Revealed: Mackay’s ATAR high achievers
‘I yelled out pretty loud and woke my brother up from his sleep’.
Mackay
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It was a year like no other for Mackay's graduating class of 2020.
As the first cohort to experience the new end-of-school ranking system, this resilient group also navigated their way through their toughest year with a pandemic thrown in the mix.
But Mackay Year 12s Lachlan Wilson and Daniel Walton took the added stress in their stride.
Mr Wilson, 18, was awarded a near perfect ATAR score of 99.2 - equivalent to an OP 1 in the old system.
The former Whitsunday Anglican School student plans to attend the University of Queensland next year to start a Masters of Engineering.
Mr Wilson said while it was an interesting year, he felt fully supported by his teachers.
"When the pandemic hit in Term 2, all my extra curricular activities were cancelled, so I had more spare time," he said.
"It was still stressful as hell.
"I'm not sure how other schools handled it but my school got on top of it right away."
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Mr Walton, 18, achieved an ATAR score of 93.35 - equivalent to an OP 4.
The former Mackay Northern Beaches State High student - who will study secondary education at CQUniversity next year - was pleasantly surprised by his result.
"It was a lot higher than I expected," Mr Walton said.
"I was pretty excited when I found out.
"I yelled out pretty loud and woke my brother up from his sleep."
Students can decide whether to allow their school access to their ATAR, and with 82 per cent of pupils opting for this, a snapshot of results on Saturday showed stellar success.
Whitsunday Anglican School - the only local school to have their results published as at late Sunday - had 41.2 per cent of its students with 90 or above.
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