AS students across the Gannawarra found out if their study was worth it last Monday with the release of ATAR scores, hard work paid off for three students in particular.
Kerang Christian College’s Jemarie Café, Kerang Technical High School’s Oscar Hogg, and Cohuna Secondary College’s Carolyn Fergusson were all announced as duxes.
Jemarie’s motivation was wanting to have the freedom to get into any university course he wanted. He has chosen rural medicine.
“I never really focused on getting the top score, I just focused on achieving the best that I could do,” he said.
Similarly, Carolyn just wanted to see how high a score she could get if she applied herself.
“I just thought that if I can do it, I’d like to see how I can go with it I suppose,” she said.
“Then during the exam period and studying, I was like, I only have to do it once, so let’s see how good of a score I can get.”
She now plans on attending Federation University to study speech pathology after achieving an ATAR of 82.65.
Carolyn credits some of her good study habits to the pandemic.
“It taught me how to manage my own time better to get done what I needed to get done, so then in Year 12 I already had those sort of skills and time management,” she said.
Oscar, who plans on starting a Bachelor of Arts degree next year, said his ATAR score of 81.60 was “unexpected”, but that he was proud of his achievement.
“Last year’s school captain gave me something to aim towards,” he said.
Across the state, 45,239 students received an ATAR, with the average score 69.41.
