St Paul’s Catholic College Booragul students Donovan Bilsborough, Madi Forshaw, Lochie Kneis and Tom Curran were among the 18,041 students across the state who sat the exam on Friday.

“It was really good and exactly what I expected,” said Donovan, 18.

“Going through it at first was a bit nerve racking, but once I properly looked at the questions it was pretty easy.

“There was an equal distribution of the core topics.”

As for the heat? “We had big tables, lots of room, air conditioning and cold water, so we couldn't feel a thing.”

Madi, 17, said she was expecting “surprises or trick questions I didn’t know how to answer”.

“But it was mostly fairly simple – we were well prepared.” 

Tom, 18, described the exam as “fair – it was just like the past papers we’ve done and there was nothing out of the ordinary”, while Lochie, 17, said he wrote seven and five pages for the last two extended responses and still had ten minutes left over.

Tom and Madi said the multiple choice section included a few difficult questions.

Tom felt it was the hardest part of the paper, while Donovan said it was a “good way to start the exam and got you into the right mindset – there were hints that refreshed your memory”.

Lochie said he used the reading time to choose his answers so he had extra time for the more complex sections.

Madi said the first short answer question about transforming processes “caught me off guard” but “the rest of the paper jogged my memory and I went back to it”.

“Most had a broad range of answers you could give, they didn’t ask for specifics.”

Donovan said the short answer questions allowed students to “write about what you knew”.

Lochie felt they were “pretty straight forward” and “about key business functions and adapting them to hypothetical case studies”.

All said the third section, which required them to write a business report about the operation of a fast food restaurant, was their favourite.

“It told you exactly what you needed to write about,” Donovan said. 

For the last extended response question, Tom and Lochie chose to answer how globalisation impacts the interaction between prices and quality, while Donovan and Madi chose to discuss global market influences on financial management.

Business Studies was Tom’s last exam and he drove afterwards to Treachery Camp at Seal Rocks.

Madi, Lochie and Donovan will sit Studies of Religion I on Tuesday and Donovan also has Economics on Wednesday.