2016 University offers: Mary beats the masses into uni offers

WHILE 46,000 students across the state bite their nails tonight anxiously awaiting university offers, Earlwood teenager Mary Jamhour is putting her feet up...she’s already achieved her dream.

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WHILE 46,000 students across the state bite their nails tonight anxiously awaiting university offers, Earlwood teenager Mary Jamhour is putting her feet up.

The 17-year-old, who achieved an ATAR of 89.9, has already accepted an early offer to study criminology and law at the University of Western Sydney.

“I want to work for the police as a crime analyst — so when I got the early offer I was absolutely stoked and I locked it in,” Mary said.

She’s one of a growing number of HSC students in NSW who have taken up early offers to study, figures released last night by the University Admissions Centre (UAC) show.

Students will know at 6pm tonight if they made their first course, with formal emails being sent tomorrow morning.

Mary Jamhour with proud parents Helen and Elias. Picture: Toby Zerna

Universities tonight will make 44,344 main round offers to school-leavers — a decrease of 2,519 offers on the previous year.

“In the last few years many institutions have increased the number of offers they make in the early rounds, which of course means there are less made in the main round,” UAC spokeswoman Kim Paino said.

“Applicants have from 6 o’clock tonight until midnight next Wednesday 27 January to change preferences to be included in that round offer.”

For Mary Jamhour, bonus points from living at Earlwood and choosing HSC subjects related to her course enabled her to get into her five-year double degree of law and criminology — which had a 90 ATAR cut-off.

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“I was so lucky that I got those bonus points,” she said. “And the course was exactly what I wanted to do — no one else offered it, so I took the offer straight away.”

University of Western Sydney acting vice-chancellor Professor Denise Kirkpatrick said students were increasingly taking up early offers, which were sent out if they met the ATAR requirement and make the university their first preference.

Popular courses this year include traditional subjects such as medicine, law, nursing and midwifery, but also criminology had become more popular, she said.

“And interestingly enough, the engineering and construction programs are also very popular this year, perhaps with so much development occurring across western Sydney,” she said.

At NSW University, business degrees and science degrees have attracted a lot of interest, a spokesman said. The university had sent out 1500 early offers to non-school leavers, he said.

“We’ve had a strong growth in first preferences, more than anyone else,” he said.

And at the University of Sydney, an alternative entry scheme — giving financially disadvantaged youngsters scholarships — has attracted 10 per cent more students this year.

“There has been a very strong demand for law, but also, pleasingly, for agriculture (which is the strongest in a very long time,” a spokeswoman said.

Also in high demand was vet science and professional allied health which includes physio, occupational therapy, diagnostic radiography and speech therapy.