreon. ⁓

A ⁓ huge thanks to our relatively small but very mighty band of Patreon supporters. Every one of you makes a big difference to helping keep the show on air, providing great content to help everybody in their studies and their exam taking. For now, thanks again for joining us today. I’ll look forward to seeing you again next week. Wishing you every success as always in your studies.