Exam Time Arrives: Dull The Pain With These HSC "Fun" Facts

The HSC is here. Brace yourselves.

Okay, I'm sure you don't need us telling you this, but: the first HSC exams begin today in NSW.

Soon, the rest of the country will follow.

The majority of year 12 exams will begin in earnest the week of October 17 for those in Queensland and South Australia, October 24 for Victorians, November 1 in Western Australia and November 7 in Tasmania. For folks in the Australian Capital Territory, they're already done and dusted with their exams!

We realise you're probably freaking out a bit, but don't worry - we're here to help. Well, kind of.

We've compiled a bunch of "fun" facts for your procrastination pleasure. (You can thank us later.)

We scoured the Board of Studies Teaching and Educational Standards NSW website for the most elusive and intriguing stats.

A whopping 77,163 students are sitting HSC exams this year.

That means if each of those students has just one regular coffee a day, then in total, that would come to 21,605 litres of coffee - per day.

There will be a total of 118 written examinations.

Yikes!

Exam paper content is reviewed six times before they're printed. All 700,000 copies of them.

The three subjects with the highest number of students enrolled are: English (standard), Mathematics General 2 and English Advanced.

Yep, no surprises there really.

The three subjects with the lowest number of students enrolled are: Arabic Beginners, Dutch Continuers and Maltese Continuers.

If you're one of the very few people who study these languages, feel extra special knowing that there's only a small handful of you. Much easier to top the state!

There's roughly 350 students sitting their HSC exams overseas.

Imagine someone sippin' mocktails while laying under a palm tree just casually doing exams that an entire 12 years of schooling have accumulated to.

5,500 markers will be joining forces to look over all the exams this year.

The unsung heroes, if you will.

Your English exams will be marked by at least 11 different people.

As they say, English papers are highly subjective.

Results will come out December 15th via email, online and by SMS.

Thanks to the glory of technology and how much we're tethered to our phones, there's no way you can really escape your results. Like, even if you tried.

There will be more students named Joshua and Emily taking the exams than anyone else.

Apparently they are very popular names! I mean, who doesn't know at least one person by those names?

If you have any kind of questions that need answering, there is a load of information over at the Board of Studies website.

But seriously, don't stress. You've got this!

Photo: Fox