219. Scoring Top 1% In The State: "Student Story" Case Study with a 300 Day Anki Streak

Unlock the secrets behind how a top student in Australia crushed his finals and secured a top 1% score in his state — and learn exactly how you can apply his disciplined strategies to your own exams. Harry's journey proves that success isn’t just about talent; it's about precision, routine, and metacognitive awareness.

We break down:
- The role of consistent daily habits in high-stakes exams
- How to use spaced retrieval practice effectively
- How to track exam practice and "vibe"

Tune in to see how disciplined consistency, metacognitive awareness, and smart practice can transform your results too.

Transcript

Welcome And Case Study Setup

William Wadsworth 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Exam Study Expert 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 actually 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, prioritizing his time, where it was most beneficial to make best use of study time each week. 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, uh, listen out for when Harry talks about his 300-day anchor streak, which I actually really liked, and as well as, of course, the use of effective-based 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 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 215, if you missed that one. Well worth a listen if you if you haven't caught that yet. So lots to take away from today's episode. Uh Harry's a really nice guy. I think you're going to really enjoy hearing from him. Uh let's meet him and dive right in.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Yeah, so I'm 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 travelling to Asia with my girlfriend, and now um I'm just getting ready to head off to university for next year. What are you going off to study? Uh I'm studying a course which is uh Bachelor of Finance, Stats and Economics down at uh ANU in Camp.

William Wadsworth 2:36

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

Motivation And Setting A 99 ATAR Goal

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Yeah, so for for like the final, my final rank was 99.05, which was my ATAR. So that was my percent out of the state. Um, and then so the subjects I was studying was English, advanced maths, extension one and two, economics and physics. And so I got advanced six in all of them, which was a mark above 90. And yeah, that was that was my high school, so it 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 uh 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 3:59

Amazing, amazing. So I'm I'm always curious about what what kind of drives drives people. I mean, you you know you you're kind of aiming effectively to kind of be in that top one percent um of of people taking taking the exams. It's it's an amazing, amazing goal, and and and congratulations for achieving it. That's a fantastic result. Thank you. Yeah, what what tell us about your your kind of motivations and and drives behind that.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Well, at the at like start of year 11, everyone starts talking about uni and what courses you want to get into, which it in Australia is pretty much like the main pathway into uni is through your ATA. 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 like started kind of you know applying myself at school. Before that, I was just cruising there for the for the fun. Year 11 I started like pretty much applying myself and I was like, oh, kind of enjoy. I enjoyed the work towards the exams and doing wells. Then got into year 12, I was like, may as well go through a 99, you know, 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 was um 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 5:37

Sense of like let's just give it a crack and and see see how far we could see far how far we can push this, right? Like how good how good can we can we get it? Like let's let's let's give it our best shot and and see where it takes us.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

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

Building Daily Habits With Anki

William Wadsworth 6:08

Amazing. Um so you said uh so through year 11 you were starting to uh so your kind of penultimate year. So five through the kind of final couple of years, you were you were starting to get um a lot more kind of focused and and and 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 uh weeks running up to the exam and your kind of final exam prep process in a minute, but but in terms of kind of those final couple of years and and kind of day-to-day, week to week, um what were some of the kind of things you were doing differently, do you think, to help give you a chance at that uh at that high goal? What some of those kind of Yeah, so tripping pieces, what did that look like in practice?

SPEAKER_01 6:50

In in year 12 is when I when I started, like I found out about Angi. So I downloaded Angy, I was like, let's see, see what this is about. And then so I started using, I started, you know, set it up. I like like I was reading about it, I was like, oh, this sounds quite interesting, like quite a like a proper, proper tool that like, you know, because obviously gets results. And so I set that up, and then um I just decided I was gonna try and do my ankey every single day for year 12. 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 ankey 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 would do a little bit of study every single day.

William Wadsworth 8:04

So that's that's really cool. Um the 300 streak, were the days in there that you were kind of sort of almost not gonna get the day, and then you were like, oh no, but I can't break the streak, I've got to make the day happen, and you made it happen.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

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

William Wadsworth 8:38

That's really cool. And and and how long were you spending each day? So when you say you do your rank each day, we took like five minutes, an hour, or what kind of amount of time was that?

