QUT has released its plan to offer current Year 12 Queensland students certainty about their study options.
The QUT Year 12 Early Offer Scheme will allow students to receive an offer to study at QUT before they receive their ATAR result.
Available to current Year 12 students, the scheme is open for entry to QUT in 2021.
To be eligible students must be completing either:
- The Queensland Certificate of Education;
- Or the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme at a Queensland high school in 2020; with minimum grades in General ATAR or IB Diploma students.
Students who have listed business, creative industries, information technology, justice, public health or science degrees in their top three QTAC preferences will need to upload school results by Friday, November 6, 2020.
Students who meet the requirements will receive an early offer on Friday 20 November, their final day of school.
QUT Provost Professor Nic Smith said the scheme was aimed at giving Year 12 students and their families certainty after the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
"It's important now that we partner with schools, students and families to show them that we are as focused on attracting high potential students as we always have been while also acknowledging that 2020 has been a really difficult year," Professor Smith said.
"We are looking to give security to a cohort which has been disrupted in a way not seen in many decades."
He said the scheme was designed to be flexible and attract future students to QUT who had the talent and potential to succeed and thrive at the university.
"While this is a slightly different way of measuring the potential and talent of students gaining entry to QUT, we will offer access to those who want to come to university to learn and foster their talent."
QUT student and Vice-Chancellor's Scholar Georgia Hawkins is in her third year of a Bachelor of Public Health and remembers the stress of Year 12 and waiting for her final grades.
"For me it was definitely a nervous wait because I had also applied for a scholarship and needed to get a very high OP," she said.
"For current Year 12s, and all of the uncertainty they've faced, I think providing an earlier offer would alleviate some of the stress and anxiety.
"You work so hard, you give everything to that final year of schooling. You give it your all and you just want to know if all that hard work has paid off."
Georgia is currently undertaking a research unit as part of her degree and would like to work in domestic violence prevention after she graduates – in policy, program development or research.
"I was very keen to get some research experience during my undergraduate degree," she said.
"My task this semester is to design a project in the area of refugee health, linking existing physical activity initiates and getting refugees to engage in those activities."
