With Isaac graduating, more than a few people have asked how post-secondary (here they call it tertiary) education works in Australia, so I thought I'd give a quick summary for anyone interested.
In 11th and 12th grade, students undertake a series of two-year courses of their choosing. Everyone needs to take an English class of some sort; in Victoria they offer regular English, English Literature and English Language (with more of a focus on Linguistics). Some schools have other requirements as well, for example at Jewish schools students may be required to take either Jewish Studies or Hebrew. These courses are broken into four units. Typically Units 1 and 2 are completed in Year 11, Units 3 and 4 in Year 12. Students sometimes have options of completing some Unit 3/4 courses in Year 11 and skip Units 1 and 2. Most schools only allow students to do one Unit 3/4 course in Year 11, sometimes two courses, but they are very intense and it can be difficult to work at that high level in Year 11 without background knowledge. Common courses to go straight to Units 3/4 on are Business Management, Psychology, Biology, PE. If someone is a native language other than English speaker, sometimes they do their language Unit 3/4 exam in Year 11 as well. It's advised that students take at least five courses, with six being optimal for maximising your tertiary entry score (see below).
For each Unit 3/4 course, students undertake two to five SACs, or School Assessed Coursework. They can be big tests, oral exams, collaborative exercises or portfolio projects for Arts subjects. Music and Drama courses require performances as one SAC, with tests on music or drama history or theory as well. The outcomes of these are figured into your final course mark, and can be anywhere from 40 - 60% of your final grade depending on the course. Then at the end of the course is the big exam/s. Language courses have an oral exam and a written/listening exam. Maths exams have two parts - calculator and no calculator. The English exam is three hours of just nonstop writing. Exams occur in October and November over three weeks. The exam period can be very stressful. Course results are released in December.
In Victoria, where we live, the diploma high school students earn is called the VCE - Victorian Certificate of Education. In New South Wales, where Sydney is, the diploma is called the HSC - the Higher School Certificate. In both instances, a student earns a score, maximum 50, median 30, for each course. In Victoria, the scores can be weighted - harder classes get scaled up, easier classes scaled down. Below is an example of a few courses and how they scale. Languages tend to scale up a lot, but how much varies. Greek only scales up a little, Latin scales up a lot. Specialist Maths is the hardest maths on offer and scales up a lot, Further Maths is the easiest one and actually scales down.
English is always included in your primary 4, plus whatever other top three marks you get. The bottom two scores are only credited 10% of the total. The scaled scores are added up, then rescaled again to form an ATAR - Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank. Each university in Australia has minimum ATARs for each course they offer. So students don't necessarily have to get a super-high ATAR, just one high enough to get in the course you want. The ATAR is a percentile rank. So in the example above, an ATAR of 99.05 means your marks are better than 99.05% of all the people who sat exams this year.
(Don't ask me how the actual ATAR is calculated - I do not understand it. My school had a rep from the organisation that creates the ATAR come out to explain it, and 102 PowerPoint slides later, I'm still befuddled. I'm thinking it's witchcraft)
Some examples of ATAR requirements from local universities -
University of Melbourne Arts degree is guaranteed if your ATAR is 88 or above. For a bachelor of science, it needs to be an 85, although they accept ATARs as low as 74.
Monash University Law degree requires a minimum ATAR of 94 for guaranteed admission. Undergraduate medicine requires at least a 99.5 ATAR. Education ATAR requirements are around 75. Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander students do get special consideration, as do students from more difficult circumstances such as refugee status or family hardship situations.
