Mathematics Advanced trial exams by topic

The generator's Advanced structure follows the shape of the HSC examination. It is a 100-mark paper in two sections. Section I is multiple choice: Questions 1 to 10, each worth one mark, answered on a multiple-choice answer sheet. Section II is short answer and extended response: Questions 11 to 32, worth 90 marks, with the standing instruction to show relevant mathematical reasoning and/or calculations.

The cover page carries the general instructions a student expects to see: reading time, working time, the usual line on which calculators may be used, the total marks, and a per-section summary that repeats each section's marks, the questions to attempt and the time to allow. Section headers are laid out the way the official papers set them, each written question starts on a fresh page with ruled working space scaled to its marks, and a Worked Solutions section follows the questions, so the marking copy and the student copy come from one file.

How difficulty is placed on the paper

Difficulty on an Andrew paper is positional, not random. As shipped, Section I climbs from the preset's starting level to the hardest multiple-choice item at the end, and that last item is always a 10 on the course's own scale. The written section is divided into zones: an entry zone of accessible questions straight after the multiple choice, so nobody meets the hardest question first; a core zone; a challenge zone in which nothing sits below difficulty 6; and a finale whose final question is the hardest thing on the paper. A 10 may appear at most once in the core zone; the challenge zone and the finale carry no such cap.

The scale is relative to Mathematics Advanced itself. A 10 means as hard as the hardest question an HSC paper for this course has carried, never a question borrowed from Extension 1. Higher difficulty means deeper reasoning within the Advanced syllabus: more chained steps, less scaffolding, interpretation over computation.

The 2017 edition of the Stage 6 syllabus, taught since 2019 and the version examined in the HSC today, organises Mathematics Advanced into six areas of study: Functions, Trigonometric Functions, Calculus, Exponential and Logarithmic Functions, Statistical Analysis and Financial Mathematics. Andrew tags every question in the bank to a syllabus dot point, and the topic picker is organised by area of study, then subtopic and syllabus dot point; the table below lists the NESA topic codes those areas correspond to in Andrew's syllabus registry, so a paper can be scoped to a whole area or to a single subtopic.

1. Choose the course and a difficulty preset. There are four: Standard HSC, calibrated to typical HSC exam difficulty; Above Average, a challenging public school trial level; Selective School, a selective school trial level; and Elite Selective, a top selective school level. The preset sets where Section I starts, by default at difficulty 1 on Standard HSC, 2 on Above Average, 3 on Selective School and 5 on Elite Selective, and changes the style guidance the question writer is given; the written zones keep the same difficulty targets under every preset.
2. Pick the topics. A full trial samples across all six areas of study. A topic test narrows the paper to one area, such as Calculus, or to a chosen set of dot points. Section I samples across the chosen topics, and each written question primarily tests one topic while it may integrate others, which is how the real paper reads.
3. Set the marks. The generator plans a mark distribution that sums exactly to each section's total, so the cover and the body of the paper always agree. A shorter task keeps the same two-section anatomy at fewer marks.
4. Review and export. Every paper renders with KaTeX on screen and compiles to a print-ready PDF with pdflatex, or downloads as a .tex file. Worked solutions are checked by a computer algebra system where available and carry the Verified · CAS label in the bank. Teachers remain responsible for reviewing AI-generated content before using it in a formal assessment; the paper is a draft until a teacher has read it.

How solutions are verified explains the CAS, Lean 4 and teacher-review labels, and what each one does and does not guarantee.

Andrew HSC covers all four Stage 6 mathematics courses from the same bank and the same generator. The companion pages describe the paper structure and syllabus topics for Mathematics Extension 1, Mathematics Extension 2 and Mathematics Standard 2. Teachers preparing for the 2024 syllabus, first examined in the HSC in 2027, should read what changes and when Andrew migrates.