Year 12 students’ nervous wait ends as ATAR scores revealed

Some Queensland schools and Year 12 students are still waiting to access ATAR results, which were supposed to be available to be viewed earlier this morning.

Some Queensland schools and Year 12 students were left in the dark about ATAR results on Friday morning, experiencing significant delays accessing their data.

Staff and students were supposed to be able to see results from 8am, but many schools hit delays trying to download their data and students logged on to find material missing.

There are unconfirmed reports the ATAR portal crashed for a period on Friday morning,

but not all schools were affected.

SEE HOW QUEENSLAND SCHOOLS PERFORMED IN ATAR HERE

Results began to flow into The Courier-Mail during the late-morning as the ATAR portal issues eased.

“When our website receives high traffic on ATAR release day, our Traffic Management Strategy kicks in and redirects all traffic to a page where students are prioritised and can access their portal to log in,” A QTAC spokeswoman said in response.

“We have not received any notifications on outages preventing log in for students accessing their results today.”

St Margaret's Anglican Girls School Year 12 student Faith Phillips has done all she can in her studies, now the results are in. Photo: Nigel Hallett

The Courier-Mail can reveal 33 Queensland students achieved the highest possible ATAR this year – 99.95. In total, 27,245 students received an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank.

Compared to 2021, 32 students got a 99.95 and about 27,000 students received an ATAR.

Faith Phillips, one of St Margaret’s Anglican College’s top performers this year, is “very nervous, but excited” to get her results. She needs a near-perfect ATAR for a medicine degree.

“I’ve always loved science, especially human biology,” Faith said.

She set her alarm clock for 7.30am, far earlier than the 11am sleep in she’s enjoyed since sitting external exams five weeks ago.

“I’m hoping the hard work pays off,” she said on Thursday.

“I was studying for about three hours after school every day and at least six hours on weekends.

“A lot of my friends are pretty nervous, so I don’t know how much sleep I will have.”

Former Brisbane Girls Grammar School graduate Samantha Atherton who secured a 99.95 ATAR last year stressed that it was not the be all, end all.

She hopes to be a doctor and is doing Health Sciences at Australian National University.

“I have plenty of friends who were concerned with their ATAR initially, but have had amazing experiences this year,” she said.

“A lot of people also don’t realise there are so many opportunities to change your degree later on – many of my friends transferred to a different degree in their first semester.”

Brisbane State High School graduate Aditya Neurgaonkar and Brisbane Girls Grammar School graduate Samantha Atherton both received ATARs of 99.95 in 2021. Photo: Supplied.

Brisbane State High School’s Aditya Neurgaonkar got the same ATAR and chose Engineering at University of Queensland and has his eye on an aerospace career.

“It’s pretty unique (Year 12 graduation) and something that will never come again,” he said.

“There are alternate pathways if you don’t get the ATAR you were hoping for.”