SPEAKER_01 8:47

So during during school, I would like my first thing I'd do if I had learned new content, I was 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 learnt 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, because you don't learn a boatload 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 um how close to the exam I was. The closer to the exams I'd get, I would like I'd end up having more content pushed closer together that I could 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 9:52

20, 30 minutes multiplied by 300 days is is like 150 hours of practice at least. Yeah. That's that's pretty good. And and so you were you were kind of making your cards uh kind of on the new content as you were learning it, you know, going through that through the school year. Were you doing that across kind of all your subjects? Was it so was it with a certain subject you were doing that for in particular? Yeah, was it just to prevent it?

SPEAKER_01 10:17

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

Subject-Specific Use Of Anki

William Wadsworth 10:51

Any user tips for Anki while we're talking Anki? So little hints, tips for for sort of anyone starting out on their Anki journey, any any little bits of best practice you picked up along the way?

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Well, the most important thing is that you stick to it. Um as long as you stick to it, it'll 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 time frame of year 12. But 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 11:48

Yeah, that's good. That's good. So go into go into your settings and find what's uh what what what's gonna work best fit for you and your and your needs, definitely. Um good. Okay. So let's talk about um when we get a little bit closer to exam season then. So when we're in that kind of a couple of months, few weeks leading up to to the final exams, typically things sort of shift a little bit. Um what in hindsight were the things you did to prepare that helped you uh as far as you believe. Uh well, you know, what do you think led to kind of your final success in terms of how you prepared in those final few weeks?

Trial-To-HSC Strategy Shift

SPEAKER_01 12:24

Yeah, so in your in year 12, we have our trial exams, which are the exact same format as the HSE. So you'll have your proper full-length three-hour exams for all your subjects. So the gap between that and the HSC is quite a long time. So I thought that's like the 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 with the top of 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 I found it helpful that I like 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 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 uh 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 HSE, 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 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 I'd look at a question and I wouldn't write a full essay, I'd write an intro, topic sentences for 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 15:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um I liked one of the things I particularly liked in there was kind of identifying, okay, I'm not quite where I want to be with this particular skill yet. And and really kind of grasping the nettle by the by the, but you know, grasping the nettle and going, right, okay, right, what can I do about this? Let's let's fix this. Rather than just sort of settling for, oh, okay, I'm not so good at this, and I'm just gonna just gonna kind of live with it sort of thing, you know, really figuring out, okay, what do I need to do uh to get where I want to be? I I really like that that approach. That's that's great. Growth mindset in action. Brilliant. Um when it comes to uh because I I I know you're you're obviously doing a lot of kind of past paper practice across not just English, your your other subjects as well. Um how did you organize, you know, what was your sort of system for organizing all that sort of past paper practice?

Fixing English: Essays And Adaptation

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Yeah, so for my like the math and physics and echo, I'd be doing past papers for all of them. And so I'd have a a big table for each, for like math extension one, two, physics, etc. And I'd have the name of the paper I'd done. So whether or not it was a past HSC or a different schools 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 a hundred, whatever. Um, the time that it took me to finish it. And then I'd write down notes about each each individual exam that I'd sat, uh, 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 are like holding me back to 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 not 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'd 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 are actually going back and doing the topics that you don't like and that you find hard. And also specifically the question types that you don't like and that you find difficult.

Past Papers, Tracking, And The Vibe Column

William Wadsworth 18:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I really love all that. I mean, the the number of people there'll be a bunch of people listening to that and they go, well, that's all sounds very sort of uh you know, it 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 is quite unusual in practice. So, I mean, it it sounds like when you sort of put it all there, like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a tracker for it all. Well, yeah, but no one's actually doing that. Or, you know, very few people are. If you are already, then brilliant, you're doing a great job, keep going. Um, if you're not, then that's that I think that's seriously that's that's great advice. I think that's such such good advice. I uh you know, I liked how um you know, we often talk about on the podcast, you know, when it comes to maths questions, uh, you know, we want to redo those tricky questions again, have a way to record them. I really liked how you described that system. Very clear, very, 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 kind of learned from those mistakes, learn from those, you know, so something like that. And the exam comes up, you know what you're doing. Um 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 the kind of time it took, you know, that's that's nice. Um, and that and that kind of notes column for am I right in thinking that that you you you headed that column that that was that was your vibe column? You call it your vibe column, had a column on vibe.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

I actually I actually, yeah, I I did have a I did have a vibe column, which was not only like the vibe, like there's 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 days that I was coming back to and spending like more than the allocated time to properly go through it. So I I did have my there's that, there's 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, selected school pass paper, or was this just uh, you know, one of the easier years of HSC, you know, like a COVID year HSC, which uh like on average a little bit easier. And those those that as well, yeah.

