Some HSC students were reduced to tears while sitting this year’s mathematics exams.
“Someone I know is literally crying because it was too hard,” a student wrote on a Facebook forum about the Standard 2 paper. “Real sista, real,” came a reply.
Around 60,000 students – or seven in 10 – sat exams across Mathematics Standard 1 and 2, Advanced and Extension 2 in New South Wales on Wednesday morning. Mathematics Extension 1 students have to wait another week to sit their exam.
On social media, the papers were described as “brutal”, “stupid”, “so hard” and “absolute horror”.
“Standard 2 was worse than 2020,” one student wrote on TikTok to hundreds of likes.
A question about a person owning a large quantity of sheep on the exam drew particular ire, with another student questioning: “Why did bro have 12,600 sheep in the first place?” followed by crying emojis.
“TH[E] [Q]UESTION ABOUT SHEEPS BRO,” came a reply. “I SAT THERE TRYING TO UNDERSTAND.”
For many of us, high school exam anxiety only resurfaces in an unpleasant dream or the occasional flashback. But we are offering readers the chance to relive their youth with a sample of questions pulled from this year’s Standard papers 1 and 2.
In order to make it accessible online, we can’t provide the most difficult questions – only the multiple choice options. Rest assured, though, participants are still allowed to use a calculator, which were approved by the NSW Education Standards Authority for all exams. Just don’t plug the quiz into ChatGPT.