More than 10,000 school leavers receive offers in early December round

With 10,000 Queenslanders having received a university place in the first round of offers, analysis has revealed the Top 20 most popular courses. SEE THE FULL LIST

NEARLY 20 per cent more female school leavers were accepted into IT courses at university this year compared with last year, as more than 10,600 Queenslanders received tertiary offers yesterday.

School leavers gained entry into more than 1500 different university courses yesterday, with a third already accepting their tertiary offers.

The most offers were made to students who had placed a Bachelor of Business at Queensland University of Technology as their first preference, with 193 offers made.

QTAC chief executive John Griffiths said the number of offers and their respective popularity was consistent with the December round in previous years.

SCROLL DOWN TO SEE THE TOP 20 MOST POPULAR COURSES DURING THE FIRST ROUND

Jessica Gracey was the first person in Queensland to accept her university offer. Picture: AAP image, John Gass

There was an 8.3 per cent increase in offers for IT courses overall this year and there was a staggering 19.7 per cent hike in the number of female school leavers offered courses in IT since 2018.

Dr Griffiths said while analysis of course trends would have to wait until the main offer round, the increasing popularity of IT courses was potentially because they are seen to lead to the “jobs of the future”.

The latest tally showed 3550 Queensland Year 12 students had accepted their offer from QTAC to study in 2020.

However, it took just one minute and 21 seconds for school leaver Jessica Gracey to accept her dream course, the first student to click yes.

She said she was very excited to receive an offer to study a Bachelor of Biomedical Science at QUT yesterday morning but being the first to accept was not on purpose.

“My end goal is to be a pediatric surgeon, so biomedicine is a great way for me to get into a medicine degree,” she said.

“I really like helping people, I think medicine is really cool and I love working with kids.

“I just logged on as soon as I woke up, because I remembered late last night offers came out today and it was the first thing I checked this morning.”

But QTAC’s chief executive stressed that OPs are just one way to gain entry to university.

And he said students who did not receive an offer should not fret that they wouldn’t be accepted into university, with the major offer round still to come in mid-January, and subsequent offer rounds up to early February.

With more than 6000 offers yet to be actioned, Queenslanders have until 4pm on December 30 until the offers lapse.