Student ecstatic with hard to come by OP1

A Coast school has said goodbye to the OP system in style with two students achieving the top mark.

ACADEMIC SUCCESS: Mayor Mark Jamieson presenting Joshua Cox with the Sunshine Coast Christian College Dux award. Picture: Contributed

SUNCOAST Christian College has said goodbye to the OP system in style with two students achieving the top mark.

Both Joshua Cox and Grace Eegdeman achieved the desirable rank of an OP1 after a year of hard work and dedication to their studies.

Joshua said his academic success came with sacrifices.

“I really had to sacrifice my sport, I used to do a lot of rep basketball, but I had to cut back on that,” he said.

“As well as that, it was impossible for me to have a job. All my friends were making fun of me for being the guy that has his parents pay for everything but while you’re trying to achieve as high as you can it is very hard to do that and have a part-time job.”

Councillor Peter Cox’s son was the school dux and couldn’t wait for his results, checking the site before being surprised with his OP success two hours before the release time.

“I was very ecstatic when I saw that,” he said.

“I was pretty confident that I would get a one, but I wasn’t expecting it to come up at that time — so it was a bit of mixed emotions, bit of excitement, a bit of surprise, the works,” he said.

Joshua is hoping to study a double degree of Bachelor of Mathematics and a Bachelor of Engineering at the University of Queensland next year.

Needing an OP4 to be accepted, he went above and beyond.

“I was kind of guaranteed to be in the course no matter what because I was fairly confident I would be a two or higher so I would have met the threshold,” he said.

“But the reason why I pushed and worked quite hard for the OP1 was because UQ has a scholarship on offer and I really want to get a decent academic scholarship because it will make living down there easier.”

Out of the Suncoast Christian College OP students, 50 per cent received an OP 1-10 and 88.5 per cent achieved an OP 1-15.

Director of students Lyndall Waters said the school was “quietly hopeful for the OP1s but with the system coming to the end we weren’t sure how it would go” as many students chose different pathways.

“I think we went out with a bang. We’ve had strong results in the last few years but to finish with two OP1s when we had less than 30 kids doing the OP was really good,” she said.

“We were really pleased with our results … I had a bit of a yell when I saw the two OP1s sitting there.

“(When) my husband told me I woke up the whole neighbourhood.”

Joshua said he was not sure what career he will pursue but it will be either economics or engineering.

He will know whether he has been accepted into his degree of choice by February 20.