Everyone's experience with Extension 1 is different; some people find it hard, and others don't. The best thing you can do is give it a go and see how you like it. Year 11/12 maths is very different from year 10 maths and much more interesting, so it's definitely worth giving it a crack if you're considering it.

Throughout the year, the best thing you can do on the regular is your homework. It's worth doing all the exercises your teacher sets you. It's also a good idea to and make sure you really understand the content that was in the lesson, because it comes thicker and faster than in year 10, and this understanding will help you a mile in the long run. The exam questions won't always be repeats of textbook questions, so this understanding will help you really get the harder questions that unlock an E4. The other really important thing to do before exams is past papers; do as many of these as you possibly can. They will show you where your weaknesses are and prepare you for exams better than anything else. These are especially crucial to do from before trials all the way up to the HSC exam.

There's really no secret to doing well. It helps to really understand the content, and to do as many past papers as possible before exams. Past papers also help to reveal which areas you're weaker in; if you find you don't understand a question it's worth going back to the related chapter in the textbook and working through similar questions until you can do them with your eyes closed. This method is really the key to success, it just takes a lot of practise and hard work.

For Maths Extension 1 at Project, we teach all the course content in the first three terms of year 12. The last term (Term 3 for other years) is spent doing the LEAP program. The syllabus experts at Project create these LEAP exams to closely mirror, and predict, what the HSC and trial exams will look like. Everything down to the font on the front page looks exactly the same. Each student sits a LEAP exam every week under exam conditions, then an exam review is held after the exam to help the students see their mistakes, and understand content they might have forgotten.  It's the best training there is for the HSC, as each student is basically doing a HSC exam every week and improving on their errors. Once you've done the HSC 12 times, you'll feel much more prepared when the real final exam date rolls around the corner.