William Wadsworth 20:29

Yeah, give it a bit of context, give it a bit of context. Um, yeah, all of that, and then the kind of the the the you describing like topics you found easy, hard, you know, the things, specific lessons learned. That's that's really classic and and really nice use of kind of that the we've spoken about metacognition on the show recently, you know, that that kind of thinking about thinking, understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, you know, that's that's a really effectively really nice kind of metacognitive um exercise. That's that's a really nice job on that. That's that sounds great. Fantastic. So 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, uh, that you think helped you uh pick up as many marks as as possible on the day?

SPEAKER_01 21:14

I think, well, a lot of people they talk about how they'll do their exams in like out of order, like they'll for I don't 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 the easiest section first or the hardest section first. I 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 would talk about before the exam, like or after, like, oh, 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 for 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 like aware of how long you're spending on questions and being willing to skip questions that are taking too long, then what they should be, is is really important. Just having like, you know, in the back of your mind that it is a timed exam. They're all timed, you know. I think I think that's quite important.

Redoing Tricky Questions And Metacognition

William Wadsworth 22:46

Fantastic. Well, um, Harry, top one percent in your state off to uh university next. Well, off to university tomorrow. I think so, I believe. Tomorrow, yeah. Um so uh you know, many congratulations again. 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 figured it out when you found it really worked for you.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

There's one the the stuff that I don't like when my friends would ask me, like, oh 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 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. And 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 aim kit, 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 gonna go like never gonna 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 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 that was one one thing that I you know I I found helpful, but it's it's not as simple as just not taking notes.

William Wadsworth 24:45

I think it's an interesting consideration actually. Um we we we talked to um Professor John Dunloske about the science of note making back in episode 164. Uh and one of the conversations we had as part of that was sort of when's the best time to take, you know, when should you be taking lots of notes? When should you be sort of sitting and listening? Um what are the sort of circumstances under each? So uh if that's something uh you know, if you were listening to this and sort of prompted, oh I wonder whether I should be writing less notes or or no notes, uh maybe have a follow-up with episode 164 as well and have a think about whether that's uh going to be the right move for you as well. Um but that's uh yeah, definitely a really good consideration. So thank you for that. Brilliant. Okay. Well, look, thank you once again for coming on the show and sharing all your ideas. Um how are you uh are you looking forward to uh looking forward to heading off to university tomorrow? Tell tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

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

William Wadsworth 25:51

Tell me, are you gonna be keeping your Anke Street going or are you gonna be getting your new Anke Street going?

SPEAKER_01 25:56

I I I I'm actually I'm very looking forward to starting my Anke again. I've been missing it over summer. I was gonna 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.

In-Exam Strategy And Time Management

William Wadsworth 26:10

A bit of a break's important too, and I and I think you earned it. So so well done again. And uh thank you for coming on the show, wishing you every success over the next few years uh with your degree. Thanks again.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

Thank you. Thank you.

William Wadsworth 26:23

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. Uh, that's as part of our tech vault, part of our supporter bonuses for our highly valued Patreon supporters. Um you'll also find in that similar walkthroughs uh for some of the other most popular learning platforms among the exams of the expert community. Uh so Quizlet is there, uh, 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. Uh so we've recorded a couple of uh walkthroughs there to help you do just that. So if you'd like to check uh that out, along with a host of other great benefits for supporters, head to examstudy expert.com forward slash Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N. A huge thanks to our relatively small but very mighty band of Patreon supporters. Every one of you makes a big difference to help and keep the show on air. Um 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. Uh, wishing you every success as always in your studies.

SPEAKER_00 27:47

Well, that was good, wasn't it? I found myself taking notes. If you need a reminder of anything from today, head to the website for a write-up of this episode as well as lots more top-notch advice and resources. That's uh examstudyexpert.com. See you next time.