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Amelie Zappulla scored a 99.80 ATAR and sat in the 89th percentile of the UCAT. In this instalment of Contour's High Achievers series, she shares the study habits, mindset shifts, and small daily decisions that got her there.
People love to ask Year 12s what their "secret" was. Honestly, there isn't one. There's a stack of small decisions you make every day for a year, and the students who do well are usually the ones who got most of those decisions roughly right. Here's what worked for me, what didn't, and the stuff I'd tell my Year 11 self if I could go back.
Choose subjects you can actually commit to
I did Methods, Specialist Maths, English, Chemistry, Physics, and I knocked Biology over in Year 11. That's a heavy load, and it only worked because I went in knowing I'd have to give other things up. Be honest with yourself about that trade-off before you pick your subjects, not after.
Dropping extracurriculars (and how I coped)
I'd been dancing since I was four. I stopped at 16 because Year 12 was coming. That was massive for me, dance had been a huge part of who I was. In hindsight, I needed to let it go to get the result I wanted, but I also needed an outlet.
What helped was doing it recreationally. A random YouTube dance workout, learning a quick TikTok dance in my room, just enough to scratch the itch without it becoming a commitment. If you're giving something up for Year 12, find the lowest-stakes version of it you can do in 20 minutes. That tiny bit of it keeps you sane.
Trust your gut on what's right for you
Big decisions in Year 12, dropping things, picking universities, choosing study methods, can feel paralysing. My rule was simple: notice what comes to mind first. If your gut says "this is right," it probably is. If it says "I don't want to keep doing this," that's a sign too. Intuition isn't a substitute for thinking, but it's a really good starting point.
Parties in Year 12
In Year 10 and 11 I went out a lot. In Year 12, I stopped entirely. The one regret I have is missing a few friends' 18ths, those are once-in-a-lifetime moments and I wish I'd gone. But honestly? Three parties across the whole year wouldn't have changed my ATAR. If I could redo it, I'd protect the milestone events and cut everything else.
When your scores aren't what you wanted
After I got my UCAT result, I was a mess. I'd hit 89th percentile, which sounds fine on paper, but it wasn't what I'd been aiming for, and I started spiralling about whether I could still get into med. I was moody, I had some conflict at home, and a lot of it was me internalising the score.
What pulled me out of it was something my parents said: you've already got the score. You can't change it. So what can you actually do now to move forward? For me, that meant focusing on my ATAR, which I still had control over. Don't force yourself to study while you're processing it, give yourself a day or two. Take a bath, go for a long walk. Then get back to the things you can still influence.
A note for parents
If your kid is resting, please don't say "shouldn't you be studying right now?" I cannot tell you how much that one sentence can crush a student in Year 12. We already feel guilty taking breaks. Being guilt-tripped during the one moment we'd given ourselves permission to stop made me feel awful, and made the next study session worse, not better. Trust that we know we have to study. The break is part of the work.
Study tips that worked (and didn't)
Mind maps didn't work for me. I tried them in Year 11 and they never stuck. What actually worked was volume of practice questions, past exams, textbook questions, anything Contour gave me. Practice is what locked the content in.
My environment was specific: cold room (around 18 or 19 degrees), a blanket on my lap, the rest of the room dark with one light shining directly on my notes or laptop. Light in one spot pulls your focus to that spot.
No music. I worried I'd get dependent on it and then struggle in silent exam conditions. So I trained myself to study in silence.
Sleep was non-negotiable. Eight hours a night, every night. No all-nighters, ever. Sleep is when your brain consolidates what you learned, skip it and you're undoing your own work.
On ChatGPT: I used it occasionally for English (helping me find quotes from Oedipus, that kind of thing). Use it as a tool. Do not memorise paragraphs from it, teachers can always tell.
Study apps like Wipeout got toxic fast. I'd see friends doing 13-hour days and feel like 10 wasn't enough. I deleted it and immediately felt better.
Studying on FaceTime with friends worked well, silent company, but available if you need to ask something. Worth trying.
My schedule wasn't really a schedule
I organised by tasks, not by time. "Finish one practice SAC for Spanish" was a task. Once it was done, I got a break, no matter how long it took. Breaks were ten-minute timers, walk around, grab a snack, no phone. I deleted TikTok partway through the year because it was wrecking my attention span.
If you start one thing today
Plan ahead, and get it out of your head onto paper or Notion. Stop carrying your to-do list in your brain. And get your sleep right. Everything else builds on those two things.