HUNTER students who chose Business Studies as a stepping stone to future careers have praised the Higher School Certificate exam as straight-forward and in line with their expectations.
St Francis Xavier's College Hamilton students Isobel Lonergan, 18, and Lawson Barr, 17, were among 18,313 in NSW who sat the paper on Tuesday.
They said being well prepared and knowing the syllabus paid off.
"I did not think it was that bad, I think it was what you would expect, kind of like trials - different questions obviously, but still in the same ballpark," she said.
"There were no surprises really, which was good."
Lawson said it was a little more difficult than the trials.
"The extended response was pretty narrow, but still sort of easy," he said.
"Our teacher made it easy, Mr Dalton, he was energetic and always used to talk about hypothetical businesses and case studies and his idea for Go Bananas, a business he wants to open up that's everything to do with bananas."
Isobel said she tended to overthink multiple choice questions in the first section, "but I didn't find it too bad".
Lawson said this section was harder than the trials.
The second section comprised short answer questions.
"I feel like I can pull in more knowledge than just ticking A, B or C, I actually didn't mind them, I thought they were okay," Isobel said.
Lawson said one question asked about a business wanting to implement a new product.
"I wasn't sure if you had to talk about an actual real life business or just refer to implementing a new product hypothetically, so I did a bit of both."
The third section gave students a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis for a company called Bee Sticky.
It asked them to write a business report addressing brand and product strategies, channel choice and global financial strategies.
"They gave you heaps of stimulus, usually there's not much you can go off but they had heaps of stuff to talk about," Lawson said.
"Because of the amount of the stimulus they gave us it wasn't that hard to find information, it was more just applying what you knew to the business," Isobel said.
They opted in the fourth section to write their extended responses about how operations processes help to maintain a competitive advantage, instead of human resources.
Lawson said it was "straight-forward" and he used McDonald's, Brambles and Magnetite Mines as case studies, while Isobel used Patagonia, Apple and Nike.
"Operations we've known for so much longer, we've been tested on it in other exams because it's the first topic we did so it's more familiar," she said.
Isobel wants to study commerce and media at the University of NSW. Lawson has accepted an early offer to study finance and business analytics at Macquarie University.
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