Follow SMH Student on FacebookHSC Study GuideClass of 95: Where are they now?
On Wednesday afternoon 17-year-old Myles Cherry sat alone in a dark cavernous hall in the US town of Wallingford, Connecticut.
Before him lay a HSC advanced mathematics paper, the very same one that his former classmates were scribbling away on in Newcastle, NSW, at the same time. 
Far from the rumble of the HSC exam room at his old school of St Francis Xavier College in Hamilton, an eerie quiet descended on Myles as the sole occupant of his exam room, 16,000 kilometres from home.
Myles' journey from Newcastle beach teen to United States HSC student began two months ago.
The two-metre tall basketballer was offered a scholarship to join the elite program at Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut this year.
In   August he made the jump across the Pacific with as much HSC knowledge as he could cram into his teen head.
"My dream has been to play college basketball since I was 13," he said. "Making the move over here gave me the best chance of getting the most exposure."
Now he's taking on two sets of curriculum, both US and Australian, during the most challenging time for any high-school student, while living overseas without his family, and trying to juggle it all with a relentless cycle of impressing US college scouts.
"It's been a very hectic six weeks," he said from his dorm room. "I've really just been studying hard, training hard, knuckling down and getting stuck into it."
Throughout his exams Myles is supervised by a slightly bewildered Dean of Students at Choate Rosemary Hall.
"She thinks it's absurd to have someone sit in a room for three hours, six different times over two weeks," said Myles.
In the US, exams typically don't go for much longer than an hour.
"She thinks it's ridiculous, but she also understands that you have got to do what you got to do."
While Myles misses the camaraderie and relief of completing exams with your classmates, he might find some companionship in the 300 other NSW students sitting the HSC overseas this year.
Among those simultaneously putting pen to paper are students in Baghdad, Tehran, and Buenos Aires, as the Board of Studies pushes the international reputation of the HSC.
The great challenge for the HSC's future is that it meets the demands of an increasingly global student base, said the President of the Board of Studies, Tom Alegounarias.
"Australia and Sydney in particular are international places. It has to be an international credential."
"It's very important that those universities, Harvard and Oxford, regard [the HSC], and we are pleased to say that they do."
Most of the students who sit the exams overseas do so at a British Council or Australian Embassy, a spokeswoman for the Board of Studies said.
While the board maintains that no student should be disadvantaged by the circumstances, Myles acknowledges that doing exams by yourself is daunting.
"It's not the same as having all these kids all freaking out around you kind of motivating you to do it."
One fellow 17-year-old who knows Myles' experience all too well is Harry Darwand, a football prodigy training in Barcelona.
He's been riding solo for 12 months after a 6.7 kilogram package of syllabuses containing everything from HSC English to Legal studies was delivered to his doorstep last   October.
"My life is: football training, study, football training, study. I could have gone to a local school and finished school in Catalan [the local Spanish dialect] but I wanted to do my last years in English because I could get the best marks possible to go on to university."
The expatriate student has learnt a thing or two about himself since taking on the HSC.
He's got a knack for languages, with Chinese, Spanish, and Catalan under his belt.
"If I don't play soccer next year I want to learn Russian," he said.
Fellow players at his local football club Marrinao Poblete were shocked when he told them he was finishing his Australian high school exams at the local British council.
"Everyone here is like 'you're from Australia? That's really far away! What are you doing here?'
"'I'm doing my HSC'," he said.
The HSC continues at home and abroad on Monday with Modern History, Maths Extension 1 and Entertainment Industry exams.