SATAC to make up to 11,000 undergrad offers in new December round that considers applicants’ full list of preferences

Some teens used to have no appetite for Christmas lunch because of anxiety over January uni offers. But SATAC has come up with a solution.

• Majority of SACE exams will be online by 2021
• How to get the most out of your Advertiser digital subscription

Up to 11,000 university hopefuls will receive their offers in an expanded pre-Christmas round, meaning most won’t have to stress through the whole festive season.

The first of the January offer rounds was traditionally the largest, before the SA Tertiary Admissions Centre introduced a December round last year that considered first preferences only, making 7500 offers. This year, applicants’ full list of preferences will be considered for the offers to be made on December 20.

About 8500 of the estimated 11,000 offers will be for school leavers, who will have received their SACE results just days earlier.

SATAC chief executive Stuart Mossman said the pre-Christmas round would cover the “vast majority” of courses, but exclude some “highly competitive ones” with tight quotas such as medical radiation science.

Mr Mossman said the aim was to lessen the anxiety applicants faced if forced to wait through the Christmas period.

Another reason was to ensure they received offers at the same time or earlier than ones from interstate universities.

“(We want) all our applicant pool considered as soon as possible,” he said.

SATAC has already made about 2500 early offers, largely to non school-leavers, and usually ends up making a total of around 25,000 for each new academic year.

So by Christmas, it is likely that more than half of the offers for 2020 will already have been issued.

MORE NEWS

Majority of SACE exams to be online by 2021

Building block: Year 7 move to high school at risk

Teen sex and terrible parenting: Adelaide Uni’s controversial show

Mr Mossman said usually about 80 per cent of applicants were successful with their first preference, and about 90 per cent received an offer for either their first or second preference.

He stressed that anyone who did not receive an offer before Christmas should not worry, as there were still several more rounds in January and beyond, with universities making multiple admission pathways available.

Mr Mossman was hopeful that next year, the results of International Baccalaureate Diploma students would be released earlier so that they could receive offers in the December round as well as school leavers who had done the SACE.