Before the exam period starts, Year 12 students need to set up a list of their top eight choices for university programs they'd like to attend, by school and area of study. After the ATARs are released, a matching process happens, similar to sorority rush or medical residency match day, if you've ever been involved in that. The universities get the ATARs of students and rank them. They compare their ranked list to the ranked lists of students who listed them. If a student's first choice matches the university's choice list, you get an offer. If it doesn't, you might get your second choice, and so on, down to your 8th choice. Almost everyone gets an offer on the first match day. A few very unlucky students don't get an offer at all on match day; if that happens, they have the chance to re-order their preference list and school counsellors are available the day after each match day to assist with that. The counsellors do a really good job ahead of time to help students select programs that are realistic so there are very few who get no match offers at all. Just like in the US, there should be at least one safety program on the list but at times parental input or a student's incorrect understanding of how they are doing in various courses can get in the way.
There are multiple match days. The first match day this year happens on 21 December, but some university programs do not offer matches that early. Many wait until the second match day, 12 January, because International Baccalaureate results don't get released until 4 January, and universities want to have the entire student body results before making offers. Third match date is 30 January and fourth match date is 6 February. You can always reorder your preference list right after the first three offer dates. Domestic students get match preference over international students. Students only get one offer per match day maximum.
As explained to me by Isaac's guidance counsellor, you accept all offers that come to you. Tuition is not due until late February, and by then you should have decided your ideal course and turned down the rest. But you accept all when they come in because you always want to have at least one offer available. Some programs require additional application requirements. Isaac's been applying a a few undergraduate medicine programs that require online interviews and supplemental essays but nothing like what students go through when applying to universities in the US.
The local community makes a big deal out of VCE marks when they are released. The local newspapers publish the names and scores of anyone who gets a 40 or above in any course. Schools publish their percentage of the most recent graduating class above a 99, 95, and 90 ATARs, as well as their school ranks in the state. In a way it makes sense to celebrate Year 12 accomplishments because the courses are really, really rigorous. Maths exams can include differential equations and vectors, things I only learned about in university. Chemistry includes both inorganic and organic content. Humanities subjects require intense source analysis. PE courses include a lot of physiology and anatomy. A completely different experience to what we Americans experience in Year 12, so to be proud of ones accomplishments in this area is understandable. But low marks can be really devastating to students, because of the build-up of how important it is. In actual fact, if your ATAR isn't terrific, you can often get into a different program in the university of your choice, do well your first year, then transfer courses. But for these 17 and 18 year olds, it's sometimes hard to see beyond the year in front of them. A very good feature on offer in the VCE is a vocational program so those less academically inclined can experience success in different types of courses.
So . . . how did Isaac do? Pretty well. Honestly better than any of us anticipated, mostly because of his much higher than expected English and Chemistry scores. English was never his strongest subject, and I was worried about Chemistry because the day of the Chemistry exam, almost all the mobile phone service in the entire country went out, trains were delayed and cancelled, and he was late to the exam.
Last year he earned a 50 in Psychology. This year, from the newspaper . . .
Plus a 36 in German that scaled up to a 45. Biology and German were his bottom two (Maths scales up more than Bio), leading to an ATAR of 99.75
We're very proud of him, but just as proud of his other accomplishments over the past four years. He was chosen to be the Wellbeing representative on the Student Representative Council and ran many wellbeing programs for the student body in this role He was Baseball Captain and was on the school's ultimate frisbee team. He made time to have fun and made some beautiful friends over his last four years of high school. He managed his own learning really well during the longest lockdowns in the world during Years 9 and 10, and got himself to and from school independently on Melbourne's usually reliable but sometimes infuriating train system. He developed collegial and productive relationships with all his teachers, as well as with his principal. He won multiple awards for both academic and non-academic accomplishments. He has improved his relationship with his sister, and has gotten better at showing gratitude to his parents.
I remember Isaac's Year 9 orientation so vividly - the principal spoke to all assembled and promised "We will make a man out of your son." That promise absolutely came true. He walked into MHS a very nervous 14 year old, and walked out a confident, driven, purposeful young man. We are grateful to Melbourne High and all of its teachers and administrators for helping Isaac learn how to self-regulate, how to think, how to show compassion, how to be disciplined. We shall see what the future offers him.
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